Or, what happens when the Lutheran Church hires horror director George Romero to make a film in which the horror is… old age. The Lutherans basically asked him to make a sort of educational film or PSA about the way in which we don’t look after our elderly as well as we should, giving him a bunch of volunteer performers and a freely donated location. What Romero gave them in return was, probably, regrets, and I’ll bet they REALLY appreciated the scene in which our sorely beset protagonist finds “sanctuary” at a church bandstand, only for it to close for the day before he can get to it… apparently they actually did make some use of it, but after a film festival screening in 1975 that seemed to be the end of it until it was rescued from oblivion just before George’s death. He seems to have viewed it himself as being as ephemeral as the industrial films and commercials he was making in the 60s… but if he did, he was nonetheless clearly determined to make something more of this production than a “normal” commissioned work. The amusement park gave him room to hammer home the thesis of “old people are treated like shit” (the film has no real subtlety on that point), which he does in a manner that becomes borderline surrealist, and generates a real sense of deep unease, particularly with the use of sound. I found it interesting that, for all the thematics about old age being awful, the other elderly folks surrounding the old man in the thick of things are about as unhelpful to him as the younger people surrounding them all. And yet 54 minutes of it, short as that is, felt like a bit much; Romero could probably have brought this in more tightly and effectively in about 30 minutes. So I can’t call it a full success, and yet there’s something about the strangeness of the whole thing that’s fascinating. I think further viewings will benefit it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.