KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park

KISS were at their commercial peak when they brought KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park to television screens in 1978. To be a little more accurate, the second-highest rated made-for-TV movie of 1978. Co-hosts Jon and Mark dissect the mysterious on-goings at a theme park run amok by the creations of the (recently fired) mastermind Mr. Devereaux. With rock n' roll, kung-fu, talismans, and the ability to fly, only the real KISS can save the day.

You wanted the best... but you got this instead! 

Transcript

Jon (00:00)
Today in the Rock and Roll Theatre, you wanted the best, but you got this instead. KISS meets the Phantom of the Park.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Rock and Roll Theatre Podcast. I'm Jon, joined here with my brother Mark. Every week we dive into pop culture, movies, music, all sorts of stuff. And today we have KISS meets the Phantom of the Park.

Mark (00:33)
KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park was originally made for TV. It was originally aired on October 28th, 1978 on NBC. It runs 96 minutes long and it was rated PG. Turns out it was actually the second highest rated TV movie in 1978, which might be a bit surprising. It's classified as a fantasy horror sci-fi mystery.

This varies quite a bit depending on the source that you're looking at. It was also released in Theatres internationally. It had an alternate title, Attack of the Phantoms, so you will see this as well if you're researching this film, depending on what country you're looking at. And what's important to note here in terms of the context is that KISS were really at the height of their fame in the late 70s. They were huge, they were everywhere, they were everything.

Jon (01:29)
Were they ever? At this time between 1973 and 1978 when this came out, they'd already released six studio albums, four solo albums, and two live albums. They really found success after their first three studio albums with the live record, which as most people know, isn't really much of a live record. Most of was recorded after the fact, and the crowd noise is actually from Woodstock. Also, I took a look into what was the highest rated TV movie in 1978. I couldn't find it anywhere. So this might be a claim that

that

KISS made and I don't see any source backing it up. We'll take their word for it, why not? Also KISS had really expanded with merchandise at the time. Before bands had sold t-shirts at a concert, maybe a poster, maybe a tour program, not with KISS. KISS were selling lunch boxes, face painting kits, of course a million t-shirts, records, dolls, cushions, pillows, whatever you could, whatever you can put the name KISS on, KISS put their name on it and that continues to this very, very day.

Mark (02:27)
This meets the Phantom of the Park was produced by Hanna Barbera for a budget of three million dollars. So that's kind of interesting. And most of it was filmed at Magic Mountain in California. So this is gonna come up a couple of times throughout this episode when we're talking about different scenes. It's kind of worth noting that Magic Mountain, that's kind of cool. Much of the production was rushed, surprise, surprise. And the script underwent numerous rewrites.

All four members of KISS were given crash courses on acting.

Jon (03:00)
It seems like two of the members, Peter and Ace, decide to skip most of the classes in favor of partying, even start filming scenes and doing dialogue, which we will get into later on.

Mark (03:11)
There is a pretty famous quote that I came across when researching this film. Paul Stanley said, it was sold to us as a cross between Star Wars and a hard day's night.

Jon (03:24)
They lied.

Alright, before we get any further and get into the guts and details of KISS Me's The Fam of the Park, I would just like to say, wherever you're listening to at in the world, if you can give us a like, a follow, a subscribe, a comment, whatever the case may be. If there's something you want to see us cover, drop us a message, find us on the socials, let us know. Before we go any further though, there will be spoilers ahead. So if this is, you you want to go back and watch it, pause, we'll be right here, ready to go.

Mark (03:51)
So KISS Meets the Fan Mother Park opens up at an amusement park, as we mentioned earlier, Magic Mountain in California. KISS are playing rock and roll all night on top of an amusement park montage. So they're sort of superimposed on these background graphics of roller coasters and different carnival games. It is a little bizarre, kind of, you know.

weird stock footage stuff going on. What are you thinking when you saw this,

Jon (04:22)
That's a common thing I was just about to mention that they seem to use a lot of stock footage that probably wasn't filmed for this movie, just random shots of people, totally different time of the day on the roller coasters and bumper cars. And they keep using this footage throughout the film and repeating it. So, I mean, for a movie that's only 96 minutes, you had to go back and find all these old stock clips. I mean, there was a lot of hype, a lot of excitement for this before it came out. Of course, there was commercials, ads and newspapers. Kids were huge at the time, especially with younger kids with all the dolls and merchandise. So I can picture a kid in 1976

Sitting down being very excited to see KISS Starting off rock all night, of course is like their biggest song So that's a kind of a good start but the graphics and like the bumper cars especially flying around even in terms of 1978 it looks bad

It looks weird and cheesy and sadly Peter Chris doesn't have his drum kit. He's just magically drumming in the air, we've covered this before on episode one with the Ramones where poor Marky Ramone never seemed to have a drum kit in any of the scenes. Just had to kind of weirdly mind playing the drums wherever he went.

