Possibly the "biggest" film ever produced specifically for television, The Death of Ocean View Park is also probably the best, in the sense of a grand melodrama with high dramatic impact and abundant allegorical import, and comes across as something of an epic in the benighted "Movie of the Week" phenomenon. The film's main theme, deftly conveyed, illustrates in stark relief the impending death of the carefree, innocent and fairly liberal 1970s, a searingly sad event for some of us. Rising from the ashes of this death was the ominous spectre of the soul-crushing conservatism which would haunt the hideous 1980s. The (historically accurate) destruction of Ocean View Park at the film's climax, exploding and collapsing into Mother Earth, is certainly the premiere metaphor for this seismic ideological shift in America, but the extremely cunning screenplay addresses this theme in many other interesting ways.
As with all good TV movies of the era, there are one or more heterosexual couples featured front and center, each dealing with current socially-relevant topics and espousing trendy political views of the day. Here, we have exactly three power couples, each espousing roughly the same proto-family values ethic. First is Sam, a widower with three precocious children, a lonely man obviously looking for a mate. Sam states several times that his mission is to preserve the legacy of his father, who built Ocean View Park in 1906, so his character's devotion to traditionalism and conservative values is made clear from the outset. Enter old friend Paula, a creepy female Naval Captain whose career serving Empire has been less than fulfilling. Sam and Paula are thrown together by the upheaval surrounding them to become a faux-family by film's end. Couple Two: Sheila and Phil are hard-working schlubs who are trying to start a life together, but Phil is too dedicated to the amusement park (i.e., the past). Meanwhile, Sheila is "with child," and at a portentous moment, Phil asks Sheila if she wants an abortion, and Sheila screams "No!" as if it's the most horrible idea in the world. This couple is thus set up as a regressive political force, perfect for the ultra-conservative decade waiting just around the corner. (One of the film's many outre subplots involves Sheila's nightmarish premonitions of impending disaster, psychic powers bequeathed her only after she became pregnant, thus entirely symbolic as an allegorical forecasting of the approach of ideological doom in the upcoming decade of horrors.) Yet perhaps the most indelible couple is #3, Jenny and Billy, two lonely virgins who magically find each other at a cotton candy stand, itself a winning emblem for American infantilism in the service of nostalgia. Jenny (winningly played by Mare Winningham) is an ugly duckling, the star of a rather whorish family, the only one with a strong work ethic and a sense of romantic decency. In other words, she is a lost soul in the sleazy, sex-obsessed 1970s, and will only blossom in the Uber-traditionalist 1980s. Billy is a young soldier on leave, sent off to get initiated by his morally corrupt fellows, but he is too pure to achieve sexual release with a lowly prostitute, because he is at heart a traditional family man, a one-woman kind of guy. (Whether by design or accident, the portrayals of Jenny and Billy are so clownish and overdrawn, they at times come across as not merely shy or naive, but mentally challenged.) Connecting all of these couples in a most circuitous yet powerful way is the hilariously-named Tom Flood, played astonishingly well by Martin Landau. (As others have noted, Landau made a sea change in his career when he dumped his silly and wooden "leading man" pretentions and dove enthusiastically into evermore complex character roles.) Landau starts his character as a very stereotypical, very greedy (and very Jewish) businessman, but ends it as a sacrifice (literal and figurative) to the gods of neoconservatism returning to America. Landau gives his life so that the All-American Virgin Proto-Couple Jenny & Billy may survive to propagate the 1980s with their god-fearing middle-class babies.
The clearly supernatural hurricane which threatens the park, and the silly paranormal occurrences which counterpoint the threats to this landmark, eerily symbolize the ominous approach of the neoconservative political juggernaut, so soon to despoil America. Even a destroyed sand castle on the beach, which park owner Sam obsesses over, acts as apt symbol for the collapse of a precarious innocent myopia of the decade this film punctuates.
