Streaming service Shudder will stream the “lost” George A. Romero film “The Amusement Park” this summer.

Restored by the Pittsburgh-based George A. Romero Foundation, the 1973 film was commissioned by the Pittsburgh-based Lutheran Society as a PSA about being helpful to the elderly, but it was never released publicly.

Romero’s widow, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, oversaw the restoration of the film in 4K by IndieCollect in New York City. “The Amusement Park” was filmed at West View Park in the North Hills on the site of what is now a Giant Eagle. The park closed in 1977 and was demolished in 1980.

The film stars Lincoln Maazel as an elderly man who becomes disoriented and isolated as the humiliations of aging are manifested through roller coasters and chaotic crowds.

Desrocher-Romero said the 61-minute film was more “tucked away” than lost. A Romero friend used it at film festival in the mid-1970s and she’d had it ever since. A restored version premiered in Pittsburgh in October 2019, as part of weekend of Romero films at the Regent Square Theater.

Desrocher-Romero said before his death in 2017 George Romero dismissed the film as “a nothing.”

“Time passes, he passed and I just kept thinking, we ought to be able to show people this film,” Desrocher-Romero said, noting the subject matter remains relevant. “Elderly people are often forgotten, often dismissed to this day.”

Desrocher-Romero said when she inquired with the Lutheran Society locally about getting a copy of “The Amusement Park,” the group had no record of its existence. She said the film was never intended to be released theatrically but was to be used in congregations.

“It was supposed to be a community film, an industrial, for people who are like-minded to come see the movie,” she said. “The way he shot it, it’s quite striking and quite scary and I’m not sure they thought it was going to be effective.”

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