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| Romero in a bumper car |
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| Lincoln Maazel not fairing well at the park |
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| The dreaded roller coaster |
This dropped today on Shudder, a lost George Romero Latent Image film, shot with some of his colleagues tied to
Night of the Living Dead (1968). This really functioned for me as a message short film about the treatment of the elderly, through the vicious cycle of one particular man in a white suit, enduring ridicule, abuse, theft, neglect, malevolence, disregard, and many of the younger generations generally acting as if he isn't there. Folks just walking past him as he's struggling on the ground, seeing old folks paraded on stage to be heckled, getting tossed into therapy by younger folks with others being rehabbed (rehab as if punishment for a crime, the way Romero shoots it), party to a young couple seeing their distant future where the husband suffers dementia and the wife has no one to help her (all told through the crystal ball of a clairvoyant), the guy so enraged by what is in store for him that he punches our protagonist, having a hard time on a roller coaster while others his age seem happy, unable to help an older couple through his eyewitness testimony on a bumper cars ride due to his missing glasses, terrified of a biker gang endangering him, and frowned upon when dining thanks to a richer customer well better off (getting cuisine compared to him, as he instead has beans and bread, deciding to give others less fortunate his grub). I think as a curio, this will be of definite interest to Romero fans, especially because it isn't long after his masterpiece from 1968, and during his
Season of the Witch /
The Crazies period. Now, this is more or less a short film trying to inspire those who watch to contemplate how they behave towards the elderly. It has been well documented in the past year how the elderly have been badly treated in cities, and I could tell you of my mother's own experience in the 70s when working at a nursing home, relaying to me horrifying stories about how healthcare workers manhandled patients.
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