Movies: Folk surrealism at the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society.

After World War I, a discharged doughboy named Albert Grass returned to his hometown of Brooklyn. Overseas, Grass had become fascinated with the theories of Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. This positioned Grass on the leading edge of what would become a full-fledged American cultural obsession throughout the 1920s, when Freud went from the quiet drawing room of the analytical session and exploded into the noisy, if often hazy on detail, realm of pop culture icon.

It was during Freudian boom that Grass gathered a local circle of like-minded Freud fanciers and founded the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society. Although psychoanalysis was all the rage among the well-off, the CIAPS was notable for its distinctly working class origins. The membership, who met regularly in an office off Surf Ave, were drawn not from the brightest lights of the Roaring Twenties in-crowd. They were working stiffs, blue-collar types from the local neighborhood.

The society was remarkably long-lived - the society held together from 1926 to 1972 - and left behind a rich legacy of what might be dubbed folk surrealist art. For fans of outsider film, the cream of this material is the society's output of "dream films." In 1927, Kodak introduced the Cine-Kodak, an inexpensive 16 mm handheld aimed that the amateur filmmaker. The society embraced the new tech and began making short films that dramatized their dreams. Often these films included an overlay of somewhat heavy-handed Freudian analysis.

A selection of the odd flicks, ranging from the 1926 The Midget Crane to 1972's The Bobsled, can be found on the website of artist Zoe Beloff.

Stuff: Hell for sale.

Last week, the operators of Astroland closed down the park several weeks prior to the regular October close of the season. The reason for this unexpected shutdown has something to do with their tangled relationship with Thor Realities, the development group that basically wants to convert Coney into an Atlantic City strip mall sans gambling.

For lovers of Coney Island, it’s a sad thing. As a type this, one-third of the park is now being dismembered and its parts sold off.

This would include Dante's Inferno, the third of the three rides I featured in my recent series on the fabulous haunted house rides of Coney.

Dante's Inferno is currently listed at Rides4U, an online site that specializes in selling new and used amusements to the carnival biz. The ticket price: $225,000.

If you do buy it, please give the old girl a good home. She's not the looker she used to be, but she is still very much loved.

Goodbye, DI. I'll miss you.

Stuff: The haunted houses of Coney Island: Part 3 – Dante's Inferno

The third and final stop on our tour of haunted house rides is Dante's Inferno.

As the middle child, stuck between its raucous and Rabelaisian younger brother (the Ghost Hole) and its legendary older sister (the Spook-A-Rama), Dante's Inferno has struggled to establish an identity of its own.

Located in Astroland Park, just a shout away from the famed Cyclone rollercoaster, Dants's Inferno opened in 1964 under the name Flight to Mars. The same year NASA failed to send Mariner 3 to Mars, riders at Coney Island could take the same trip for less than a buck. Flight to Mars rolled passengers past various "space age" scenes, including human contact with a vibrant Martian civilization. America's come-from-behind dominance in the space race and the sad realization that neither the moon nor Mars contained any societies more complex than anything you might find in vast stretches of the Midwest dealt a fatal blow to the crowd-drawing powers of Flight to Mars. After six years of economically-priced, family-friendly space exploration, Flight to Mars closed its doors.

In 1970s, along with most of the rest of the city, Flight to Mars went to Hell. The dark ride was replaced with a high-concept dark ride that actually took riders on a tour of Hell and the poet Dante imagined it. This proved a bit hoity-toity for the Coney crowd and, over time, the ride's theme was downgraded to a more generic, non-unified series of scares. The modern ride was the creation of famed attraction designer Anton Schwarzkopf. Schwarzkopf's responsible for several classic rollercoasters, including the King Cobra at King's Dominion in Virginia and the Shockwave at Six Flags Over Texas. Fans of 1970s disaster flicks may remember the Revolution from the schlocky 1977 thriller Rollercoaster. The Revolution, playing itself in the film, was designed by Anton Schwarzkopf. The Revolution was also the coaster the Griswolds ride in National Lampoon's Vacation.

