Action Park in New Jersey was opened by Eugene Mulvihill in 1978 and immediately became legendary for school children around the New York area as a place of excitement and fun but also immense danger. With attractions like the Cannonball Loop, Colorado River and dangerous Diving Cliffs, the “entertainment” was badly designed, poorly thought out and barely managed when open.

The film cuts between ex-park employees and patrons who have nostalgic memories of the park interspersed with media footage, newspaper reports and some animations to clarify the incredibly treacherous attractions. With inexperienced managers (mostly undertrained and underaged) and freely flowing alcohol from the bars, the park was a recipe for disaster yet there was a strange respect from childhood peers for those who survived its precarious charms.

And not even the walkways being between the rides were safe with the red-hot asphalt making barefoot walking unbearable in Summer. The footage and stories are amusing and the interviewees look back on their upbringing with warm nostalgia coupled with a far more mature appreciation of the situation.

The park also had water slides causing multiple injuries and a lazy river that was basically a watery human logjam with the owner himself encouraging ever more increasingly bizarre (and risky) rides.

But the film’s second half contrasts brilliantly with its first by focusing on the real repercussions of the lacklustre safety concerns and the shocking dismissal and ignorance of customer well-being.

The film highlights George Larsson Jr., who was sadly the first person to die at Action Park. The fact the word “first” even has to be used is dreadful indictment on the disgusting practices at the park. And with Mulvihill fighting legal challenges in court to avoid financial and moral responsibilities, he comes across as a truly reprehensible man with little or no concern for others.

And as the injuries and lawsuits begin to pile up the business soon closes and becomes a distant memory for those who were involved. 

The documentary contains both sentimentality and much regret which is a difficult trick to pull off, but it does so exceptionally. Class Action Park therefore finds the right balance between the exciting retro recollections of crazy 80’s Summers mixed with the melancholic memories of the tragedies that ultimately, and rightly, saw the park shut its doors. Catch this extraordinary film that will make a big splash with its mix of first-rate fun and shocking heartbreak.

★★★★★