THE AMUSEMENT PARK

The Amusement Park Movie Review

An old man walks into an all-white room and asks another old man there if he would like to go outside--no, this isn't the start of a joke, but is the beginning of The Amusement Park (well, kind of. It actually begins with another old man telling the viewer what they are about to see). Anyway, the old man who was already in the room appears disheveled, and warns the much more optimistic elderly man against going outside. The other guy ignores him, and steps back out the door, and right into an amusement park. This movie from 1973 is about as unusual as it gets--it was commissioned as an educational video about age discrimination, but was directed and edited by George A. Romero...yes, THAT George A. Romero...so it turned out a bit more disturbing than was wanted, and was shelved. This was assumed to be lost entirely until, in 2017, a 16MM print was discovered. This was restored, and voila! The movie lives once more for the entire world to enjoy.

Enjoy is maybe not the correct term

The overall message of this film is that getting old sucks--I think most of us knew that already, but the levels of absolute hell we see the senior citizens in this film endure are gut-wrenching. Symbolism is the name of the game here--there's not much blood at all, and no gore, but my goodness, is this movie terrifying. The amusement park setting is fun, and the juxtaposition of that being the backdrop to the very real world problems presented in this feature is beyond surreal. More than anything, the movie is depressing--we see the old folks being treated poorly, but as I watched, an even more depressing thought entered my mind--everybody in this film, even the very youngest, are either dead, senior citizens themselves now, or at least well into their fifties and about to face the same problems our main character here deals with. If that thought wasn't depressing enough, another one popped in there --senior citizens today are probably treated even worse than they were almost fifty years ago. All this said, this flick, which is under an hour long, is worth checking out for the stylistic merits alone--it's not a traditional horror, but is unquestionably horrific.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

The Amusement Park Movie Trailer