Mark (05:20)
I guess maybe it's a budget constraint of films at the time. So this does kind of set the tone though. It kind of introduces the setting of the amusement park and sort of there's this tension in the air, like something big is about to happen. They're trying to kind of introduce the plot, even though it does seem kind of bizarre. So one of the things that I noticed right away was that it seems like every scene outdoors in this movie,

has really bad voiceovers.

Jon (05:51)
like they didn't even try to sync it up. It's very noticeable that they're clearly having different conversations right from the very start. And it just, the audio sounds weird, it sounds off. I mean, we've all watched stuff from this era and it doesn't sound like this. This sounds like some pretty bad overdubbing.

Mark (06:08)
So then we see a big poster that's advertising KISS playing at the park that night. And then we get this little side journey of a group of thugs led by Chopper. They show up, but the cops seem to kind of be circling them and following them around. It's not totally clear what's going on, but we are getting the vibe that, you know, this is a bad gang who shouldn't be there.

Jon (06:36)
Well, one thing is clear is that Chopper don't hurt no one unless he wants to, which is repeated by the female thug numerous times. So I guess maybe Chopper isn't that bad of a guy according to her. I don't know. They're tripping people. They're messing with the robots when there's a lot of animatronics in the park, which is kind of the plot of the movie we'll get to here in a second. So I don't know. They seem to be kind of raising chaos, but the cops don't kick them out. They just kind of let them stay.

Mark (06:59)
So then we see the introduction of Melissa and Sam, two characters who are featured throughout the film. They're on a roller coaster. And then we see Sam, apparently Sam works at the park and he goes into this, looks sort of like an underground lab chamber kind of thing. He looks a little lost. He looks a little confused. He walks into this room, the door shuts, you hear a scream and Sam is gone.

Jon (07:26)
commercial break. guess we're supposed to impose here that Sam works for Devereaux. Devereaux is like the main lead villain, I guess you would say. He's in charge of all the animatronics in the park. There's a lot of robots, animatronic things, gorillas, that sort of stuff in the park.

Mark (07:41)
I guess that's

what they're implying, it's still not clear to me as a viewer at that point that Sam actually worked there. just seemed like a guy who got lost.

Jon (07:51)
we're gonna go with that. Why not? There's gonna be a lot we're gonna have to sort of conjure out and just assume what they meant. Devereaux, he loves his robots clearly. He has this underground lab where he's building them. And I guess he abducts Sam into the lab. But then we come back from commercial break. There's a KISS banner flying in the sky. There's a KISS lookalike contest. And for your trivia buffs, number seven wins and she is playing Peter Chris. As well as you can hear some KISS in the background, they play a little bit

Christine 16 but not very much so so far it's not very KISS driven and of course it's done by Hanna Barbera it is very much like a Scooby-Doo cartoon and there's a total Scooby-Doo villain what's going on vibe

Mark (08:33)
Even though I saw this movie long, long ago as a teenager, rewatching this as an adult, the first scene that stuck in my mind was that KISS banner flying in the sky. I do distinctly remember that. So that was kind of cool. And yeah, it is totally Scooby-Doo-like.

Jon (08:53)
We'll be making that comparison several times here. So Devereaux has this like restricted area sort of complex layer that's under the ground where he works. But mean security is pretty lax because Melissa just comes right up to it, takes the elevator down. He kind of shows her around a bit, but then he immediately gets annoyed and just blows her off. And it's like, see you later. Good luck trying to find your man. But now we realize that, Sam is actually a robot. And what does this have to do with KISS? I have no idea.

Mark (09:20)
So after this, we come back to the thugs with Chopper. And what they do is they actually break into this complex at night time. And they're sort of walking around causing trouble looking at all of these different, I guess, creatures that Mr. Devereaux is composing. There's a pretty ⁓ funny line. think ⁓ Chopper yells at one of them, I'll smoke you.

Jon (09:45)
Yes, he's talking to the robots.

