Watch ‘Action Point,’ Then Watch These Movies

We recommend classic movies to watch after Johnny Knoxville’s latest stunt comedy.

Not everyone loves Johnny Knoxville and his Jackass crew. They can be infantile and crude, and when they do make a movie with a plot, that narrative serves their stunts rather than the other way around. But even if that’s not the way the old masters of slapstick cinema did it, at their best anyways, the influence of people like Buster Keaton on Knoxville is apparent and appreciated.

The Jackass movies often paid homage to the classics, and now so does Action Point, which is also based on the true story of Action Park. Below I’ve compiled some recommendations of mostly silent films and documentaries that I see as forerunners to what Knoxville and friends are doing with their movie about the most dangerous amusement park in the world.

Shooting the Chutes (1903)

I’ve always found Action Park’s legacy to be tame compared to the history of Coney Island’s amusement rides. I don’t know of a death or injury count at any of the New York City location’s parks, which included Luna Park and Dreamland, but any old footage of these places in the early 20th century hints at the lack of safety of attractions back then. Coney Island was a place where stunts and rides went to dangerous lengths to draw the crowds. The rides and shows had to be thrilling more than they had to be secure.

This was a place where an elephant was electrocuted for the public to see (and Edison’s company to film), as part of a promotion for the opening of Luna Park, which was notable for its displays of electric lights and wonders. This was a place where babies in incubators were an exhibit. A place where recent natural disasters inspired staged spectacles re-creating the tragedies. A place where shows involved the fighting of real, controlled fires — it’s no wonder it was also a place where whole parks, Dreamland famously, wound up destroyed in fires.

The below film from American Mutoscope & Biograph, commonly titled Shooting the Chutes, is not the first showcase of a Coney Island attraction, not even the first to document the Shoot-the-Chutes ride, but it is one of the more focused and clearest available today — compare it to Edison’s too-closely shot 1896 film made when Sea Lion Park was its home. Did anyone die on this early water chute? I can find no record, but it sure looks like people could easily be thrown from the boats at the end and there weren’t as many safeguards 115 years ago.

 

Blackfish (2013)

Aren’t you glad I haven’t mentioned Jaws 3D yet? Fortunately — no, that’s not right to say… Instead, we now have a documentary about the dangers of maritime theme parks such as SeaWorld. Blackfish mostly focuses on the issue of keeping orcas in captivity and how one in particular has been so harmed by that life that he’s managed to kill trainers employed by the park out of the blue. Who needs Westworld or Jurassic World when SeaWorld is just as bad?

Orcas might not seem as dangerous as an attraction for the public, because almost all incidents have involved trainers. But there was the one guy who snuck into Tilikum’s tank to presumably swim naked with animal after hours and was apparently killed by the orca. He wasn’t employed by SeaWorld, and his story is more akin to the people who are injured or killed by hopping rollercoaster fences to retrieve hats or phones or whatever, their fates mostly their own faults. Also recommended: Rust and Bone, the movie where Marion Cotillard is a trainer who loses her legs to an orca attack.

 

The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever (2013)

According to Johnny Knoxville, who never had the opportunity to visit the real Action Park, acknowledged to Fandango that his inspiration for Action Point was actually this short documentary. The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever was made by director Matt Robertson and writer Seth Porges as a collaboration between Mashable and Dailymotion, and it features mostly former employees of Action Park, some of whom are involved with the park that took its place, along with Mashable staff and comedian Chris Gethard.

The 14-minute doc lays out the infamous history of Action Park, its most idiotically dangerous rides, such as the looping water slide and the skin-scraping Alpine slide, and recognizes the reputation as legend and something deserved, with the multiple casualties of the attractions being identified. Some of the slides and rides are seen in Action Point, mostly in exaggerated form but not always. These were attractions that were heightened in their dubious safeness on their own. Watch the documentary short below.

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