Director Report Card: George A. Romero (1975)

3.5. The Amusement Park

It was a scenario so fitting that it prompted a hundred pun-filled headlines. Three years after his death, a lost film from the inventor of the zombie genre would emerge from the cinematic cemetery and be unleashed on the world. Yes, here in 2021, we now have within our reach a “new” – or, more accurately, newly unearthed – George A. Romero movie. Before its rediscovery, only the most die-hard of Romero scholars had heard of “The Amusement Park.” I considered myself a pretty big fan of the guy and I had never heard of the movie until the news broke a few years back.

The circumstances surrounding “The Amusement Park's” production is, itself, a great story. In-between “Season of the Witch” and “The Crazies,” Romero was commissioned by the Lutheran Church to produce an educational film. The chosen topic was age discrimination and elder abuse. I guess the Church had different expectations than you and I would when hiring the director of “Night of the Living Dead.”  The subsequent film was considered disturbing enough that it was barely screened and quickly buried. For forty years, it was considered lost. A rare 16mm print was found in 2001 and the slow road to restoration began. It wasn't until 2018 that the restored film began to play festivals. Finally, earlier this year, Shudder made it available to the public at large. Now, “The Amusement Park” can be watched and judged within the context of Romero's overall career.

Following a short introduction from the film's star, explaining its themes, we begin. An unnamed old man, bloodied and bruised, sits in a white room. His clean-cut doppelgänger appears before exiting the room into an amusement park. In the park, the old man isn't allowed on most of the rides due to his health conditions. The staff is actively hostile to the man. Soon, he suffers ever graver humiliation, before being violently attacked. All the while, the people around him — in the prime of their life — ignore his mistreatment.

"The Amusement Park" is a potent metaphor for the abandonment and abuse of the elderly. Like Romero's best social commentaries, it's not exactly subtle either. The roller coasters in the park are marked with signs, forbidding anyone with a weak heart, diabetes, or any other common ailment facing the elderly from riding. The ticket barker doesn't care that the man is on a limited income as he takes his money. There's even a lengthy digression, depicting an old woman trying to alert people to her husband being sick while she is ignored by the people. At least by the ones that aren't actively hostile to her. Later, the bloodied old man seeks medical treatment himself, before being pushed through a cafeteria-style hospital who literally put a band-aid on his wound before shuffling him back out. 

In other hands, blatant symbolism and metaphors like this might've come off as ham-fisted or overly obvious. Romero, however, knew how to make this kind of thing work. From the opening minutes, he establishes an unsettling, dream-like atmosphere. The first scene, where two different versions of the same man meet in an unearthly white room, let's us know immediately that this story doesn't reflect literal reality. All throughout the film, a grim reaper-like figure is seen lurking behind the old man. At times, the environment seems to freeze around him, immediately becoming empty. This is his nightmare, a nightmare that many elderly people face every day, and we are trapped in it. 

This surreal ambiance seems to most link "The Amusement Park" to Romero's more slow-paced, character-driven films like "Martin" or "Season of the Witch." But just wait, because the guy who made those gory zombie movies is lurking in here too. After suffering numerous psychological and moral humiliations, the old man is subjected to brutal violence. A cartoonish motorcycle gang — not unlike the one that would later appear in "Dawn of the Dead" — rides into the park. They proceed to beat him in an extended sequence that isn't especially bloody... But is still harrowing because of the way it lingers on the pain and terror the old man feels in this moment. Scenes like this are paired with the loud, rushing environment of an amusement park, quickly making the film an overwhelming sensory experience.

What makes "The Amusement Park's" acts of psychological and physical abuse so bracing is the performance at its center. Lincoln Maazel, who would go on play to Tateh Cuda in "Martin," stars as the old man. In the beginning, he is optimistic and positive. Slowly, the park grinds down his confidence before he's reduced to weeping while laying on the ground. Somehow, the film's most punishing moment is not the act of violence. It's when Maazel sits down at a picnic with a little girl, seemingly the only person in the park who treats him with kindness, and reads her a story... Before her mother scoops her up and walks off, acting as if the man isn't there at all. His following tears and anguished wails are absolutely heart-breaking. "The Amusement Park" wouldn't be half as effective as it is if Maazel didn't make you feel so badly for the old man. 

As much as "The Amusement Park" is specifically about the mistreatment and abuse that the elderly face in America, Romero also uses it to criticize the societal forces his films often commented on. A key moment has the old man sitting down to eat some lunch, while a clearly rich man sits in the same area. While the waiters lavish attention on this man, giving him fine food, the old man is ignored, treated rudely, and giving cold French fries. This illustrates that the abuse of the old is just another symptom of the same diseases that have always plagued America. Namely, the division between the haves and the have-nots. 

Perhaps the most disturbing moment in "The Amusement Park" occurs not during its main runtime but in its brief epilogue. When Maazel directly addresses the viewer again and informs us that he'll one day "see us in the park." After all, old age awaits us all and our fate may very well be the same as this film's main character. Romero packed a lot of disturbing power and potency into "The Amusement Park's" brief 55 minute runtime. I can understand a church deciding this was too spicy a meatball for them, though it absolutely makes its point with brutal efficiency. Romero took a simple for-hire job to make an educational short and created an unnerving horror experience. It's fantastic that this once lost gem is now available to everyone and can be slotted alongside the other classics its director made. [Grade: A]