Studio: Shudder
Director: George A. Romero
Writer: Walton Cook
Producer: Richard P. Rubinstein
Stars: Lincoln Maazel, Michael Gornick, S. William Hinzman
Review Score:
Summary:
Nightmares blur with reality when an old man faces the horrors of elder abuse during a surreal day at an amusement park.
Review:
A bit of background is in order for contextualizing “The Amusement Park.” In 1973, the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania contracted Pittsburgh filmmaker George A. Romero, yes “that” George A. Romero, to produce an educational film about elder abuse. Whatever it was they wanted from Romero, the movie he made was not what the Lutheran Society expected. Upon viewing the final cut, legend has it that the people paying the bills were shocked and/or confused by content they supposedly deemed disturbing. “The Amusement Park” ended up banished to a “we don’t know what to do with this” limbo as a lost cause that literally became lost after everyone wrote it off and moved on.
Two badly faded 16mm prints turned up in 2018, one year after Romero’s death. With the legendary director’s widow Suzanne Desrocher-Romero acting as a consultant, NYC-based IndieCollect went about restoring “The Amusement Park” with additional support from The George A. Romero Foundation. The result isn’t as crisp or as clean as everyone would prefer. “The Amusement Park” still suffers from scratches, washed out colors, and “underwater” audio. Given what there was to work with, this is undoubtedly as good as it can conceivably get considering the sources had been sweating who knows where for 45 years.
Understandably, a considerable amount of hype accompanied “The Amusement Park’s” resurrection. An unseen George A. Romero film most people never knew existed, released posthumously when no one thought they’d get a “new” Romero movie ever again? What fan of the filmmaker wouldn’t be absolutely over the moon about this unexpected discovery?
High anticipation has to come with some tempering, however. Perhaps on reductive presumption, several sources misleadingly refer to “The Amusement Park” as a horror film. Horror elements certainly exist in the imagery presented, but “The Amusement Park” is neither a traditional narrative nor a feature film. It’s a 53-minute work-for-hire corporate video that Romero took in a highly experimental direction. Even knowing that, my own expectations weren’t properly aligned for what “The Amusement Park” actually is.
My parents are in their eighties. One of them lives in a nursing home. Neither of them has their full physical or mental faculties. As I progress further into middle age myself, my thoughts are increasingly preoccupied with fears involving compassionate care for the elderly, becoming immobile, developing dementia, and other inevitable aspects of dealing with old age for yourself or your loved ones.
I reasoned, if anyone was going to have their finger on the pulse of what it’s like to live in a fog of missing memories, inconsiderate humiliation, and loneliness, it would be a director who was ahead of his time in critiquing consumer culture, entitled elitism, and segregated societies. In my head, I was already imagining what “The Amusement Park’s” thought-provoking metaphors would be. A carousel symbolizing routine monotony. A roller coaster mirroring ups and downs of unpredictable daily confusion. What clever commentary might the master have in store this time?
What I failed to take into consideration is that “The Amusement Park” wasn’t made by the socially-savvy filmmaker George A. Romero ultimately became. It was made by a relatively under-experienced 33-year-old who was smack dab in the middle of 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead” and 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead.” Not only was Romero seeking his true voice as an artist while scrounging for commercial work, he was comparatively a “kid” far removed from fully empathizing with internal terrors associated with aging, e.g. Alzheimer’s, from passive or active perspectives.
What we see instead is a vision primarily focused on tangible torments like physical abuse and economic exploitation. At times, “The Amusement Park” can be as much of a PSA about being impoverished as it is about being elderly. The glimpse this gives us into Romero’s development as a conscientious creator shows he was just as concerned about classism then as he was right up until his passing.
Shot at the long since defunct West View Park in Pennsylvania, the amusement park essentially exists to provide “glue” for linking various vignettes together. Romero wanted to illustrate elder discrimination in several settings such as an unsympathetic pawnbroker lowballing old folks selling sentimental heirlooms and a slumlord forcing tenants to live in unkempt conditions. The solution he came up with for connecting this material was to set these scenes inside a surreal amusement park where nightmarish fantasy blends with vague reality.