Mark (09:46)
this

Jon (09:47)
Did Devereux give them like tickets to the Chamber of Horrors? that how this all came to be? Yeah, okay. And the Chamber of Horrors is terrible, by the way. This scene goes on way too long. Way too long. Full disclosure, when I rewatched this movie the second time in preparing for the podcast, I skipped over this scene. It's like long. I can just picture a little kid waiting for KISS, so excited before Halloween, and we're watching this, and the monsters don't look scary in the Chamber of Horrors. It's real. This is like a goofy plastic

Mark (09:51)
⁓ maybe, yeah, yeah, maybe.

Yes, it's... awful.

Jon (10:17)
spider that comes down and nobody's scared I'm not scared and finally somehow I think it's through like I don't know some Egyptian mummy thing opens up and they are boom sucked away into Devereaux's lab

Mark (10:30)
Yeah,

so while this is going on, thinking, what does this have to do with KISS?

Jon (10:34)
Well I guess this is part of the Scooby-Doo mystery of what's the evil man doing at the amusement park.

Mark (10:40)
All of a sudden, we move to the next day. It's sunny, it's bright, we're outside, and the stage is set up for the concert.

Jon (10:47)
The weather changes a lot in this film, even from scene to scene, from line to line.

Mark (10:52)
But unfortunately, Mr. Devereaux is out for a walk with his boss. He's not too happy with them. Some things have been going on in the park. He's tried to soup up some of the rides and, you know, that's kind of putting people in danger. They can't be having this. So Mr. Devereaux actually ends up getting fired.

Jon (11:10)
I think they tell him to retire or fired. I don't think it matters because he, as we'll see, keeps right on going.

Mark (11:16)
You do hear a PA announcer scream right after this happens, KISS tonight. And Mr. Devereaux responds, I will destroy you. So I guess now he has a vengeance against KISS. They're taking all the shine from his hard work at the park.

Jon (11:30)
He's a KISS hater, he is not a member of the KISS Army. Nope.

Mark (11:33)
So 30 minutes into the movie, see KISS on stage for the very first time. They are playing Shout It Out Loud.

Jon (11:40)
So think about you've now sat through the chamber of horrors, the robots, the this, the that. The only glimpse of KISS you got was in the opening credits for half of Rock and Roll All Night with some weird graphics. So at this point, you must be desperate to see some KISS. On my copy, it was 36 minutes in actually where this actually starts. They kick off one of their most iconic, famous, anthematic songs, Shout Out Loud. I mean, they played every show they've ever played at and the crowd is into it. It's a real crowd. It's a real show. It's a studio version.

of a shout out loud but I mean it's it sounds like it it looks like KISS and you know so far the best part of the film.

Mark (12:15)
So another note to call out from Magic Mountain here. This concert was filmed on May 19th, 1978 in a crowd, for a crowd I should say, of 8,000 people.

Jon (12:27)
which is probably small at the time for KISS. mean, they were doing big venues, big arenas. I mean, for the people in the crowd, this was probably a really cool KISS experience. I actually read some comments on the internet there about people that were at the show. They loved it. They had a great time. They got hours of KISS. This went on, the taping went on for a long time. They did the songs live. They did do a backing tape. There was a lot going on. So people in the crowd seemed really into it and really happy.

Mark (12:50)
The production does look pretty good, the playing looks good, the sound is not bad.

Jon (12:54)
sounds okay,

it's better on the record but, and also I mean it looks like a 1970s style concert clip like you've seen. So also the production looks a little bit better than everything else we've seen so far. So there is a contrast there of when KISS are on stage versus when the acting is going on.

Mark (13:09)
So then we go back to the underground lab and Mr. Devereaux seems to keep working, so I don't know about that firing, it doesn't seem to be holding.

Jon (13:17)
doesn't seem to at all. We don't even get all of Shout Out Loud. They cut away to go to show him in the lab. There's a commercial break in there too as well and they come back and KISS are playing the end of Black Diamond, not the whole song, just the very end of it.

Mark (13:29)
All right, so then we move along here. KISS are coming off stage and Sam is back, but apparently now, you know, he's working for the evil Mr. Devereaux. He is his sort of a henchman robot type of character, I guess. ⁓ He's out to take photos of KISS. So he sees them coming off stage. He points the camera, he flashes it, and I'm really confused at this point. Is this some sort of...

magic trick that now KISS are also becoming robots or wait a second. They're superheroes or I'm already supposed to know they're superheroes. I'm not sure what's going on.

Jon (14:10)
Yeah, Paul Stanley, Star Child, uses his magic star eye to like light up the scene and basically eavesdrop on the conversation. Everyone around seems the most normal thing in the world for KISS to pull out superpowers. So I guess KISS have superpowers now. mean, even after just playing a show and rocking the crowd, there's still still will to help this poor fan who seems to be having an issue with her boyfriend. So KISS are on the case now. They have, you know, in six seconds, somehow interpret there's a mystery going on and KISS are down to solve it.