Although the various dramatic subplots are not always woven with complete success, the overall result is a kaleidoscopic collage of life at the end of an amazing decade, with an almost Fellini-esque atmosphere ascendant at times. The film features many idyllic scenes of happy folk cavorting in a carnival atmosphere, wonderful and endearing sketches which paint the 1970s as the largely carefree, even Dionysian era which it was to many of us. Ocean View Park itself symbolizes as monument the notion of middle class leisure and abundance, one of the most cherished social phenomena of the postwar era. (As many know, many amusement parks were originally built in the early 20th century by trolley car companies wishing to create entertaining destinations for tourist passengers on their ever-expanding transit lines, the resultant parks representing an apex of the industrial revolution and its gifts of excess leisure time to the hard working masses.) Yet hovering over all of this supposed innocence is the sinister presence of the U.S. military, via the various characters assigned to the nearby Naval Base in Norfolk, Va., as well as the abiding presence of Naval warships right on the shores of Ocean Park: a clearer depiction of creepy military presence in domestic America could not be imagined.
As for the climax, a leaking gas line may be a sloppy or trite deus ex machina for the truly apocalyptic cataclysm which signals the wholly symbolic "death" of the popular cultural landmark, but it does act as an effective metaphor for the accruing societal pressures, social, economic and ideological - which were percolating throughout that lovable yet troubled decade, and had to explode at some point. And these scenes, of the demolition of the magnificent wooden roller coaster, are indeed both thrilling, and somehow unbearably sad.
Credit for a large part of the uncanny impact of this amazing film must go to producers John Furia and Barry Oringer, who also wrote the terribly clever, arguably subversive screenplay. It would thus appear that the largely allegorical nature of the film was intentional, as so much of that thematic content is clearly expressed in the screenplay. Furia and Oringer would go on to mount the popular anthology series Hotel, one of the high watermarks of 1980s mediocrity, a required destination for pretty much any TV star of note through the decade.
1979 was certainly a good year for bright, insightful even self-reflexive theatrical movies, as witness this short list: Americathon, The Concorde: Airport '79, Apocalypse Now, The Warriors, All That Jazz, Quadrophenia, Being There, The Black Hole, Hair, The Brood, The Rose, etc. As for the "lowly" TV movie, 1979 was certainly the genre's zenith, with heavy hitters such as: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Orphan Train, Vampire, When She Was Bad, The Miracle Worker, The Two Worlds of Jenny Logan, The Jericho Mile, All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis, and... The Death of Ocean View Park, perhaps the Citizen Kane of Movies of the Week. Call this amazing film a sublime requiem for the 1970s.
As with all good TV movies of the era, there are one or more heterosexual couples featured front and center, each dealing with current socially-relevant topics and espousing trendy political views of the day. Here, we have exactly three power couples, each espousing roughly the same proto-family values ethic. First is Sam, a widower with three precocious children, a lonely man obviously looking for a mate. Sam states several times that his mission is to preserve the legacy of his father, who built Ocean View Park in 1906, so his character's devotion to traditionalism and conservative values is made clear from the outset. Enter old friend Paula, a creepy female Naval Captain whose career serving Empire has been less than fulfilling. Sam and Paula are thrown together by the upheaval surrounding them to become a faux-family by film's end. Couple Two: Sheila and Phil are hard-working schlubs who are trying to start a life together, but Phil is too dedicated to the amusement park (i.e., the past). Meanwhile, Sheila is "with child," and at a portentous moment, Phil asks Sheila if she wants an abortion, and Sheila screams "No!" as if it's the most horrible idea in the world. This couple is thus set up as a regressive political force, perfect for the ultra-conservative decade waiting just around the corner. (One of the film's many outre subplots involves Sheila's nightmarish premonitions of impending disaster, psychic powers bequeathed her only after she became pregnant, thus entirely symbolic as an allegorical forecasting of the approach of ideological doom in the upcoming decade of horrors.) Yet perhaps the most indelible couple is #3, Jenny and Billy, two lonely virgins who magically find each other at a cotton candy stand, itself a winning emblem for American infantilism in the service of nostalgia. Jenny (winningly played by Mare Winningham) is an ugly duckling, the star of a rather whorish family, the only one with a strong work ethic and a sense of romantic decency. In other words, she is a lost soul in the sleazy, sex-obsessed 1970s, and will only blossom in the Uber-traditionalist 1980s. Billy is a young soldier on leave, sent off to get initiated by his morally corrupt fellows, but he is too pure to achieve sexual release with a lowly prostitute, because he is at heart a traditional family man, a one-woman kind of guy. (Whether by design or accident, the portrayals of Jenny and Billy are so clownish and overdrawn, they at times come across as not merely shy or naive, but mentally challenged.) Connecting all of these couples in a most circuitous yet powerful way is the hilariously-named Tom Flood, played astonishingly well by Martin Landau. (As others have noted, Landau made a sea change in his career when he dumped his silly and wooden "leading man" pretentions and dove enthusiastically into evermore complex character roles.) Landau starts his character as a very stereotypical, very greedy (and very Jewish) businessman, but ends it as a sacrifice (literal and figurative) to the gods of neoconservatism returning to America. Landau gives his life so that the All-American Virgin Proto-Couple Jenny & Billy may survive to propagate the 1980s with their god-fearing middle-class babies.