Local stage actor Lincoln Maazel, whose only other onscreen role came later in Romero’s “Martin,” plays an unnamed old man we’ll also call Lincoln for simplicity’s sake. Lincoln spends most of the movie wandering a midway where ordinary carnival attractions bizarrely morph into disturbing depictions of ageism.
When a bumper car collision results in a man, played by Romero, berating an old woman for rear-ending him, a cop and an insurance agent improbably get involved. Lincoln does too, only to find his eyewitness testimony disregarded since he wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time.
At a makeshift restaurant, Lincoln watches waiters dote on a wealthy patron with a top hat, ornate cane, and candelabra on his table. Ignored by the same staff and feeling the stares of elderly onlookers, Lincoln leaves behind his little lunch while the aristocrat dines on lobster. Hungry hands eagerly grab at Lincoln’s paper plate of leftover pasta, and fight over crusts from slices of plain white bread.
To my surprise, I found myself siding with West Pennsylvania’s Lutheran Society while watching “The Amusement Park.” Putting myself in their mindset, I can see why the movie posed a problem for their purposes. The cautionary tale they commissioned turned into a dream logic oddity I can’t imagine making any rational sense in 1973. Several times I wondered, “Who is this film for?” and couldn’t come up with an answer.
Any elderly viewers not put off by a bearded biker gang beating and robbing Lincoln would be utterly baffled by all other patrons inexplicably disappearing during this sequence, presumably as a parallel for Lincoln’s abandonment. Who knows what they might make of a scene where a young man, upset when a fortuneteller’s crystal ball shows a future where a distracted doctor ignores a woman’s passionate plea for a house call, punches Lincoln in retaliation for what’s to come in old age.
If “The Amusement Park” was meant as an informative cautionary tale for young people to mind their behavior toward senior citizens, that would have fallen on deaf ears too. One scene shows an old man being denied a driver’s license for failing an eye exam. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Well yeah, he had trouble reading the third line of the chart and couldn’t read the fourth at all. Maybe this guy shouldn’t drive a car.”
“The Amusement Park’s” tableaus of mistreatment clearly come from a 33-year-old mind associating economic unfairness with ageist discrimination. Sluice those underdeveloped ideas through an interpretive dreamscape and it’s no wonder “The Amusement Park” turned into a wildly weird hodge-podge of indeterminate educational value.
In mulling how to rate “The Amusement Park,” I realized any arbitrary number depends on how someone classifies the film and whether they consider its unusual history. The fact that it never saw the light of day defines how well the movie fills the function for which it was initially created. But because “The Amusement Park” is now a George A. Romero rarity rather than a misfit corporate video, it doesn’t make sense to regard the film as anything other than a Romero curio. Unless some oblivious viewer accidentally stumbles across it in Shudder’s streaming selection, the only people who will ever watch “The Amusement Park” are Romero fans who know something about its origin. Why worry about an “average” moviegoer who will only question, “What even is this?” exactly like the Lutheran Society did?
Several “what if’s” struck me while watching the film. The final “huh?” came with the last shot set in the park, where the camera cuts in close on a half-eaten piece of fried chicken. I could hear an older George A. Romero, wizened by decades of experience, chuckling at the ham-handedness of whatever the neglected drumstick meant to symbolize. “The Amusement Park” wouldn’t embarrass Romero by any means, but he’d be the first to look back with a slight snicker and reflectively laugh, “Oh yeah, I was really rowing without a paddle for some of that movie, wasn’t I?”
For all its faults as an arguably unsuccessful allegory, “The Amusement Park” remains a fascinating film for fans anxious to peek at a young George A. Romero still finding his filmmaking footing. Using precious little dialogue, the film features a few Romero trademarks like a large background cast of volunteers as well as appearances in front of and behind the lens from longtime collaborators including “Dawn of the Dead” D.P. Michael Gornick and ‘Cemetery Zombie’ Bill Hinzman. There’s a lot to look at, appreciate, and unpack in terms of a time capsule curiosity that will illuminate audiences far more about Romero’s creative process than the tragedies of elder abuse.
Review Score: 60
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.