'Class Action Park' Remembers The Perils Of A Really Good Time

There's a species of giddy nostalgia that involves laughing off what you barely survived. It can be even more powerful if, at the time, you didn't know how lucky you got. It's the nostalgia of near-miss childhood accidents and times you almost set the house on fire, and of things that fell from the ceiling a foot from your head. It's also the nostalgia of the new documentary Class Action Park.

Made by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott, the film chronicles Action Park, the New Jersey waterslide park that opened in 1978, enjoyed great popularity in the 1980s and is now remembered in part for the injuries and deaths that gave it its nickname and contributed to knocking it out of business in 1996. Some parks have themes like the Wild West or futurism or countries of the world; Action Park's theme was deregulation. With roots in Wall Street arrogance and an apparent ability to wiggle around any legal obstacle its leadership encountered, the park was built around one question: Who says we can't?