An unre­leased George A Romero film address­es the effects of ageism

In 1973, George A Romero was com­mis­sioned by a Luther­an char­i­ty in Pitts­burgh to cre­ate a PSA about ageism. This was before Sea­son of the Witch, The Cra­zies and Dawn of the Dead – a young film­mak­er tak­ing on an indus­tri­al job to make ends meet. The film was nev­er released, while Romero charged ahead and became the beloved genre direc­tor who defined the zom­bie film and left a beloved mark on pop culture.

The film – intend­ed to be screened in com­mu­ni­ty venues – was called The Amuse­ment Park, and its aim was to teach view­ers about the per­ils of ageism by con­dens­ing the every­day world into the con­fines of its recre­ation­al set­ting. In Jan­u­ary 2020, the film screened to the pub­lic for the first time at New York City’s MoMA, fol­low­ing fundrais­ing and restora­tion efforts by the George A Romero Foun­da­tion (the GARF) and IndieCollect.

The film is quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Romero, with exact­ing social com­men­tary and dark humour through­out. ​“A bunch of us had seen it and we were sur­prised that no one real­ly knew about it,” says Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, the director’s wid­ow, who found­ed the GARF in response to a con­ver­sa­tion she had with the film­mak­er over Scrab­ble one night while he was sick. He had assert­ed that ​“nobody real­ly cares” in response to what he felt about his lega­cy – a com­ment Desrocher-Romero found her­self return­ing to in mourning.

“I decid­ed that that just wasn’t right – that that just wasn’t cor­rect – and I need­ed to do some­thing,” she reflects, ​“so we cre­at­ed the foun­da­tion and our first task was to restore this film.” The foun­da­tion is also help­ing to com­pile an archive devot­ed to the film­mak­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and sup­ports schol­ar­ships at the George A Romero Film­mak­ing Pro­gram run by the Dou­glas Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter. It’s a labour of love dri­ven by his fam­i­ly mem­bers and collaborators.

Restor­ing The Amuse­ment Park was no sim­ple feat. The orig­i­nal 16mm ele­ments are pre­sumed lost, and the avail­able copies were scratched, warped and colour fad­ed. Desrocher-Romero had one print, while anoth­er was found by Tony Buba (broth­er of Pasquale, one of Romero’s edi­tors) in an old film lab. Anoth­er emerged in the belong­ings of the late Bill Hinz­man, the first per­son to appear as a zom­bie in Night of the Liv­ing Dead.

San­dra Schulberg’s team at IndieCol­lect, an organ­i­sa­tion devot­ed to pre­serv­ing Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing, exten­sive­ly scanned and restored the films to the best pos­si­ble stan­dards. The result­ing restora­tion plays fan­tas­ti­cal­ly, and the slight colour shift and occa­sion­al­ly frayed nature is a charm­ing reminder of how close this film was to nev­er being seen at all.

With his pass­ing in recent mem­o­ry, recon­nect­ing with Romero’s work through the film feels espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful. ​“He just didn’t think it was impor­tant,” recalls Desrocher-Romero ​“but as Romero com­pletists we of course dis­agree!” Aside from its open­ing and clos­ing mono­logues, the film hard­ly con­forms to the rigid­i­ty of a PSA at all. It detours so wild­ly that it feels like a lost con­nec­tion with­in Romero’s fil­mog­ra­phy, break­ing out of an indus­tri­al film’s shell.

The omnipres­ence of mean­der­ing crowds demon­strates a clear pre-occu­pa­tion with the nature of com­mer­cial spaces that would man­i­fest ten­fold in Dawn of the Dead years lat­er, and a motor­cy­cle gang even ter­rorise its elder­ly pro­tag­o­nist, played by Lin­coln Maazel.

Maazel’s char­ac­ter is intro­duced in a hos­pi­tal-like white room away from the park’s bus­tle, where he encoun­ters a future, bruised and almost cata­ton­ic ver­sion of him­self who he attempts to cheer up. When he enthu­si­as­tic ven­tures out­side, the fore­shad­ow­ing labo­ri­ous­ly becomes real­i­ty. Elder­ly vis­i­tors pawn their fam­i­ly heir­looms at the admis­sions booth, only to be turned away from cer­tain rides.

The park has an arro­gant DMV counter that restricts access to the high­way-mir­ror­ing bumper car ride, where younger vis­i­tors blame the elders for acci­dents. A gift shop acts as a fast-paced and dis­ori­en­tat­ing phar­ma­cy with unsym­pa­thet­ic clerks, and the restau­rant gives pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to younger and wealth­i­er patrons.

Pick­pock­ets prey on vis­i­tors in queues, and one of the ​‘rides’ – to which elder­ly patrons are eager­ly ush­ered into – is an over­ca­pac­i­ty care home in dis­guise. Though it’s not a hor­ror film, it’s cer­tain­ly hor­rif­ic. ​“It’s dis­con­cert­ing about ageism and its fac­tors – we’re all going to go there!” points out Desrocher-Romero. In one apro­pos scene, a young cou­ple con­sult a for­tune teller and are shown a vision of their future demise as neglect­ed elder­ly citizens.

There’s a posthu­mous side to the film that con­trasts its more hor­rif­ic ele­ments, how­ev­er. ​“If you look care­ful­ly, you can see him walk­ing by the cam­era all the time” Desrocher-Romero observes, ​“and you can hear his voice in the back­ground with the wal­la.” Romero also plays a bumper car rid­er, and his fre­quent pres­ence with­in the film – owing to his resource­ful­ness in the face of a lim­it­ed bud­get and a scarci­ty of extras – feels bittersweet.

Films can ret­ro­spec­tive­ly become time cap­sules, and The Amuse­ment Park is one that allows us to wit­ness a young Romero doing what he did best – putting 100 per cent into con­vinc­ing the audi­ence that the events seen are pos­si­ble. This isn’t the last we’ll see of his ear­li­er works either. Desrocher-Romero reveals that 17 min­utes of Expos­tu­la­tions – Romero’s first attempt at a fea­ture film – have also been recov­ered. Is there a chance the rest of the film will emerge at some point? ​“Hope­ful­ly, some­where in someone’s attic… or in a box… it’ll be there.”

The Amuse­ment Park screened as part of MoMA’s ​‘To Save and Project’ sea­son in Jan­u­ary 2020. Details of a UK release are expect­ed to be announced soon.

With thanks to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, San­dra Schul­berg and the GARF and IndieCol­lect teams.