We also hear Gene Simmons do a growling noise, which was a Hanna-Babara sound effect, which later on became the sound effect for Battle Cat on the He-Man cartoon later on in the 80s. So it was definitely a staple of the Hanna-Babara library. ⁓ So then we move on, the park comes to life, it's after the show, and Gene Simmons is roaming the park, but is it really Gene or is it a robot?

Mark (15:00)
Again, I'm confused, I guess seeing the full movie till the end, going back, okay, it makes sense. This is the robot version of Gene Simmons, who is going around and beating up those cops we saw earlier.

Jon (15:13)
and he crashes through the wall Kool-Aid man style he breaks up like a guess a fast food stand that seems to have no food or liquid in it. You know, it's that mark the scene. It was totally empty what Gene smashed up. But and that's kind of you know what I mean? Like his rampage. I guess we're supposed to impose that ⁓ either Gene has lost it or Devereaux is up to something. And I just thought of this right now is why did Devereaux send Sam to take pictures? I mean, KISS at this time probably the most famous band in the world with pretty much the most famous face paint of all

time, you can find lots of photos of KISS and I think he has a poster board later on of KISS photos. So I'm not really sure what Sam's mission was there.

Mark (15:50)
Melissa also has this security pass tracker that Mr. Devereaux gave her, but I don't think she knows it's a tracking device. She's wearing it like it's a park pass or something like that. So he is kind of tracking the movement of anybody who might be afoot. There is a really funny line here. think it's the cops. say, everyone knows rock and rollers don't bathe.

Jon (16:15)
It was the cops. As well as one last thing about this, the her security tracker pass thing. It's literally just a cheap button that says security pass that anyone could have or make. So I'm guessing the security at Magic Mountain, pretty low, pretty weak. You can pretty much do whatever you want. So the police have tracked down Gene after his rampage and we find KISS sitting around the pool. I guess at whatever house they're staying at in between shows, they're playing for three nights and they're decked out in these super cool, long,

really heavy bathrobes that make no sense for the California sun.

Mark (16:48)
Yeah, this is really strange. Totally doesn't make sense. The dialogue in this section is also really bad because I guess it's supposed to be KISS carrying the scene and their acting skills are definitely showing. So, yeah.

Jon (16:57)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

And apparently, he does dispute this, I mean, I've heard Peter Chris speak many times and he has a very thick Italian New York accent. Apparently, Peter Chris decided just to not show up to dub his lines because everything is dubbed in this movie. And that's actually one of Hannah Barbera's voice actors playing Peter Chris in this scene. Apparently, is Ace freely speaking, but Ace did not have much to say and was, by his own admission, fairly intoxicated the entire shoot. Paul and Gene are, mostly Paul carries this scene.

you

Mark (17:32)
we go back into the lab once again we see Mr. Devereaux he's still working I mean again I guess that firing didn't really hold and now he's trying this search for the talisman the special power charms that KISS get their special abilities from so this is we see it it's sort of like a ⁓ trunk with like a you know a little star and a little demon head and these these little talisman

Jon (17:39)
Retirement stuff.

Mark (18:01)
our sources that KISS have, I guess.

Jon (18:04)
The kids do explain more about in a minute, but yes I guess we now all listen There's a new element thrown into this that KISS our superheroes because of talismans

Mark (18:13)
we move on to another concert. So I don't think, I don't know if it's known at this point that this is a multi-night event, but apparently it is. We see KISS playing I Stole Your Love.

Jon (18:23)
Another classic KISS song. opened most shows around this time and even much later on after that with I Stole Your Love. I think this is the best part of the film. I love the song. It's a classic. It's really, a great rocker, really fast tune. And it's the live version from a live one, I do believe is the actual background music they're using. Gene blows fire in the middle of it, which normally did during God of Thunder, but I guess they edited it in that way. So this is possibly the best part of the movie. But as we have KISS rocking out, we got Sam on the hunt for the talismans.

Mark (18:51)
it's pretty bad. He breaks into like, I guess it's supposed to be like their clubhouse or their suite or something like that. They have this funky purple couch. looks like a giant sort of snake edition of a beanbag or something like that. Then we see KISS playing an acoustic version of Beth.

Jon (19:03)
The couch is cool.

