As an unabashed fan of 1960s, 70s, and 80s horror, the name George Romero holds sincere weight. After he popularized the splatter horror subgenre in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead, how could any self-important horror fan (such as myself) be anything but excited for the wide-release of The Amusement Park? Filmed in the early 70s, Romero was approached by the Lutheran Service Society and encouraged to create a public service announcement regarding the tribulations of the elderly in modern society. What followed was a project that would become The Amusement Park, and was never released due to the nature of the content within. Romero decided he’d rather not fight the Lutherans, and he moved on to direct and produce several other films that people like me have come to love later in the 70s. Now that the over-40-year-long battle with the Lutherans has concluded, horror fans would be treated to a new film from a genre-defining master. What the film contains, however, carried a bit more of an emotional weight than fans may expect.
Lincoln Maazel, the leading man of The Amusement Park, begins and ends the film by directly speaking to the audience. His opening and closing monologues provide a clean introduction to the film's ideological backdrop and a call-to-action during the conclusion, though they remain short “meta moments”. As Maazel wanders the empty amusement park and provides background to the film, his words admonish the audience to take heed of the plight of those around them. The audience understands that terror is borne of the real world’s gritty realities rather than from an abstraction in the mind of some “crazy zombie movie director”. The silence of the park becomes deafening and a sense of general discomfort begins to set in as Maazel explains the film’s explicit intention to disturb. These short moments at the beginning and end of the film successfully set the tone for the meat of the film inbetween.
After the introduction, Maazel is seen in a white room with another man who is both physically and emotionally battered. Maazel asks if this man would like to accompany him outside, but the man sobs and declines his offer, stating, “There’s nothing out there!” Maazel informs this other man that he will be going outside anyway, and turns to exit into the amusement park behind him.
As the film proper begins, it’s apparent that The Amusement Park will not be a subtle experience. While the ensuing in-your-face metaphors are sometimes humorously overt, they’re largely effective and always feel appropriate to the moment. Maazel faces a ticketer conning the elderly out of prized possessions, plain-costumed monsters on a train ride, and large signage excluding the sick and elderly. As he becomes increasingly uncomfortable, the film develops insulting and persecutory undertones.
A crucial moment in the narrative arrives when Maazel witnesses a bumper car crash between an elderly woman and a younger man. The police arrive after the ensuing argument grows heated. Maazel attempts to speak with authorities to provide an unbiased recounting of the collision but is quickly dismissed when the policeman notices that he isn’t wearing glasses. How could he have seen what truly happened?” He is elderly after all, and his eyes may be playing tricks on him. This theme persists throughout the film, sometimes bordering on comical but never releasing the tension that Maazel holds in his lungs throughout his day at the park.
Maazel experiences several discriminatory events, but the most impactful occurs during his attempt to read a book to a child. Listening intently, the child kindly offers him food and asks him to continue.Untouched by the jaded world around her, she enjoys her limited time with Maazel before her mother begins to pack up and leave. Maazel wishes dearly to provide a positive experience for the child and cries out to her as she is taken away, weeping as he finds himself alone and discarded in the amusement park. In this pinnacle moment, we find Maazel psychologically shattered, and it is this moment which psychologically shattered me. Here Romero broke through my screen, shook me, and questioned my thoughts and actions towards my parents and grandparents. I should have called them more.
On the screen, the Grim Reaper wanders the park, reminding Maazel what may come for him at any time during his day at the park. Returning to the white room, Maazel speaks to a version of himself from the start of the film. He speaks to the less wise version of himself, muttering that “There’s nothing out there”. Like a snake eating itself, the narrative loop of hope and destruction is completed in this return to the sterile, dead room from which we initially set out - an ouroboros of broken spirit.
With a short runtime and fever-dream aesthetics, The Amusement Park is visually disturbing. The camera sweeps and follows Maazel through his outing-become-nightmare, but does so without proper visual stabilization or cinematic convention. Disorienting audiences infrequently works to benefit, but does so in this case. The collective conspiracy of the park inhabitants, camerawork, and storytelling let Maazel (and the audience) know that he is unsafe in his surroundings. Admittedly, part of this aesthetic arises as a result of the film’s age - the grain and imperfect sound quality contribute to the grittiness of Maazel’s world. Voices of the crowds are often inconsistently picked up, and the patrons of the park often feel more like ghosts or ghouls than humans. As the film lends itself well to poor audiovisual quality, one would be forgiven for assuming this was a design decision (and it may have well been). Budgetary concerns may indeed lend themselves well to this film design as well, as cheap, exaggerated designs and poorly thought out attire actually serve to exaggerate Romero’s vision. The comically large suitcases and garish outfits of passersby feel realistic and right at home in this existential nightmare.
That Shudder managed to get this film shown is a marvel in its own right, and should have been counted as immediate cinema history in the making. Romero, a massively famous horror director, only managed to score a mere 450 ‘likes’ on Facebook via the official Shudder page for The Amusement Park release month. If I wasn’t a member of this streaming service, I never would have known that this release even occurred. Horror has always been the ugly stepchild of film, and this should-be momentous event in film history demonstrates it: a legendary director’s excellent lost film was rediscovered and rereleased to hardly a single comment from mainstream media. The discovery of horrific thought (such as the strife of the elderly) through film mustn’t be considered a putrid nuisance. Instead, audiences should become intimately aware of the frightful images portrayed in horror filmography, and work to critically analyze why they’re frightening at all. One will find that, such as in the case of The Amusement Park, we may not like what’s staring back at us. Maybe we should have spent more time helping our grandparents after all.
The Amusement Park provides a near genre-defining experience with a message which is just as poignant as the day it was filmed. The existential darkness of the film is unrivaled by almost any modern-day equivalents, and the end-result of this film is greater than the sum of its parts. The Amusement Park is a film with an unexpected emotional toll and begs important questions: what have you done for those who have raised you? While not perfect, it is a film I would recommend to everyone and a film I will never watch again.
★★★★☆
Maximillion Ripley
Staff Writer at The Papermaker