George A. Romero's once-thought-lost film, The Amusement Park, was not intended as a summer anthem, even though I have come to accept it as such. The 1975 production, which was financed by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania and filmed at the long-gone West View Park, is a public-service announcement on senior abuse. Its depictions, as written by Walton (Wally) Cook (who portrayed a fire chief in Romero's The Crazies) may seem surreal, but they are not far removed from what many seniors endure, whether then or now.
Lincoln Maazel, who would go on to depict patriarch Tata Cuda in Romero's urban-vampire classic, Martin, plays both the film's host and juxtaposing leads. To launch its events, he confirms his own status as a senior (on the cusp of 71) and prepares one for the plight those of his demographic may face. From there, he assumes the story's bookending roles (introduced in a dull, white room), both characters dressed in white, but one spry and the other disheveled, the former journeying out to engage a series of linking vignettes, which culminate in an ironic, full-circle turn.
The vignettes consist of the park's attendees dismissing an older man's death on a railroad attraction; a senior who fails an eye exam and loses his driver's license; a traffic accident involving his wife, represented by allegorical bumper cars; Maazel being disrespected at an outdoor restaurant (along with other elderly patrons); a false accusation made against him when he converses with children; a makeshift hospital where he is shuffled about without beneficial cause; a fortune teller who reveals to a young man that he will someday fall ill, with his wife unable to get him help; and a picnic where the exhausted Maazel reads "The Three Little Pigs" to a little girl, but is scorned before he can finish.
Cook's Twilight Zone-ish script is the real force behind the stressful stream, and his scenarios do resonate, but the blanketing ambiance is pure Romero, featuring his inimitable style of the time, which flowed from Night of the Living Dead through Knightriders. (And in the Amusement Park's case, the production even stars Romero as a hot-headed driver in the bumper-car scene, as well as Bill Hinzman, Night of the Living Dead's graveyard ghoul, as a shifty ticket handler, who also acted as the film's cinematographer, plus Romero's most consistent cinematographer, Michael Gornick as the young man of prophesized, poor health). The culmination, carried by these Romero familiarities, creates an everyman aesthetic which, though unassuming at a glance, builds a draw that's hard to break.
Maazel, who would live to the ripe old age of 105, is pitch-perfect in the lead. He is the glue that keeps the parts together, relaying strife, bewilderment, fear and dread: themes that infiltrate Cook's script.
On the frivolous front, The Amusement Park does, indeed, capture the instrinsic essence of comparable, "summer" movies: The Other, Jaws, Friday the 13th (1980), The Lost Boys, Monster Summer and Abraham's Boys: A Dracula Story. The Amusement Park prevails, however, beyond its warm-weather insertions, due to its message, which spotlights folks in the winter of their lives, who are forced into summer's fickle serenity. It is a period that its participants should enjoy but, due to red-tape snags and myopic misunderstandings, cannot.
If you have not seen The Amusement Park, please give it a view. Like me, you might find its specialized approach does, in fact, make for a worthy and unique, summer entry, even if one marked by disconcerting truths.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/0FFGDUEXZC0JZK87M3SVLPC53O/ref=atv_plr_detail_play
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