Tag Archives: George Romero

CAPSULE: THE AMUSEMENT PARK (1973/2019)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Lincoln Mazaael

PLOT: An old man spends a terrifying afternoon at an amusement park.

Still from The Amusement Park (1973)

COMMENTS: In 1973, the Lutheran Society decided to fund an educational, public service film about the problems faced by the elderly. Certainly a worthy, even progressive, cause. But it doesn’t seem like the first thing you’d say when pitching this project to the congregation is, “You know who we need to get to make this for us? The Night of the Living Dead guy.”

The sedate opening, with the distinguished looking older actor Lincoln Mazaael strolling along, reciting the problems faced by the seniors—neglect, disrespect, high health care costs, diminished incomes, crushing loneliness, and so on—is probably the kind of respectful, boring homily the church had in mind when they commissioned the project. But this turns out to be only a brief introduction; Romero quickly shuffles his protagonist into an all-white room and initiates a “Twilight Zone”-style scenario where he sees another old man, battered and bandaged, cowering in the corner. After awkwardly attempting to engage this beaten figure (whose identity is no real secret) in conversation, Mazaael then declares that he intends to enjoy his day and confidently strolls into the amusement park.

His adventure begins satirically enough, with a long line of older people buying carnival tickets from a combination salesman/pawnbroker. But events progress from the undignified to the brutalizing, as Mazaael finds himself barred from the more invigorating rides, witness to a bumper car accident between an old woman and a reckless whippersnapper, scammed by a pickpocket, menaced by bikers, and shuffled through an impersonal assembly-line medical clinic. As he journeys through the park, he accumulates bumps and bruises, both physical and emotional. Younger pedestrians thoughtlessly jostling him, or callously passing him by when he is clearly in distress, becomes a repeated motif.

Visually, The Amusement Park is far from glamorous, but the unpretentious, antique presentation suits the material. It’s shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, naturally, and although it was restored as much as possible, the print still looks brown and dusty, often reminiscent of stock footage. Besides Mazaael, the cast is completely composed of amateurs (the many elderly extras were probably recruited from a local nursing home, and reportedly had more fun on the shoot then they had experienced in years). The donated amusement park location provides almost all the production value; a few cheap props (a pine box, a comically oversized pencil) appear (although to be fair, the makeup is good). None of this proves to be a problem; the entire thing ends up looking like a home movie, which makes it feel even more like an artifact from some bizarro alternate universe.

I can’t say I found The Amusement Park viscerally terrifying. Even though zombielike figures, Grim Reapers, and dead rats randomly pop into frames every now and then, there is no real sense of mystery or existential dread; the blatantly allegorical nature of the project makes it more thought-provoking than scary. The Lutheran Council, however, was apparently horrified, concluding that the results were too gruesome for the edification of their parishioners and burying the film. Nevertheless, the mismatch between message and messenger is precisely what makes The Amusement Park fresh and fascinating. Making its point efficiently in under an hour, anyone with an interest in Romero, experimental horror, or obscure cinematic oddities will want to put this ambitious little curiosity on their bucket list.

After finishing up it’s limited run in theaters, The Amusement Park will stream on Shudder starting June 8. Who knows what the future holds after that?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Following a group of senior citizens as they get terrorized during a surreal trip to a Pittsburgh theme park – where ride tickets are gained through the bartering of precious family heirlooms and carnival barkers are scam artists ready to pick your pocket – The Amusement Park is one of Romero’s trademark hammer-over-the-head metaphors.”–Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail

2017 FANTASIA FESTIVAL: MOVIES & MAYHEM IN MONTREAL, VOL. 3

7/26 : Throwback Thursday …I Mean, Wednesday

Still from Eternal Evil (AKA The Blue Man)Tucked far out of the way of anything else at the Fantasia Festival is the “Cinematheque Quebecoise” theater. After forty minutes of searching and using the secret knock to get through the door, I was finally able to get seated for Eternal Evil (AKA The Blue Man). Directed in the mid-’80s by George Mihalka, Eternal Evil tells a dark tale of murder and astral projection. Our hero Paul Sharpe spends a lot of time with his shirt unbuttoned, and wonders why those close to him keep ending up dead. The answer stems from an interview he did with an elderly couple who claimed to achieve immortality by shifting to new bodies when their current vessels had worn out. A cult hit in its native Canada, the ’80s cheesiness was fortunately outweighed by the interesting story and clever premise. Not really something to Certify, though.