Like all Coney Island dark rides, Dante's Inferno features an outsized mascot: A yellow, winged demon character holding a ghostly puppet in his left hand (Brutus, Cassius, or Judas about to be devoured? Your guess is as good as mine.).

The exterior of Dante's Inferno resembles some ren-fair castle and is studded with several bits of animatronic tomfoolery. Sadly, none of the pieces appear to work. This a real shame as the single most awesome bit monster in all of Coney can be found on the far left of the ride's façade, often hidden behind the ticket booth. Here's a photo I took on previous trip.

This bad boy is sometimes referred to as "the werewolf." In his more functional days, his carriage-support slid in and out of the castle façade, allowing the beast to lunge at passersby. I don't include a modern photo of this wonderful beastie as time and vandals have not been kind to him. Earlier this year, teens busted off his lower jaw.

Earlier I mentioned that overall balance of scare pieces on most rides falls somewhere in between Platonic poles: jump-out and tableaux scares. Well, Dante's makes a big freakin' liar out of me. Dante's is interesting in that it contains nothing but tableaux scare pieces. Some of them are quite modern; there's a dismemberment by circular saw scene that would fit right at home in Hostel film. Others, like a gorilla beating his chest in a cage, seem quaint.

Last but not least, here's the ride through video. If you've got your ears open, you'll hear the filmmaker (or his companion) ask if the other rider has ever been on a "pretzel" dark ride. That term refers to a specific sort of dark ride design in which riders move on flat surface over very twisty tracks. The car's orientation, and therefore the riders' point of view, twists back and forth as needed by the ride designer. Since the ride is mostly conducted in the dark, riders quickly loose their sense of orientation and get the feeling that they're covering enormous amounts of ground. The Spook-A-Rama is a classic pretzel ride. Dante's Inferno and the Ghost Hole are not pretzel rides because they follow a fairly linear track and contain multiple levels. Dante's Inferno even includes a slight "coaster dip," as you'll see.

Thanks for following me on this little tour. Enjoy the ride.

Stuff: The haunted houses of Coney Island: Part 2 - Spook-A-Rama

The second stop on our tour of Coney Island's haunted house rides is the wonderfully retro-named Spook-A-Rama. Spook-A-Rama is located in shadow of the Wonder Wheel. It is the oldest haunted house ride in Coney Island.

This famous dark ride was built by Fred Garms. Fred was the son of Herman Garms, the visionary Coney Island developer who created the Wonder Wheel. Garms, like his father, thought and built big. The original Spook-A-Rama ran the length of a city block. When it opened in 1955, the ride filled three buildings and its cars ran over a quarter mile of track, including intro section that ran through a translucent plastic tunnel that took rides under a waterfall of colored water. The ride was billed as "the world's longest spook ride."

The modern Spook-A-Rama is considerably smaller. Of the three structures originally dedicated to the Spook-A-Rama, only the middle and second largest building still houses the ride. The largest building is now dedicated to an arcade and the building that once housed the colored waterfall is now given over to various carnival games.

Unlike the other two haunted houses, Spook-A-Rama's exterior is pretty modest. It is a single story high and does not feature an elaborately painted façade. It does, however, feature two excellent animatronic components. The first is called the Reaper.

The photo above was taken with the glare off the Reaper's plexi-glass case. You can see from the reflection that 1) my wife is blonde, 2) my friend A. is really tall, and 3) the Wonder Wheel is literally a stone's throw away. The Reaper is situated out in front of the ride. He warns the weak of heart and other unfit specimens not to dare mind-shattering and unspeakable horror that is the Spook-A-Rama.

The other piece of animatronics appears on the roof of the ride. Just as Ghost Hole has its massive mascot, the Dark Prince of Love, Spook-A-Rama features a similarly oversized beastie: a spear-wielding, demon-headed, undead thing dressed in tatters. By virtue of his Year_zero weaponry and his castaway chic outfit, we've unofficially dubbed him Skeleton Crusoe.

Skeleton Crusoe stands about ten to fifteen feet high and, when functioning, alternately stands and squats above the dark rides entrance way. Admittedly, a giant skeleton popping a squat might not be the epitome of terror, but of all the oversized mascots, Skeleton Crusoe is the most detailed, best built one of the trio. He's also kept in the best repair.

