There’s no shortage of good documentary films out there, and plenty of ways to find them. But if you don’t want to go too far off the beaten path, you can’t go wrong with perusing the documentary section on HBO Max. HBO has been making great docs for decades, and a lot of them have gone woefully underappreciated.
That includes Class Action Park, a 2020 documentary that has to be seen to be believed…or at least read about below.
Class Action Park is about the deadliest, most fun theme park on Earth
Fun and danger, hand in hand
In 1978, in Vernon Township, New Jersey, a disgraced Wall Street traded named Eugene Mulvihill opened up Action Park, a theme park meant to bring in money from students during the summer months that would eventually grow to include 75 rides, including 40 different water slides. It’s considered one of the first water parks in the United States. It was also a death trap.
“Class Action Park” was one of the nicknames for Action Park, since so many customers were hurt there. Anybody could have predicted this. The rides were designed in-house by people without any engineering degrees, the park was insured through a shell company Mulvihill set up in the Cayman Islands, and the park was staffed by teenagers who often showed up to work drunk, stoned, or just bored. Basically, there were no rules at Action Park, which was exhilarating and dangerous.
Class Action Park is a fascinating watch because it recognizes both the chaotic appeal of a place like Action Park as well as the real danger it posed to people who visited, which was, of course, part of that appeal. Rides included the Cannonball Loop water slide, a closed tube slide that had a literal loop-de-loop in the middle of it. Kids would hurt their backs or scratch themselves while going through. When the slide was opened up, inspectors found human teeth lodged in the walls of the slide itself, knocked out of who knows how many patrons over the years. Customers could ride in go-karts that had been modified to go as fast as 60 miles per hour; naturally, that attraction was right next to the beer garden. On the Alpine Slide, patrons would mount little planks and ride them down long half pipes made from cement and asbestos, scraping the skin off their bodies or getting flung off the course onto the waiting rocks.
Class Action Park interviews people who remember going to Action Park as kids, and they talk about it with a mix of horror and nostalgia. As a kid, you could imagine how appealing the idea of a park where you could do anything you want would be. And of course, thrill-seeking behavior is normal; it’s why people do things like sky-dive or mountainclimb. As New Jersey-raised comedian Chris Gethard puts it in the documentary, “Growing up, we would try to die for fun.”
But of course, some people actually did die at Action Park, and for their families, it was no fun at all.
Class Action Park is more than a nostalgia trip
It’s all fun and games until multiple people die horribly
At least six people have been known to die at Action Park. Two drowned in the wave pool, which was known to have a “death zone” that inexperienced life guards were put in charge of as a form of hazing. One man died on the Kayak Experience when his Kayak tipped over. He got on to right his boat, stepped on an exposed live wife that was powering underwater fans, was sent into cardiac arrest, and died in the hospital.
Injuries were much more extensive, with the director of an emergency room at a nearby hospital saying they treated anywhere from five to 10 patrons on some of the busiest days. It got to the point where the park eventually bought the township an extra ambulance so they could keep up with the volume. But despite this reputation, Class Action Park was fined only once, possibly because it was the biggest employer in the area and the township gave it special treatment.
The documentary doesn’t get too moralistic about this, but it does spend time with the Larsson family, who lost their 19-year-old son when he careened off the Alpine Slide and hit his head on a rock in 1980. Ultimately, it gives them the last word, which keeps the movie from seeming like it’s treating all of this too flippantly.
There’s a tension at the heart of Class Action Park
The movie leaves it to us to resolve it
Class Action Park is a movie about two extremes. On the one hand, there’s the tragedy of patrons who died young because Gene Mulvihill built a crooked theme park with little to no safety guidelines. And on the other hand, there’s the inherent appeal of a crooked theme park with little to no safety guidelines. The movie makes the rides at Action Park feel appropriately scary, but there’s also something undeniably fun and funny about them, a point the film drives home with evocative animations. You wince as you hear people talk about these monstrosities, but they also sound a bit thrilling.
And there’s a bigger point the movie has to make about what we’re willing to trade for safety. Some of the interviewees consider Gene Mulvihill as a daring renegade who was willing to break the rules and give patrons the time of their lives, but to the Larssons, he’ll never be anything other than “a piece of sh*t.” The movie ultimately comes down on their side, as it should, but Gene Mulvihill represents a strain of free-wheeling independence that runs through American history. Class Action Park prompts you to think about what it costs to indulge that streak. Pretty thoughtful for a documentary about a theme park.
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For the record, Action Park officially closed in 1996, when its reputation, questionable financing, and numerous lawsuits finally caught up with it. But it was open for nearly 20 years, which tells you something about how popular it must have been.
And if you’re still looking for documentaries, you can still watch the hilarious parody series Documentary Now! on Netflix for a couple more weeks before it leaves the service. And if you want to stick around HBO Max, there are plenty of other docs to entertain you, as well as fantastic scripted series.
- founded
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May 27, 2020
- number of users
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125 million+ users
- notable shows
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The Pitt, Peacemaker, Pretty Little Liars, Hacks
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