I mean, we only if it is a three night concert, we only got one song from night two. So yet again, if you're tuning in to watch KISS, you're not getting a lot of KISS. However, this scene when they play Beth is I'll admit I'm a full on KISS fan member of the KISS army. I'll explain at the end of the podcast to how much I like KISS. But as far as things that are unique or interesting about this movie, this might be one of the only few things they do to a version of Beth while they're sitting beside the pool. And the normal version of Beth is Peter Chris singing to a piano accompaniment. This one's done.

an acoustic guitar. It's a cool arrangement. It's as far as I know the only time they've ever really used this arrangement of Beth and I think it works really well. But while this is going on and they're just playing for Melissa, it's an audience of one. She's getting Beth because you know she's sad and they want to cheer her up I guess. And as Alice is going down, Sam is now ramshackling the place. He's tearing it apart. He flips over the cool purple couch because he's on the look for the talismans. And when he finally touches the box you see Paul Stanley, Star Child, who's playing

guitar hit a hit a wrong note hit a bad note so all of a sudden KISS knows something's up

Mark (20:12)
Sam is making his way through the amusement park when Melissa happens to be outside and she sees Sam. So she approaches him, but then she can't believe he's a robot.

Jon (20:23)
blows her right off. Couldn't care less.

Mark (20:25)
So I think everything at this point really has a very sort of made for TV kind of feel. Even though this was released in Theatres and in different editions and things like that, it really does feel made for TV.

Jon (20:31)
Absolutely.

Mm.

KISSer now roaming the park. after the show, after the best thing, looking for, I guess, whatever the problem is and what's going on with Sam. And this is where it definitely goes very TV movie ish as well, because all of a sudden this funky music starts up as they're patrolling the park, not KISS. Like think of every 70s cartoon fight scene, funky music you would hear. This is what's playing in the background as KISS first stumble across a bunch of you wrote down here animatronics

white monkeys I guess that's the best way to describe them so there's monkeys hanging off the roller coaster and now it's time for kids to fight

Mark (21:14)
it's a full on brawl. Each member of KISS has taken on two or three at once. They are using all kinds of really great martial arts moves and wrestling techniques and they're knocking off the heads of some of these animatronic characters. So you see sparks and you know.

Jon (21:32)
And this is also another turning point in the movie and one of the things the movie is most famous for. At this point it appears that Ace Freely has left the conversation entirely. It's his stunt double doing all of this and pretty much everything other than the live performances for the rest of the movie. It's very obvious that it's a different human being and not Ace Freely. I mean, his skin tone alone will tell you that. And he's much bigger than Ace too as well. He's also the most athletic of KISS. he's whooping ass. He's doing a good job there. And so far the animatronic monkeys were no match for

for KISS, so they keep moving on through the park.

Mark (22:03)
So then they come across a group of martial artists, know, some big, you know, muscle-bound guys who look like they know what to do. No match for KISS though.

Jon (22:14)
No

way.

And at one point a lightsaber comes out, if Star Wars meets a hard day's night, I guess they want to get a really bad looking lightsaber in there. At a time when we all knew what a lightsaber looked like. So that was pretty cheesy too. Like, ⁓ okay, a bad lightsaber. But mean, Ace hits an amazing backflip, and yet again, the martial artists are no match. But then they call in reinforcements we cut back to Devereaux who's now has some ray gun and he's zapping the talismans and KISS are slowly losing their strength.

Mark (22:42)
Yeah, I think it's actually Sam zaps them for Mr. Devon.

Jon (22:46)
More horror.

Mark (22:48)
And we're back in the chamber of horrors from the first

part of the movie.

Jon (22:53)
It's the exact same as before, the stupid rubber spider, KISS fights some, you know, they fight Frankenstein, other creatures, and I guess we realize that Ace has teleporting powers, and he's gonna teleport the whole band out of there. But now, since their talismans have been drained, they don't teleport anywhere to other side of the room, and slowly but surely, KISS are abducted, and in one of the worst graphics of 1978, if there was an award for that, the graphic of KISS being sucked up into Debaro's lab is laughably bad.

Now we move on to day three of KISS and they're ready for that I guess their third this is a daytime concert or starts as a daytime concert and KISS are missing and everyone's concerned at the park where our KISS our KISS gonna show up and then all of a sudden Robot KISS appear out of their dressing or they would have a minivan do they not kind of a car I think which is kind of odd for them to come up to the stage and they come up the stage and it's robot KISS Ace does his trademark act noise, which is you know You can buy a t-shirt this has ace freely on it saying

that because apparently when they asked him for you know natural dialogue when he's talked to dialogue coaches all he would say them was ack

Mark (23:57)
at this point we're understanding that Mr. Devereaux has sent this robot version of KISS to the final concert to sabotage everything for everyone. So again, we're getting more Scooby-Doo vibes. What should he have done with KISS? I think the real KISS is they're still in the underground lab at this point. But we see the robot KISS play Rip and Destroy.