For all the continuity of location, Spook-A-Rama's exterior has undergone near constant innovation. Before Skeleton Crusoe arrived, the roof of the ride featured a cartoonish cyclops who was surrounded by an ever changing and seemingly random cast of characters – including, at one point, life-sized sculptures of Laurel and Hardy. The cars have been swapped out numerous times, first with cars from a defunct Steeplechase Park dark ride in the 1960s and then with cars from a dark ride in Salem, NH, in the 1980s. There's only one constant: the entrance and exit doors, featuring paintings of eyes, have been part of the ride since it first opened.

On the spectrum of jump-out versus tableaux style scares, Spook-A-Rama features the greatest number of jump-out scares. Most of the ride's various gags lunge, fall, or swoop out at the rider. For fans dark rides, there's an added attraction to Spook-A-Rama's fright pieces. The on-going renovations to the ride have turned the inside of the ride into something like a fully-functioning museum of dark ride history. If a gag from the early days of the ride is still working, Spook-A-Rama doesn't rip it out. Consequently, riders are treated to a variety of scare sets that cover more than half a century's worth of dark ride style horror.

Here's an incomplete ride through. The poppin' fresh dance music was added by the filmmakers and is not part of the ride itself. Enjoy!

Stuff: The haunted houses of Coney Island: Part I – The Ghost Hole.

As the plans for the massive redevelopment/plunder of Coney Island have, yet again, been delayed, my wife, my friend A., and I took the opportunity to sneak off to New York's faded and fabulous boardwalk Babylon and experience the decaying playland's trio of terrifying haunted house rides.

We began our tour with the Ghost Hole, an independently run dark ride situated outside the two major parks of Coney – Astroland and Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park – and just down the street from Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs.

Originally part of an amusement park in Ocean City, Maryland, the Ghost Hole (formerly the Hell Hole) was sold and shipped to Coney Island in the mid-1990s. Of the three haunted house rides in Coney, it's the youngest.

The façade of the Ghost Hole is the most modern, having a graffiti-like feel to it. It features three animatronic elements. The first, on the far left as you face the ride, is a demon stirring a cauldron. Sadly, the demon no longer works. It's still mounted on the ride's exterior, but it doesn't move. On the far right, there's a tangle of three snakes that bow up and down. Astute riders will notice that there is actually a mount for a fourth snake, but it has slithered off somewhere.

Every dark ride at Coney features some massive beast, a sort of dominant totem figure, that centers the exterior design. For the Ghost Hole, this figure head is a giant red demon that my friend A. simply refers to as the "the Dark Prince of Love."

I'm just guessing, but I reckon the Dark Prince of Love is 15 feet or so high. He stands astride a set of speakers that blast his roar into the construction site across the street. His jaw is nicely articulated, though not always perfectly in sync with his roaring – he's a demon from an Italian horror flick, I guess. He's also got an embarrassing hole in his loin cloth that reveals he's got nothing but an empty void for a crotch. He is understandably upset by this. Here's a YouTube clip of the Dark Prince of Love in action.



Besides having a name that sounds like a euphemism for something particularly disreputable ("I'm going to Coney to ride the Ghost Hole"), the Ghost Hole features a particularly vile bit of animatonic theater for the strong-stomached riders to enjoy while they wait in line: a animatronic man who is simultaneously vomiting and suffering from projectile diarrhea. That's right, a robot fighting a war on two fronts. It's all class at the Ghost Hole.

If a photo isn't doing it for you, here's a video somebody posted on the YouTube, complete with retching sounds.



