WARWICK — The Shore Dinner Hall, the House of Horrors and most of the rides in the once bustling 123-acre park have either been carted away for scrap metal or demolished.

Yet memories of Rocky Point live on, from the ride-all-day bracelets that once sold for $4.75, to the huge crowds of visitors who came to see shows in the Midway.

And the memories seemed as fresh as ever last night at the Warwick Art Museum, where visitors gathered to watch excerpts of an upcoming feature-length documentary about the park, You Must Be This Tall, and to meet the filmmakers.

The trip down nostalgia lane was replete with helpings of popcorn, and with buttons bearing the portraits of the wolfman and the other creatures and monsters whose faces decorated the different cars in the House of Horrors.

Among those arriving with the hope of renewing old acquaintances was 99-year-old Estelle Gustafson, who was known to many as the clam cake lady.

Gustafson, who sold bags of the stuff from her concession stand just a clam’s throw away from the Shore Dinner Hall, started making the cakes in 1951 when, as a widow with three children to feed, she looked to see if the park had any concessions available. In those days, every concession was its own independent operation.

“There was only one left, for selling clam cakes. Well I never made a clam cake in my life,” she recounted yesterday. “But I took it and soon learned.”

Gustafson, who continued to supply clam cakes for 25 years, acknowledged that she didn’t get along well with one of the park’s early owners, Vincent Ferla. She sued Ferla in 1956, contending his Shore Dinner Hall encroached on the terms of her contract, which gave her the exclusive rights to selling bags of clam cakes.

“I sued him and won, but I didn’t get any money. Instead the judge ordered him to provide a shore dinner, complete with watermelon, for just 85 cents for all visitors for two weeks. He never liked me after that, but I stayed.”

And she did very well by it. The profits allowed her to spend her winters in Florida for nearly 50 years until the age 90.

Also looking to renew acquaintances was Ken Rinn, 52, who was the “voice” of Rocky Point Park in the mid-70s, and who used to introduce the performers at the Midway. Rinn, who now works in the operating room at Kent Hospital, said Johnny Zoppe, a trapeze artist, so enjoyed Rinn’s way of announcing that he had it recorded so he could use Rinn’s announcements when he performed elsewhere.

He said he also enjoyed his conversations with Hugo Zacchino, the “human cannonball,” whose act included being fired from a cannon before an audience of spectators. “I hope I don’t disillusion you when I tell you it wasn’t really a cannon,” he said. “It was a huge spring.”

Howie Bergel, 47, now of Norton, Mass., handled many of the rides at the park for 10 years, starting in 1976. The House of Horrors was always challenging, he said. Twice a day teens would jump out of their cars in the darkened ride and he’d have to find them.

Toward the end, facing competition from some other parks in the region, Rocky Point saw its business decline. “I remember some Friday nights when I’d be there and not have one person go on the ride.”

The park’s eventual demise is all part of the story being told by filmmaker David Bettencourt, who teaches documentary filmmaking at the University of Rhode Island.

Bettencourt, whose film team includes still photographer Nicole Gesmondi, musician Lonnie Montaquila, and researcher Liam Gray, said he decided to do the documentary after his 7-year-old son returned from a visit to Six Flags, and he found himself trying to explain to his son there was once a park in Rhode Island that also had thrill rides.

His research took him to, among other places, the Rutherford B. Hayes presidential museum in Ohio, to gather information on one little known fact: the first use of a telephone by a sitting president was in 1877, in a call from Rocky Point Park to inventor Alexander Graham Bell. “His first words on the phone were, ‘Would you speak a little more slowly.’ ”

To complete the film, Bettencourt and his team want to ride the Corkscrew, the Rocky Point coaster, now renamed Wild Thing, still in operation at a park in Federal Way, Wash., and Rocky Point’s other featured coaster, the Cyclone, now at a park in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The movie premiere is scheduled at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket on Sept. 7.

rdujardi@projo.com