Jon (24:20)
Rip and Destroy is just Hotter Than Hell by KISS with changed lyrics for the chorus. And it's still catchy. It's still a good song. But they think this is, know, the Rip and Destroy will send the kids into a frenzy and they'll destroy the park. Somehow proving Devereaux right, I guess, to get back at his bosses. They're going to destroy the amusement park because instead of Hotter Than Hell, they're yelling Rip and Destroy, which lyrically works. I mean, if they'd release that, no one probably even bat an eye. Also, I'm kind of wondering here. OK, so Devereaux has KISS locked

up, he's taking away their powers, robot KISS are up there completing the tour for KISS, and he doesn't just kill them. Why would you just keep them around at this point if you want to destroy them so badly? he's making the mistake all Scooby-Doo villains make where he's not capitalizing when he has the advantage.

Mark (25:07)
They are bound to a PG rating, so I guess they have to work within those confines.

Jon (25:12)
I was being very sarcastic, but yes.

Mark (25:16)
Okay, so KISS are in that underground lab. They are in a sort of ⁓ laser jail, I'll call it. That's what it looks like. But they are able to use their forces to get the talismans. They're able to channel sort of this sort of psychic energy and ⁓ able to get their powers back so they can break out of the underground lab. After this, we see them fly through the sky.

Jon (25:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mark (25:45)
and land on the stage to confront Robocis.

Jon (25:49)
Yeah, it's the final showdown. It's robot KISS versus real KISS the funky music starts back up again for some reason and It's very obvious who's a stunt double and who's a member of KISS just put it mildly and of course KISS win Paul's happy he hits his classic stage rap. What's up everybody? I love you Paul Stanley stuff. He always does at every show and They're gonna kick it off in a rock and roll all night Which started the movie ends the movie KISS and every show they've ever played with the song. It's their biggest song. So of course

it's a good one to go out on.

Mark (26:21)
We're not done. We got to go back to the lab, right? There's all these people. There's Sam, there's Melissa, Mr. Devereaux. you know, we got to, we don't end with just music. So we go.

Jon (26:22)
No.

Rock and Roll of Night would

have been the highlight to end on, but no.

Mark (26:33)
We go back to the underground lab. We're looking for Mr. Devereaux, but he ends up being frozen. So I guess he kind of knew his time was up, so he decided to freeze himself.

Jon (26:44)
I guess, or he's aged like a hundred years. don't know.

Mark (26:46)
it's hard to understand. And of course,

we got to save Sam, right? Because he was a robot. So Paul Stanley simply just removes that robot ship from his neck. There. Done. Yep. Yep. Yep. Everyone's happy. Melissa's happy. Sam is back. Everyone's friends.

Jon (26:56)
Yeah, I know. He just grabs it. It looks like a diode off his neck. Like, well, okay, that was that was it. That's all we could have done. Oh, okay. Yeah, Ace says,

ah, and then we hit God of Thunder for the closing credits of the made for TV movie KISS Me, Safam of the Park.

Mark (27:13)
Okay, so let's take a look at our soundtrack for KISS Meets the Fan with Park. It's a little light and a little weird. So, the songs officially listed on the movie itself, there's four of them. Let's go through these and then we'll take a look at one of the unofficial movie soundtracks that looks a little, well, we'll get into it. Let's start with what's officially listed.

on the film itself. Rock and roll all night.

Jon (27:47)
the most famous of all famous KISS songs. Everybody knows it. Everybody's heard it. It's in the movie twice for a reason. It's rock and roll all night. There's not much I can say about it other than if you like KISS, you like this song. One of my personal favorites, a staple of their live set. High energy, good song. Great way to showcase KISS. I think if you're making a made for TV movie, I'd pick this one too.

Mark (27:59)
Shout it out loud.

RIP and destroy.

