Synopsis
"See you in the park, someday"
An elderly gentleman sets out for what he thinks will be a normal day at an amusement park and is soon embroiled in a waking nightmare.
The Amusement Park
1975 Directed by George A. Romero
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The embodiment of everything that a nightmare is.
Captures human disarray better than most and features a performance for the ages from Lincoln Maazel. This is so incredibly Romero it hurts—filled with uncomfortable blunt realities and surreal pain where the outcome of a brief glimmer of hope moment towards the end made my cry.
Feels like a lost transmission from the back of all our minds. Important and thought provoking stuff, plus it might just be the best Twilight Zone episode never made but even scarier because it’s real. I thought this would be a quaint little oddity with a few rudimentary allusions about life from one of my favorite and most revered filmmakers but boy was I dead wrong—it hit me like a ton of bricks and I loved it.
I miss George so much.
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George Romero’s lost movie. What is said is that it was saved from 2 damaged 16mm films. The restoration was quite nice. George Romero’s widow stated that she believes that it was shelved because the organization that hired him to make a movie about elder abuse was just to edgy for their tastes. Which seems kinda funny because they must have not realized who they hired. lol It is like a PSA on how elderly are discarded by society, take advantage of and physically abused reflected in the setting of a theme park and can be quite bleak. You have to see it to appreciate it for uniqueness. It is currently available on Shudder check it out!
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Completely devastating film about the very real horror of ageism. Meant to be a PSA, this “lost” film shows a kind senior man go through all of the daily tortures the elderly face in our society. I used to work in an assisted living center so I think this hit me as especially frightening because I’ve spent a lot of time around what I’m terrified of becoming. It’s the unavoidable horror of becoming helpless and useless. It’s the cruel joke of the life cycle.
This is full of that classic Romero tension and paranoia as well as his usual social commentary that hits the nail right on the head. Not your standard horror film, but in many ways just as terrifying as anything else out there.
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Orson Welles in the Twilight Zone.
Stare long enough at capitalism (or mortality) and you'll see either a horror movie or a sick joke. Romero, of course, sees both.
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what was functionally supposed to be a PSA on elder abuse in romero's hands is the horrifying and hellish material reality of old age rendered into an expertly-crafted formal conveyer belt of drifting and assault and eventual disposal. at its best reminded me of one of my all-time fav horror shorts: The Telephone Box; which i won't go into detail about, best to go into that blind. anyway unbelievable that this saw the light of day even if it was decades later. "just nothing... nothing... just nothing."
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When the Lutheran Society decided to make a film about ageism, they went at it in the most inexperienced way possible, as you'd expect... They funded George Romero, and when he rocked up with the results, they were horrified.
Were you trying to make your point or not? Because if you ask me, George delivered your message in spades...
Shot in 1973, we're talking peak Romero here. This is before he becomes Mr. Zombie, and was instead making thought-provoking horror, that despite his budget constraints, always hit home. And Amusement Park is no different.
As anyone reading this probably knows, the Lutherans then lost their nerve and buried the film, to be forgotten until a print emerged in the years…
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I would pay money to see a reaction video of the Lutheran church group that hired Romero to direct this.
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No other horror master, not even Raimi or Carpenter, better understood than George A. Romero the thin line between terror and farce that defines bewilderment and powerlessness. The Amusement Park compresses his satirical chills into a dense short that doesn't so much move forward as constantly squeeze its baffled protagonist until he is propelled against his will. The relentlessness of the pandemonium makes the amusement park metaphor seem oddly logical as your brain is overloaded with the sensations of the elderly characters' increasing exploitation and destruction, a state that only wealth can ameliorate, and even then for only so long as they are slowly dispossessed of their goods on their way to being sped toward the grave. Romero throws in…
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When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this film,
And slowly watch, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deepWilliam Butler Yeats & George A. Romero
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Wow.
One of the first things that hit me right away was the elderly trading in their valuables for cash, cents on the dollar, it reminded me of the predatory "sell your gold" commercials on Faux News (I'm not a Faux News watcher).
I know this movie was targeting elder abuse, and that's important, but there's so much about society that Romero got right in this movie. And as much as I love a bleak movie, this one was too real, too relatable. And that's the point. The ever present lack of health care, the grifters stealing from you as you're sold home upgrades (reminded me of grandparents relying on reverse mortgages to survive) the hustle and bustle of every…