The Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Venue

Imagine a theme park with an enclosed water slide sporting a complete 360-degree loop. Imagine a concrete and fiberglass slide with vehicles often devoid of brakes. Imagine a park so lacking in safety rules and proper protections for its patrons that local hospital workers nicknamed it “Accident Park.”

While this amusement venue could never exist in today’s overprotective culture, Action Park opened in Vernon, New Jersey, in 1978 — and remained open, incredibly, until 1996.

The park put guests in control of how fast and how high their rides could go — and the location quickly developed a national reputation as the most dangerous theme park in America.

Though it’s long gone, Action Park has only grown in legend over the years. One of this weekend’s new releases, “Action Point,” is based entirely on that legend, and it’s appropriately produced by and starring stunt daredevil Johnny Knoxville (“The Dukes of Hazzard,” “Walking Tall”).

“It was an amazing theme park where the owner was like, ‘Let’s not hassle the kids with a bunch of rules. Let’s leave safety up to them!’ And he did. And people got wrecked,” Knoxville recently told Vice about the film.

A short documentary about the park, he said, inspired him to jump on the film.

The making of “Action Point” was perhaps as reckless as the theme park. Knoxville ended up with broken bones, stitches, busted teeth, multiple concussions — and his eye even popped out of its socket at one point.

“I thought of the most painful stunts I could, and we made a film,” he said.

Action Park embraced its reputation from the beginning. CEO Gene Mulvihill had a marketing strategy that played up the park’s more dangerous aspects.

“I thought of the most painful stunts I could, and we made a film.”

The park’s Alpine Slide, which sported the mostly brakeless cars, even greeted guests — once they made it to the summit after a ski lift ride in order to get on the slide — with pictures of people who had been injured.

There were reportedly 26 serious head injuries and 14 fractures attributed to that ride. The slide even led to the park’s first fatality: A 19-year-old employee went flying off the ride and hit his head.

Other rides were just as daredevil-themed. The Tidal Wave Pool needed lifeguards on constant watch, and over a dozen people would need rescuing every single day. Waves could reach up to 40 inches.

“My father, if he could find a guy with a crazy idea for a ride, he’d hire the guy, even if he never built it before,” one of Mulvihill’s sons said, according to History.

Six people died at the park. As regulations became stricter and the world became more cautious over the years, Action Park slowly faded into memory. After it closed in 1996, it eventually reopened in 2014 under a different name — and began advertising its up-to-date safety features and staff.

As dangerous as the original park was, there is something captivating about its very existence — and that’s what this new film has embraced.

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As unsafe as it was, the place was innovative and offered a peculiar freedom that can likely be found only in America.

Knoxville’s film — which is about as non-kid-friendly as the actual park — makes note of this. While it acknowledges that a place like Action Park belongs in the history books, it also embraces the motivations of the place. There’s plenty of refreshing talk about “personal responsibility” and the “nanny state” from Knoxville’s character (the owner of the film’s fictional Action Point Park) as he looks back on his creation decades later.

The film’s villains are also corrupt government officials and bureaucrats.

Even if one doesn’t see the film and even if a place like Action Park will never exist again, its story is still worth remembering and telling — even if it only inspires shock and awe in all those who take the time to listen.

PopZette editor Zachary Leeman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.