Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park – 1978
In Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, Kiss is the largest music attraction in the world and they’ve come to play in this theme park. Meanwhile, Abner Devereaux, the park’s developer, gets even stranger ideas than usual and is ultimately fired by his old friend who happens to also be the owner of the park. He plans his gruesome revenge! His plan to replace the famous rock group with his own creatures and use them to start a riot begins – and voila! Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park!
According to legend – haven’t you always wanted to start a review with those words? – Kiss themselves hates the movie. I don’t know if this is the truth or not; or if Ace and Peter should be involved in the hatred. It seems to me that Gene and Paul are the ones who always made all the decisions anyway; even when the classic lineup was a reality. But I understand them; this is a real piece of crap really! But on the other hand – I like it a hell of a lot! It’s poorly acted, the effects are really bad and the storyline is almost nonexistent. But still, it’s very entertaining and it features the band’s mythology – the demon, the star child, Space Ace, and the cat man. Each of them has a unique power which is brought to them via a certain talisman, which is very amusing.
Terrible acting
The band themselves are really poor actors! Gene is somewhat better and has in fact made a few parts since then. Runaway and Wanted Dead or Alive comes to mind. He is far better as a terrorist in those movies than as himself here though. How odd does that sound? Anthony Zerbe, who plays the main villain Abner Devereaux is pretty decent though. I mean that his character might be poorly written but I think he does what can be done with the part.
But it doesn’t really matter that the production is dull. There are entertainment values in this turkey beyond belief. Plus all the music is top-notch! There is even a scene where some androids (yes, it’s a long story) sing some barbershop. Well, maybe it isn’t such a long story after all. When this Abdner dude gets fired. He uses his creations to attack the band and replace them with his own duplicates. He then plans to wreck the park by rewriting the lyrics to titles like Hotter than Hell, making it into Rip and Destroy and hoping that Kiss’ fans will take it literally. Come to think of it, there is also a great acoustic guitar version of Beth in KissMeets the Phantom of the Park!
The U returns
If you can get hold of this I suggest you get it! It’s really bad but as I said it’s very entertaining! That reminds me. Me and my friends, once upon a time. used a rating system where a U represented the rating. The right part was all the good aspects, the real quality stuff, and the left part was all entertaining. It was used as guidance as to whether it was a really good film or just a bad but entertaining one. I’m not sure why this grading system was lost but I guess there was a problem visualizing it. Anyway, this would render a high rating on the left side of the U!
