🎞 American Cinema 🇺🇸
🔻 Horror and Terror
The Amusement Park (1975) is considered a psychological horror that was excavated in 2017 and 4K restored in 2019 from the supposedly lost 16mm print. It’s a reflection of the taste of Pittsburgh-based local independent film production, the same as Season of the Witch (1972) and The Crazies (1973). The director-editor is my favorite filmmaker, George A. Romero (1940-2017).
So-called horror. This term is abused globally, while it only means intentional physical danger. In contrast, so-called terror is about causing psychological threats from criminals or evil entities. Hence, many ‘horror’ films are terror films. Such as The Ring (1998) is a terror film. Curse is terror, not horror. The Amusement Park (1975) is mixed with horror and terror if you accurately categorize it. The lack of compassion toward the elderly people is a terror for the elderly while aging abuses by younger groups of society is a horror. This defamiliarization reveals the nature of the film. It’s made as some kind of new subgenre of ‘horror’ film in terms of social commentary. In other words, it came out of one kind of typical fear depicted above. This is why I highly rate this film in contrast to monsters, ghosts, and zombies. I can say that George A. Romero's (1940–2017) greatest films are non-zombie films if we value their depth, intelligence, and originality. He turned various kinds of fears in society at the time into various kinds of new ‘horror’ films.
🔻Fact and Value - The Amusement Park (1975)
Someday, you will be aged.
The leading actor, Lincoln Maazel (1903-2009), who played the protagonist, the elderly man in West View Park, Pennsylvania, is distinct, as we can see the clear differences between his role, Cuda in Martin (1977) and The Amusement Park (1975). Cuda is like the Colonel in Viy who, unhesitatingly, kills the suspected vampire, Martin, due to his possessed superstition. A good actor shows different characteristics while playing different roles, even though they have the same outlook as the same actor. Thus, it’s hard to recognize Cuda as the elderly man in this film. Lincoln Maazel (1903-2009) is this example.
This film is composed of a series of aging abuses and a lack of compassion toward elderly people. At the time, there was no such concept as ‘barrier-free.’ However, the location doesn’t have any specificity because the subject is the lack of compassion toward elderly people in general. In addition to what Lincoln Maazel says in the first narrating sequence and the last reflective sequence in this drama, the fear of elderly people being abandoned and even abused by the younger groups of society is a real fear for everybody. Hence, not only the protagonist is our mirror image, but also the entire film is our mirror image. In other words, the elderly man in this film is an externalized self-consciousness of every viewer. The screenwriter, Wally Cook, seemed to apply Hegelian dialectics in this film production. The thesis is the first white room sequence in which we can see the bloodied protagonist from the end of the drama (synthesis). It’s the negative image of the protagonist. Then, the yet-endeavored version of the protagonist starts its journey. It’s the positive image of the protagonist who we must follow through. The entire film is growing fatigue, disappointment, and scars of the protagonist via a series of aging abuses by staff and guests in the amusement park (antithesis). Among the episodic inserts, the most aesthetically brilliant ones are the fortune-teller sequence and the biker sequence.
1. The fortune-teller sequence is the most complicated editing structure that can be seen in this film. Maybe many viewers don’t recognize what it is. Yet, if we understand the components, it will be clear enough. It’s intercut between the fortune-teller, the young couple, the news interview that tells about economic hardship for tenants, and the old couple struggling in the apartment room to get medical help. In this, the theme is the same as the entire film; a lack of compassion from society toward elderly people. Most importantly, the old couple – their spouse is dying in bed and his wife is seeking medical help on the street of downtown Pittsburgh – is the mirror image projected in the mind of the young couple by the fortune-teller. Although fortune-telling is to reorganize issues in our minds to conclude, a film can do more like this.
2. After being beaten by a well-tempered young man from the fortune-teller’s house, the protagonist finds himself in silence and no one in his surroundings. The three bikers – the precedent of the subsequent Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Knightriders (1981) – rob him of park ticket money in The Birds-style freeze action collage – see the gas station explosion in The Birds (1963) or the airport sequence in High Anxiety (1977) with an insert of Death in the middle of them. After the assault, everything turns normal. The other guests frame in mass as usual in the theme park.
❗️ Conclusion
The entire film is fictional. What does it mean? There is no such thing as fact in fiction when it’s about values. The Amusement Park (1975) deals with social values. We can go through this visual-sound journey to realize our mirror images both as offenders and victims. No one can escape from the subject because everybody is getting age to join the elderly people at the end. Unfortunately, people see it as a particular criticism of West View Park at the time if he or she doesn’t understand fiction or art in general. And Romero didn’t mention West View Park as it is anyway. Moreover, if the filmmaking aims to criticize the park, it shouldn’t have taken the form of drama. Instead, it could have been an investigative journalist news report, not a film. News should strictly deal with facts, while fictional rhetorical works deal with values. We can’t mix both as a norm today.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to the professional film writer Ryota Nakanishi as author and a link to www.ryotanakanishi.com is provided.
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