Watch the first trailer for George A. Romero’s long-lost film ‘The Amusement Park’

After premiering in New York back in January, the first trailer for horror auteur George A. Romero’s long-lost 1973 film The Amusement Park has been unveiled.

George A. Romero was contacted by a Pittsburgh-based organization Lutheran Services back in 1973 to work on a project highlighting the way that society discriminates against the elderly. Ultimately, Romero’s grotesque, grizzled horror didn’t fly with the Luterhan’s and he had neither the time nor energy to fight against them. For nearly fifty years, the film was shelved, unseen and inaccessible to the public.

Three years ago, director Guillemero del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and collaborator Daniel Kraus announced the film had been discovered. The following year, Romero’s widow Suzanne Desrocher-Romero revealed that a 4K restoration of The Amusement Park was being readied for release.

The official synopsis for The Amusement Park reads: “An elderly gentleman goes for what he assumes will be an ordinary day at the amusement park, only to find himself in the middle of a hellish nightmare instead. Shot by George A. Romero between ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead,’

‘The Amusement Park’ is a bleak, haunting allegory where the attractions and distractions of an amusement park stand-in for the many abuses that the elderly face in society.”

As Indiewire note, upon viewing an early version of the film three years go, Daniel Kraus considered it “Romero’s most overtly horrifying film” second to Night of the Living Dead.

“The scholar Tony Williams, who saw the film 30 years ago, wrote, ‘The film is far too powerful for American society…It must remain under lock and key never seeing the light of day,’” Kraus wrote at the time. “It was never shown publicly. The people who funded it wouldn’t allow it. And no wonder. It’s hellish. In Romero’s long career of criticizing American institutions, never was he so merciless.” Watch the trailer below.

The Amusement Park trailer:

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