By Drew Dietsch
| Published
There’s this movie called Punishment Park. Chances are that you’ve never seen it. Maybe you’ve never even heard about it. That’s a touch surprising as it’s often considered one of the most controversial movies of all time. Maybe that’s why you haven’t heard of it. Maybe it’s a movie most people would be happy not to even know about.
But with Stephen King’s The Long Walk finally making its way to the big screen — along with some other movies with similar themes — the time seems more appropriate than ever to give Punishment Park the chance to be discovered by a new audience.
The Story Of Punishment Park
Punishment Park is a faux documentary from writer/director Peter Watkins that was released in 1971. The premise of Watkins’ speculative fiction is that President Nixon is facing untold pressure from anti-war forces in the country. In his panic, he issues a state of emergency allowing anyone deemed a “risk to internal security” to be arrested and detained by police and military officials.
This doesn’t just include protesters of the Vietnam War. Many university students get scooped up, as well as feminists, Civil Rights advocates, and those who declare themselves as members of the Communist Party. A wide swath of mostly young people, often from diverse backgrounds, are corralled into camps and sentenced by a panel of community figures and impromptu judges.
Everyone is found guilty of some perceived crime and given a choice: going to prison or spending three days in a game called Punishment Park. Since the prison system in this not-then-too-distant future is notoriously filled with legitimate violent offenders, most of the detainees choose Punishment Park.
The Game Of Punishment Park
Punishment Park is a three day journey across the California desert in which the detainees are given a headstart before being chased down by police officers. If they are caught, they are returned back to serve out their sentence in prison. Their goal is to reach an American flag stuck in the desert sand as a promise of freedom.
Of course, some of the detainees decide not to play the game and fight back against their captors. This gives the police all the impetus they need to kill everyone that stands against them. You get the feeling this kind of rebellion is something they come to expect from the many groups they process through Punishment Park.
But another group decides not to fight back and try to reach the goal. They do just that but are met with some of those same police officers arresting them and beating them without mercy. They are going to prison to serve out their sentences. You can’t win the game of Punishment Park.
Making It Feel Real Because It Is
The decision for Peter Watkins to frame this as a documentary story makes the brutality and the bleak fatalism hit all the harder. Many of the participants are non-actors that were cast for a sense of verisimilitude. There is even one moment in the movie where a gun goes off and the actor using the gun didn’t know it wasn’t live rounds. Another actor pretended to be shot and the kid with the gun thought he actually shot someone.
And Peter Watkins captures that moment for real in the movie.
It’s a startling, cruel, torturous, and arguably unethical thing to do. Almost as horrendous as the ideas present in the movie themselves. Ideas that were reflections of real horrors that had happened at the time in America, such as the tragedy of the Kent State Massacre. They are still reflections of real horrors that will happen. Real horrors that are happening.
So making the story a documentary film seemed the only way Watkins could push the barrier between reality and fiction in a way that would evoke a strong reaction out of the audience.
Anyway, I thought you might like to watch Punishment Park today. It’s clearly an influence on The Long Walk, a not-then-too-distant future story about a game where competitors have to traverse America for a promise. If you’re wanting to watch something in preparation for that Stephen King adaptation that still feels shocking, important, and relevant after more than half a century, I can thoroughly recommend Punishment Park.
