I decided to forgo doing a regular review for The Amusement Park because it is more of a curiosity for cinephiles than a movie to be enjoyed by general audiences. For those who don’t know, The Amusement Park was a film made in 1973 from the late great horror icon George Romero. He was commissioned by the Lutheran Society to make a film that explores the way modern society treats the elderly, a literal message movie from the man famous for the social commentary in his horror films. It was produced on a very small budget, and the cast and crew were largely made up of volunteers.
This is all explained in a brief opening where the film’s star, Lincoln Maazel, who was also featured in Romero’s 1978 film, Martin, addresses directly to the camera telling us what the film is all about. Of course, what eventually happened was the film was rejected by the nonprofit group due to its graphic nature (which, having now seen it, seems puzzling since it’s not that graphic), and it was never released; assumed lost for many years until a print was found in 2018, and given a 4K restoration that we are now finally getting the chance to watch.
Written by Walton Cook, the story of the not-even-an-hour-long film involves an elderly man (played by Maazel), who goes to an amusement park, and very quickly finds himself not only disoriented by the hustle and bustle of the busy park, but actively mistreated and degraded by the indifference of all the younger people that he, and plenty of other elderly people, encounter throughout the day in the amusement park, and it only gets worse as it goes along. That’s pretty much it.
The film is quite the ride, and while Romero may have considered it to be an odd job that doesn’t hold a candle to his masterpieces, his style is pretty sharp, even as one of his early films. In that opening, Maazal says it was important for the film to now simply tell you its message, it wants you to feel what it’s cross a point in your life when you are disrespected and considered disposable by everyone else. That element shines through as you really feel for Mazaal’s character, and experience the anxiety the way he probably did. And considering how a number of Romero’s classics involve society’s failings and loss of humanity, this fits rather snugly in his canon.
If you’re a George Romero fan, The Amusement Park is absolutely a film you need to check out. I mean, are you not gonna take the opportunity to say you saw “the new Romero film” in 2021? For everyone else, I don’t know if I would say the same, but that’s not to take away what an entertaining and terrific piece of low budget filmmaking this is. It has absolutely zero chill from the get-go. It’s cool to see a filmmaker like Romero take what is basically a work-for-hire gig, and still apply his own idiosyncrasies, sense of humor, and stylistic impulses. One sequence fairly early on could easily be cut out, converted to black-and-white, and be easily mistaken for a classic silent film that explores class differences. And I would say the ideas being explored here are still very much relevant, just look up what Stan Lee and Mickey Rooney went through. As Maazal says in the beginning, “Remember as you watch the film, one day you will be old.”
The Amusement Park is now available to stream exclusively on Shudder.