Jon (28:12)
⁓ A version of hotter than hell with changed lyrics that still pretty much sound like hotter than hell I mean if you had it on the background and weren't paying attention it is hotter than hell I guess it works for what the plot is of the movie It's kind of a funny once-in-your-lifetime listen to that's about it

Mark (28:30)
So turning to another source for a more unofficial soundtrack, we'll call it. There is one listed on Discogs. KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, original motion picture soundtrack. It's released on the KISS Army Records label and as a vinyl LP. Unofficial release, it says. The country of origin, Faroe Islands, released in 2025, its style is hard rock. Okay, so I'll lead off with the...

songs listed here but we don't have to go into too much detail for the ones we've already covered. Let's look at the ones that we haven't covered yet. So first up, Rock and Roll All Night, which we know by now. The second song, Christine 16.

Jon (29:12)
It's played sparingly in the movie, I mean it's maybe 30 or 40 seconds when they're kinda doing the KISS lookalike contest. Lyrically, Christine 16 does not age well, and joke unintended there. Never one of my all time favorite KISS songs, it's okay.

Mark (29:27)
that look in her eyes.

Jon (29:29)
I don't really know what that is, because we haven't heard this. I'm assuming it's just part of the background music or Melissa talking, I'm guessing would probably be that. Why you'd release that? No idea. OK, that's a nice fairly song and actually a really good one. And it's not on in the movie at all. but I do believe in the European versions. What we read is that they replace songs. So maybe in a different in different countries versions, this might actually be in it.

Mark (29:40)
shock me.

Shout it out loud, we've already covered that one. Black Diamond, you mentioned that one earlier.

Jon (30:01)
Yeah, they only played the very end of it, which is understandable. Black Diamond is a pretty long song. It's not really going to fit onto a TV movie. Yet again, a staple of their live set on KISS's very first record. a live standard for KISS for sure. They could have showed a little bit more of it in the movie, but we got what we got.

Mark (30:17)
We've already talked about Beth, And then up next is Coaster Chaos, misspelled as Costa Chaos. And this reference is a fight scene taking place at the roller coaster in the movie.

Jon (30:28)
guess we got a track of bad 70s jazz funk music that they fought to. I guess someone committed this to vinyl.

Mark (30:36)
Rip and destroy, which we've already talked about. God of thunder.

Jon (30:41)
Played at the very end for the credits another classic KISS song That's the song actually gene usually blows fire and they put in a different part of the movie I mean to show off all the guess what KISS does live Great song great gene song if you want it with a demon gene Simmons KISS song is God a thunders it

Mark (30:58)
Closing this off, we have I Stole Your Love.

Jon (31:01)
Another one of my all time favorite KISS songs, one that used to open every show with back in the 1970s. ⁓ Great, great classic KISS song, classic Paul Stanley vibes. Love it.

Mark (31:16)
so let's take a look at the critical reception for KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. So apparently, before the film was ever aired, KISS had their own private screening for their management and friends. And apparently, there were positive reactions from everyone in attendance, but KISS hated the film for the buffoonish way it made them appear. So for years and years after it airing, apparently,

everyone who worked for the group, were not allowed to mention the film while they were in the presence of KISS.

Jon (31:48)
I think especially for Gene and Paul, they saw this as like a launch pad for KISS being in movies and KISS being movie stars. And Gene did do some acting and so did Paul later on, but it didn't really take off in the way I think they thought it would be that they'd be seen as these larger than life superhero type characters and wanted to have all sorts of different movies and a big movie franchise. That really fell flat on his face with this. kudos for KISS for not lying to themselves when they saw it and realized, this isn't that great. But I totally could picture them being like,

are borrowed from speaking about this in my presence.

Mark (32:19)
On the internet movie database, KISS Me, It's the Fan of the Park currently has a 4.6 out of 10. That's on about three and a half thousand ratings. On Rotten Tomatoes, does not have a tomato meter rating, but it does have a popcorn meter rating of 60%. That's based on over 5,000 ratings.

Jon (32:38)
I it is a cult movie. If you like cult movies, if you like So Bad It's Good, this definitely meets all the criteria. If you like KISS, watch it once, maybe. Fast forward the Chamber of Horrors parts. I could totally see how maybe 60 % of people were like, you know what, this is so bad, it's good. You gotta watch this just for the ridiculous nature of it. And speaking of that, we have a tradition here on the Rock and Roll Theatre Podcast, is my brother Mark scours your net and finds a one-star review. No matter what we're watching, we can always find a one-star

review. I have a feeling for Mark for this one it wasn't that hard to find one.

Mark (33:11)
This is a pretty easy one to find. This is from the Internet Movie Database on February 21st, 2009 from Tuscan underscore 2004 dash one. The rating is one out of 10. The title is the road to hell paving company must be hard at work.

Jon (33:31)
Indeed, they must be.

