Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park [1978]

In order to cope with this Scooby Doo film meant for kids ages 10-13, we spend a good lot of the run time talking about better rock bands. It's not hard. While Kiss is unquestionably iconic, that is a title that comes from their look and their theatricality. Divorced from that, their music is quaint and unimpressive. It feels like rock meant for preteens before they get into heavier stuff like Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. Their "danger" is solely pretense and really they look like escapees from a queer BDSM club, a comic con, a furry con, and a Japanese print turned into a porno respectively. Even the name Kiss sounds more like a K-pop girl group than a rock band. When they played "Rock And Roll All Nite" Sarah realized that this was a Kiss song and she never realized. The point I'm making here is that any flack Kiss might have gotten for this schlocky cash grab film, probably should have been thrown at them earlier. They are not a serious band.

The plot has to do with an evil automaton/cyborg maker at an amusement park. A pretty girl loses her fiance who has been kidnapped by the evil scientist and Kiss are the only ones who help her. It takes 45 minutes or so before this plot even really starts though. Apparently Kiss all have magic powers that are loosely tied to their "things" (Simmons breaths fire for real, Stanley uses his star eye to spy, etc.). They have talismans that hold their powers and also their ability to make mediocre music. They get kidnapped eventually. They escape. We get a lot of concert footage and a scene of them all wearing wizard cloaks by a pool. Kiss make all the other actors look like Oscar winners. The effects are bad even for the time and the whole thing looks like it was shot on the worst cameras. 

As someone who wasn't alive in the 70s, I do have to ask if this kind of product was profitable. Kiss were big, but comparable to what I ask? Either way, it's hard to imagine even diehard fans defending this movie unless they are below the age of ten when they saw it. My favs could never, but also my favs would never.

Spoon Rating: 2