Poster for God Tole Me To (1976)That honor might go to ‘s 1976 cop-drama/alien-abduction picture, God Told Me To. A series of mass murders take place in downtown New York City, only connected by one thing: the perpetrators informing a policeman after the fact that they did because “God told [them] to.” Police detective Peter Nicholas is convinced there’s something to their confessions and digs deeper, discovering both an ominous entity at the heart of the matter as well as some strange truth about his own nature. Quite Certifiable, with one of the “Three Weird Things” necessarily being “glowing furnace-room messiah.”

7/27 : “Well, all the movies can’t be good. You’ve got to expect that once in a while.”

I suppose I really shouldn’t complain. It took over two weeks for Fantasia to give me a swing-and-a-miss evening out. I had high hopes for the Filipino Town in a Lake, Jet Leyco’s (ever-so-slightly) bizarre crime drama concerning the murder of one girl and the concurrent disappearance of another. The first hour is a humdrum, if capable, drama surrounding the mystery: reporters rush to the small town as the news “trends”, politicians work hard to take advantage of the tragedy, and, as is so often the case, the police have no real leads. It takes over an hour for something weird to happen—and right on its heels, the movie ends with a “twist”. An out-of-the-blue, confounding, and not terribly inspired “twist”. Though my goal here is to find new movies that are out of the ordinary, I can’t help but think that Town in a Lake would have been better as a straight-up procedural. As it stands, it’s as if got particularly lazy and, in Continue reading 2017 FANTASIA FESTIVAL: MOVIES & MAYHEM IN MONTREAL, VOL. 3

1978 EXPLOITATION TRIPLE FEATURE, PART TWO: MARTIN

Continued from 1978 exploitation triple feature, part one.

The Mountain of the Cannibal God (directed by prolific trash guru Sergio Martino), is possibly the most well-known film of the Italian cannibal genre, primarily because it has name stars in Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress. Being Martino, it naturally revels in its nastiness, which runs the gamut from castration to decapitations, shots of human entrails, and actual footage of a monkey being devoured by a python. A nude Andress certainly helped its box office. It was yet another video nasty staple in the heyday of mom and pop video stores.

Still from Starcrash (1978)Starcrash (directed by Luigi Cozzi) stars cult fave in a blatant Star Wars ripoff. There’s other people in it as well, like David Hasselhoff (in his film debut) and , but it’s Munro that audiences went to see, and it’s a hoot to boot.

Starhops is a sort of Star Wars parody, but it’s essentially juvenile sexploitation, surprisingly directed by a woman: Barbara Peeters. It’s obscure, for obvious reasons.

The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (directed by Leo Penn) is a Gothic horror TV mini-series starring grand dame , still riding high post-Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1960). Adapted from the Thomas Tryon novel, it’s winningly offbeat with a high camp performance from Davis as the town matriarch. For unknown reasons, it’s home video distribution has been spotty, only briefly becoming available on VHS in a badly mutilated version.

goes zombie with Grapes of Death. Being Rollin, it naturally is going to have a twist—amusingly, zombifying wine. Opulently bloodied, the film has a reputation as being weaker Rollin. Actually, his virtues here outweigh his usual flaws.

They Call Her Cleopatra Wong (directed by Bobby A. Suarez) stars Marrie Lee as an Asian 007 kickin’ ass of a buncha baddie henchman disguised as nuns. Naturally, it was an epic influence on . Low-budget explosions, scantily clad femme fatales, kung fu galore, and wretched dubbing. Sorry, but you can’t call yourself cool ’til you’ve seen it.

