The Death of Ocean View Park
In the mid 1970s, the park was slated to be torn down, but was saved from total oblivion by having its rollercoaster featured in at least two Hollywood disaster films. One was "Rollercoaster", starring Henry Fonda, and Timothy Bottoms, which featured Ocean View Amusement Park as one of many around the nation which were being targeted by a mad terrorist bomber (Bottoms). The other film was "The Death Of Ocean View Park", a "Playboy" production, starring Mike Conners (Mannix), in which the actual destruction of the coaster served as the climax of the film. Although the films themselves turned out to be rather cheesy, the scenes filmed in Ocean View Park remain dear to the hearts of all who fondly remember it.
A testament to the strength of the old ride's wooden structure remains fixed in the memories of those who witnessed its demolition. When the time came for the filming of the movie's climax, the primary supports of the coaster were fitted with explosive charges. At the signal of the director, one of the wooden trains, filled with mannequins, was sent for its "last" ride down the aged track. The charges were set off, blowing the large wooden posts to smithereens, while at the same time, huge, fiery gasoline explosions were set off for visual effect. The coaster refused to budge. The somewhat melancholy crowd watching from across the street broke into spontaneous laughter, and applause, for their beloved, and defiant coaster. Inspections were made, new charges were set on the secondary supports, and the scenes were re-staged. The charges went off, the coaster remained standing, and the crowd cheered.
Unwilling to spend any more time or money on explosives, the movie company finally devised a way to bring down the Rocket once and for all. A bulldozer, off-camera, and fitted with cables tied to strategic points along the track, finally did what the dynamite couldn't do, and amid the smoke and fire of one final gasoline bomb, as well as the geers and tears from the crowd, it slowly dragged the wooden monster to the ground. (A close review of the film may even reveal a cable or two in the final scenes.)
Read more about this topic: Ocean View Amusement Park
Famous quotes containing the words death, ocean, view and/or park:
“Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism!”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“The view that honesty is something, and even a virtue, belongs, it is true, to those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinions.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)