I place the dark rides of Coney into a spectrum between two idealized categorical poles. This isn't an official taxonomic method used among fans of dark rides or anything, it's just something I use to describe the differences between dark rides. On one end of the spectrum, you've got the jump-out ride. These rides scoot you around a track and attempt to traumatize you by having suddenly appearing monsters lunge toward you. There's a lot of flashing lights and loud, abrupt noises. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the tableaux ride. These rides roll you past elaborate set ups, parading you through a series of terrible scenes. These rides move a little slower. The rider is supposed to soak in all the unpleasant details. All dark rides fall somewhere in between these two poles, mixing elements for both approaches. Of all the dark rides in Coney, the Ghost Hole is closest an even mix of both jump-out and tableaux scares. There's a lot of sudden, rushing monsters, but they've also included several inventive, relatively detailed scenes that the rider lingers over. On the downside, one of the set ups is what is supposed to be a man puking. Enough with the bodily functions, Ghost Hole! On the plus side, though I don't have any good images of it, the ride features a jump-out giant alligator. And, as we all know, giant alligators and crocodiles make anything better.

Here's YouTube ride through (complete with commentary by unimpressed filmmaker and companion). Enjoy!

Stuff: “It don’t Gitmo better!”

The New York Times has an article on a new "attraction" at Coney Island: the Waterboard Thrill Ride! From the article:

It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam — in this case there’s SpongeBob SquarePants saying, “It don’t Gitmo better!”

If you climb up a few cinderblock steps to the small window, you can look through the bars at a scene meant to invoke a Guantánamo Bay interrogation. A lifesize figure in a dark sweatshirt, the hood drawn low over his face, leans over another figure in an orange jumpsuit, his face covered by a towel and his body strapped down on a tilted surface.

Feed a dollar into a slot, the lights go on, and Black Hood pours water up Orange Jumpsuit’s nose and mouth while Orange Jumpsuit convulses against his restraints for 15 seconds.

In my previous series on torture porn, I brought up 1) the sort of extremely stylized hyper-reality of torture porn that makes the real thing seem weirdly underwhelming and 2) the generational divide regarding the reception of torture imagery. Here's an extract that briefly touches on these issues:

Many people stroll by the installation without even stopping to look. As for those who do, Jodi Taylor, house manager for the freak show, said: “Adults find it very shocking, and kids are like, ‘That stinks.’ They’re so desensitized. They have no idea what the ethical issues are. They wish there was water spraying in their face.”

Kids these days.

Stuff: Happy Birthday, Howie.

So, if he had actually made a dark deal with eldritch powers beyond the kin of mortals, H. P. Lovecraft would be 117 today.

In tribute, here's the complete episode of The Real Ghostbusters in which our boys in gray cross proton beams with Cthulhu.

Here's part 1: "Your precious book of spells will be quite safe here."



And here's part 2: "The most opportune place for the cult to perform the ceremony is the southern tip of Brooklyn: Coney Island, to be exact."

Stuff: Goodbye, Dante's Inferno

The last of the three original parks of Coney Island, Astroland - home of the famed Wonder Wheel and Warriors - will be torn down soon.

For those who do not live in NYC and will not get a chance to get out to Coney Island before October, when the season officially ends, then this may well be you're last chance to see Dante's Inferno: the oldest of the two haunted house rides in the soon to be demolished Astroland theme park. Enjoy these photos, and my apologies for the blur – I'm not much of a photographer.

Here's a photo of the large yellow demon and Dante's Inferno sign that dominate the exterior of the ride. If you look closely, to the left of the demon, you can see one off two three-headed dragons that appear in the upper corners of the ride's exterior. The dragons used to flail their heads about, but I haven't seen them operational in a dog's age.

Here's a close-up of that yellow demon.

Here's a bit of the facade. This is to your right as you sit in the cars, before the ride begins.

More of the outside decoration. With ride employee.

This odd character is actually hidden away behind the ticket booth. He's actually a really nice monster, so I'm not sure why they've hidden him away. He used to actually "pop" out of the facade of the ride - an effect accomplished by the harness frame you can see under the beast's chest - but, like the three-headed dragons, he hasn't been fully operational for some time.

The second haunted house ride in Astroland is the more recent Spook-A-Rama. Here's a pic of the signage. Again, sorry for the crappy photo.

Since he's not that visible in my crappy wide-shot, here's a close-up of the monster on top of the Spook-A-Rama.

(Bonus: Eagle-eyed readers might be able to pick out the back of my newly-minted wife's head in the Wonder Wheel shot. She's the one wearing the brown baseball cap, a gift from the fine folks at Jack's Coffee in Greenwich Village.)