Mark (33:33)
Okay, I'll do my best to read this with any typos or grammatical errors included.

Jon (33:39)
As always, we leave them in.

Mark (33:41)
I have been a KISS fan since I was a little tyke, and back when this stink burger came out on TV, I had to watch it. I only now realize that the world of music-related film must be pockmarked with bomb craters, in brackets, no pun intended, left in the wake of such cinema gold as this poor excuse to sell cheaply made action figures by

Mago. M-E-G-O. I mean, even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in brackets 1978 makes sense compared to this. It was a cartoon. A live-action cartoon. Joseph Barbera must have felt horrible after unleashing this poor excuse for a film on an unwitting public. But yet, as so many other films that are real cheese fests,

I can't help but sit mesmerized by the events on screen. I'm not following the apparent lack of plot, nor am I really caring about the equally detestable special effects.

I gotta correct myself, special defects. I guess that it's just to go into zombie mode with this film. If Dr. Forrester of MST3K really wanted to rule the world so bad, he would have used this film to turn Joel and the bots into so much mental cabbage. I am still a KISS fan, however. This film

failed to change that. All the same, I am NOT a fan of the people responsible for convincing Gene, Paul Ace, and Peter that a TV movie of the week would be a great idea for publicity.

I think that any film aficionado worth his or her salt owes it to themselves to see this film once. After that, appropriate dosage should be determined by your physician. Seven people found this helpful. Four thumbs down.

Jon (35:47)
I mean, there are diehard KISS fans everywhere who will hate on anything and say this is the greatest movie ever made. I'm not one of them. I think that that interview may have taken more time to write than the actual movie we just watched.

Mark (36:01)
thought that was a pretty good review.

Jon (36:02)
Me too.

Overall, think this movie represents KISS at their commercial peak. They had numerous successful studio albums, live albums, and all sorts of different things up to this date, all the merchandise, and younger kids were really starting to gravitate towards KISS. Their fan base was now the eight or nine year olds, not the teenagers. And I guess in some theory, a Scooby-Doo style movie makes sense. But in practice, it did not come out good. Even like the special effects and what have you were way behind the times for 1978. It looks bad. Most of it is bad. The acting

is

not good and this is coming from a diehard KISS fan. I of course saw it when I was young. I remember KISS being big even in the 1980s when I was a little boy. There was KISS posters in my dentist office. We had a KISS Viewmaster at my house. So KISS had been a part of my life as long as I can remember. But when I first saw this movie I must have been 12 or 13 and right then I knew all me and my friends watched it and we just laughed the whole time about how cheesy and bad it was. But I think if you like cult films, if you like that sort of thing, give this one a

shot.

Mark (37:04)
Yeah, I'm comfortable with it in terms of its place in history. think it, you know, based on it being 1978, KISS or Huge, it's a made for TV movie. It's not like unbelievable to think that this was made. Like it kind of makes sense in their history. I think the music scenes are all right. Everything's okay. It doesn't turn me into a mega KISS fan in any way, but I think it's an okay piece of their history.

Jon (37:32)
I don't think they should be as ashamed of it as they were. it's what it is. It's a made for TV movie. I mean, it was the second Reyes Hyde movie, apparently. It did gangbusters at the time and I'm sure it exposed KISS to a lot more people who had probably never seen them before. So I think in what of the overall goal of the movie, I do believe was achieved, which was get KISS in front of as many eyeballs as possible, especially young ones that want to buy toys and merchandise and records. And I think they accomplished it.

Mark (38:03)
But before we end this, I'll ask you Jon, do you have any theories on some sort of remake or redo of anything we've covered in this film?

Jon (38:13)
While I was watching I got the idea that the character of Devereaux could have been handled so much differently. I think in today's day and age what he was trying to accomplish basically an AI robot army is something we're dealing with right now today in 2025 when we recording this. And maybe they could have done a dystopian type black and white like Ex Machia style movie where Devereaux is this troubled AI artist who loves his creations so much and they turn on him and the only nod to KISS is maybe like a faded like KISS poster

in the back or you see like a Paul Stanley Halloween mask hanging around his lab and that's the only mention they ever give and it's super dark and troubled and I don't know Tim Burton directs it and Johnny Depp is Devereux who knows

Alright, well that's gonna do it for this week here in the Rock and Roll Theatre. Once again, wherever you are in the world, if you could like, subscribe, comment, find us on the socials, drop us a line, whatever. It really helps a small independent podcast like us. And for now, the Theatre is closed. We'll see you next time.