I’ll be honest: I’m glad Playland at the Beach was before my time. Is glad too strong a word? Relieved. From all I’ve heard and seen of the place, I just can’t help but get the impression of something utterly unholy.
A west-coast Coney Island was the idea, but that’s putting it optimistically. Besides, isn’t Coney Island itself already a tad depraved? Aren’t all amusement parks? I recognize that I’ve been conditioned to think this way by movies, having soaked up the varied horrors of so many cheap thrillers, squirmy coming-of-age comedies and San Francisco’s own noir canon (in which more than one harrowing climax gets staged in the general Playland vicinity). Well, it doesn’t help to have local director Tom Wyrsch’s documentary Remembering Playland, a nonchalant assembly of stock footage and talking-head remembrance, implying that the absence of the place has left a whole generation haunted.
Oh sure, Wyrsch means well. But he’s kind of freaking me out. I don’t think I need to know any more about the mysterious bobsled accident in the early days, after which the place suddenly had new owners. I understand that the rumor of the roller-coaster beheading was just a rumor. That in fact it was merely a crushed skull. And it was a long time ago. And yes, Wyrsch does point out that they had a sign, disclaiming, “Danger: Do Not Stand Up.” It’s just that, well, he also points out that in those same early days, there weren’t even any kids. Just neatly suited adults in face-concealing hats. Creepy.
As for Laffing Sal, the plump, animatronic park hostess who stood there spewing a maniacal titter like some Wal-Mart greeter with severe self-medicated PTSD, I am glad never to have made her acquaintance.
“I never got that,” one of Wyrsch’s testifiers says, “why people were scared of her.” OK, let’s all keep our eyes on that guy. I’m more inclined to trust the other guy, who says, “I don’t know why they called it the Fun House. They should have called it the House of Torture and Humiliation or something.”