Now, when we think we’ve grown immune to a decade full of the unexpected, we encounter Charles Burnett’s “” feature Killer of Sheep, which is one of the most unsettling films of the decade and entirety of cinema. The title refers to Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) who works in a slaughterhouse and lives in the ghetto where there are principles, despair, poetry and, ultimately, a lack of liberty. Like Stan, the film does not progress, and it really should be required viewing for every Neanderthal who can’t seem to grasp the fact that an entire race oppressed for half a millennium here is not going to “bounce back” by itself in a mere fifty years. This was Burnett’s Masters thesis, shot on a mere $10,000 budget. It remained Continue reading 1978 EXPLOITATION TRIPLE FEATURE, PART TWO: MARTIN

1968 EXPLOITATION TRIPLE FEATURE: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

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In 1968 released one of the most relentlessly frightening movies ever made in Night of the Living Dead, but it took a couple of years for the midnight movie crowd to make it into an epic cult phenomenon. Seen today, it holds up effectively, even with our sensibilities jaded from countless hack imitations. Its grainy black, white, and gray palette serves its otherworldliness well during a late night viewing on big screen, which I how I first encountered it. Even Romero could never quite match it, although he continued to try for forty years.

The argument can be made that Romero’s best post-Night of the Living Dead films were outside the zombie genre (The Crazies, Martin, NightRiders, and Creepshow). Still, no one does zombies like Romero (as proved with his 1990 NotLD remake), and the movie closest to the impact of the original was its immediate sequel, Dawn of the Dead (1978), which was a shock satire on Western consumerism, brutalizing in its late 70s comic book colors and deliberate plays on banality. Some claim Dawn is Romero’s masterpiece, although it lacks the original’s reinventing-the-wheel, rough-edged freshness. In 2004, Dawn was remade by who completely missed Romero’s acerbic wit. The underrated Day of the Dead (1985) was the third in Romero’s original zombie trilogy, but did not attain the cult status of its predecessors. Its financial disappointment seemed to render it a finale to Romero’s zombie oeuvre. However, Romero, who has always been a sporadic filmmaker, returned with The Land of the Dead in 2005, which was followed by Diary of the Dead (2007) and what looks to be his last film, Survival of the Dead (2009). Each of Romero’s zombie sequels has its equal share of fans and critics, but at the very least, he has tried to say something new with each entry.

Still from Night of the Living Dead (1968)None have attained the compact rawness of that 1968 yardstick, however. Duane Jones became a cult icon as the doomed protagonist Ben. Previously an English professor, Jones was the first African-American to have a starring role in a horror feature (the script does not specify Ben’s ethnicity). Judith O’Dea, as Barbara, is the eternal victim ( in Savini’s remake, the character is recast as a feminist femme fatale). Together, they hole up in a farmhouse and fight off the marching dead, but are inevitably at the mercy of hayseeds with guns. The shot-on-the-cheap crudeness and novice acting actually add to the mundane horror. It was riveting enough to create an entirely new genre, but predictably, its unique qualities have eluded pale imitations.

Elsewhere in 1968, AIP’s Wild in the Streets (directed by ) Continue reading 1968 EXPLOITATION TRIPLE FEATURE: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE DEVIL RIDES OUT, AND SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

READER RECOMMENDATION: BRUISER (2000)

Reader Recommendation by Jason Steadmon

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jason Flemyng, , Nina Garbiras, Leslie Hope, Tom Atkins

PLOT: Henry Creedlow works to provide for and please his cheating, social-climbing wife. An event from a masquerade party takes on a real world tangibility, signifying his nobody existence but also allowing him to take forceful and violent control of an out-of-control life.

Still from Bruiser (2000)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: George Romero’s filmography has never shied away from the strange, but the lack of an explicit reason for Continue reading READER RECOMMENDATION: BRUISER (2000)