The credits for George Romero’s The Amusement Park thank two prominent film industry titans: Jane Fonda and Kathleen Kennedy, despite neither being involved in the movie — why? Fonda is known for her political activism and her acting in film classics like Barbarella and Klute, as well as more recent hits like Monster-in-Law and Grace and Frankie. Kennedy, meanwhile, is the president of Lucasfilm and the producer of the most recent Star Wars films. Both Fonda and Kennedy are credited as Donor Circle Patrons for The Amusement Park — they helped fund the movie's preservation.
The Amusement Park first came out in 1973 as a Public Service Announcement funded by the religious group The Lutheran Society, who hired Romero to make a film to highlight the plight of the elderly in America. Romero’s film follows a senior citizen as he finds himself in a surreal theme park, where he is continually harassed by the park’s patrons and staff. Although it isn’t overtly a traditional horror film like Romero’s other films Night of the Living Dead, Martin, and The Dark Half, The Amusement Park is shot in a frenzied, kaleidoscopic manner to portray the at times frightening ways elder Americans are neglected. The Lutheran Society was shocked by Romero’s direction of The Amusement Park, so they promptly shelved the film and it wasn’t released to the public again until 2019.
Shot in 16mm film, The Amusement Park was recently restored and preserved in 4K with the financial backing of Fonda and Kennedy. Fonda is a strong advocate for the preservation of films; at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Film Restoration Summit in 2019, Fonda urged Hollywood to invest as much in the preservation of films as they do in the making of films [via The Hollywood Reporter]. Without proper preservation methods, many older movies shot on film will deteriorate until their image quality becomes unwatchable. Fonda noted how most studios are cutting back funding for archiving older films and documentaries, which only makes the effort to preserve films even more necessary.
Just as the elder lead in The Amusement Park is ignored and neglected, older films are oftentimes left to languish and deteriorate. However, it’s a positive sign that Hollywood heavyweights like Fonda and Kennedy are doing their parts to contribute to the preservation of film, and others have joined in the mission as well. Through his efforts with The Film Foundation’s Word Cinema Project, Martin Scorsese has restored and preserved many previously hidden films. The Criterion Collection has preserved and remastered thousands of classic Hollywood, international, and arthouse films for home media, streaming, and theatrical release. As these efforts in film preservation reveal, the restoration of unknown films such as The Amusement Park are actively being done.
With the financial backing of Fonda and Kennedy, The Amusement Park can finally see the light of day after being thought lost since its initial release. Indeed, without the involvement of prominent film industry figures, The Amusement Park may have remained a lost film in Romero’s filmography. Although Romero is known primarily for his Living Dead horror films, he also made dramas, and The Amusement Park was one of his most sought-after non-horror films. Now that Romero’s complete filmography is available to the public with the release of The Amusement Park, there are plenty of other older films just waiting to be rescued.