The clearly supernatural hurricane which threatens the park, and the silly paranormal occurrences which counterpoint the threats to this landmark, eerily symbolize the ominous approach of the neoconservative political juggernaut, so soon to despoil America. Even a destroyed sand castle on the beach, which park owner Sam obsesses over, acts as apt symbol for the collapse of a precarious innocent myopia of the decade this film punctuates.
Although the various dramatic subplots are not always woven with complete success, the overall result is a kaleidoscopic collage of life at the end of an amazing decade, with an almost Fellini-esque atmosphere ascendant at times. The film features many idyllic scenes of happy folk cavorting in a carnival atmosphere, wonderful and endearing sketches which paint the 1970s as the largely carefree, even Dionysian era which it was to many of us. Ocean View Park itself symbolizes as monument the notion of middle class leisure and abundance, one of the most cherished social phenomena of the postwar era. (As many know, many amusement parks were originally built in the early 20th century by trolley car companies wishing to create entertaining destinations for tourist passengers on their ever-expanding transit lines, the resultant parks representing an apex of the industrial revolution and its gifts of excess leisure time to the hard working masses.) Yet hovering over all of this supposed innocence is the sinister presence of the U.S. military, via the various characters assigned to the nearby Naval Base in Norfolk, Va., as well as the abiding presence of Naval warships right on the shores of Ocean Park: a clearer depiction of creepy military presence in domestic America could not be imagined.
As for the climax, a leaking gas line may be a sloppy or trite deus ex machina for the truly apocalyptic cataclysm which signals the wholly symbolic "death" of the popular cultural landmark, but it does act as an effective metaphor for the accruing societal pressures, social, economic and ideological - which were percolating throughout that lovable yet troubled decade, and had to explode at some point. And these scenes, of the demolition of the magnificent wooden roller coaster, are indeed both thrilling, and somehow unbearably sad.
Credit for a large part of the uncanny impact of this amazing film must go to producers John Furia and Barry Oringer, who also wrote the terribly clever, arguably subversive screenplay. It would thus appear that the largely allegorical nature of the film was intentional, as so much of that thematic content is clearly expressed in the screenplay. Furia and Oringer would go on to mount the popular anthology series Hotel, one of the high watermarks of 1980s mediocrity, a required destination for pretty much any TV star of note through the decade.
1979 was certainly a good year for bright, insightful even self-reflexive theatrical movies, as witness this short list: Americathon, The Concorde: Airport '79, Apocalypse Now, The Warriors, All That Jazz, Quadrophenia, Being There, The Black Hole, Hair, The Brood, The Rose, etc. As for the "lowly" TV movie, 1979 was certainly the genre's zenith, with heavy hitters such as: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Orphan Train, Vampire, When She Was Bad, The Miracle Worker, The Two Worlds of Jenny Logan, The Jericho Mile, All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis, and... The Death of Ocean View Park, perhaps the Citizen Kane of Movies of the Week. Call this amazing film a sublime requiem for the 1970s.