The late George Romero‘s formerly lost film The Amusement Park is now available, and a song links the film to his later classic Dawn of the Dead. Romero is a legend in the horror genre and is best known for his zombie films, which essentially invented and established how the creatures would work in pop culture. Romero’s body of work is far wider than the undead though, including classics like Creepshow or cult favorites like The Crazies and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.
Romero was never much for the Hollywood studio system, and many of his best works were produced outside of it. As a side effect, he sometimes had trouble getting funding, and he passed away with lots of unproduced scripts that will hopefully one day be brought to the screen. However, thanks to the George Romero Foundation and horror streaming service Shudder, fans of the filmmaker can now experience a never before seen Romero film – albeit one produced nearly 50 years ago.
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The Amusement Park was made at the behest of the Lutheran Society, who enlisted Romero to direct a film shining a spotlight on the real-life horrors of how poorly the elderly are treated in American society. In that respect, he succeeded, but to a degree way beyond what the Lutherans were comfortable with. The Amusement Park was shelved, until now that is. While short and primarily populated by non-actors, The Amusement Park is still recognizably a Romero movie, full of his trademark social commentary, and further tying it into his filmography is a soundtrack song that can also be heard in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead.
In The Amusement Park, the unnamed elderly protagonist (Lincoln Maazel) attempts to be served at a restaurant within the titular park, only to be entirely ignored due to the staff being too busy attending to a rich old man smoking a cigar. This sequence seems clearly intended to illustrate that there’s not just a divide between how the young and old are treated in America, but also one separating rich senior citizens from working-class seniors. It’s a rather surreal scene as staged by Romero, and it’s set to the instrumental song “Ragtime Razzamatazz,” as recorded by Herbert Chappell.
This same piece of music from The Amusement Park was used by Romero during an early scene in the original Dawn of the Dead, when the survivors go about the mall having the run of the place, taking whatever they want, and having a grand old time. It’s one of the happier scenes in the film, albeit set against the depressing backdrop of the probable end of humanity as the zombie plague spreads, lending a bittersweet taste to the proceedings. The ”Ragtime Razzamatazz” track hails from the De Wolfe Music Library, which is a stock music library that movies and TV shows can draw material from at a cost effective price. Interestingly, Chappell also recorded “The Gonk,” another memorable song used throughout Dawn of the Dead.
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