“Ack!!!”
Friends, family, and regular readers of this blog are aware that I am a huge KISS fan. I’ve heard pretty much every track that they’ve released, watched all of their videos, and spent countless hours watching and listening documentaries, interviews, etc. with the band. The one thing that I haven’t done is watch KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park. That fact changed a couple of weekends ago. I finally sat down and watched the film, known mainly for its bad acting, wonky special effects, and overall cheesiness. That’s pretty much what the film is and I won’t argue with anyone about that but I did find a few redeeming things about it.
Briefly, the film’s plot is that an amusement park engineer attempts to use his animatronic creations to ruin the KISS concert at the park and to ruin the amusement park in general. The engineer, named Abner Devereaux (Anthony Zerbe), doesn’t seem to have any other plans other than getting revenge on the park’s manager for cutting funding to his animatronic projects and KISS for being paid money out of his pot to perform at the park. He doesn’t even seem to want to take over the world. It’s a somewhat odd plot but it does give Ace, Peter, Gene, and Paul just enough of a situation to use their magical powers granted to them by four talismans.
The acting is pretty bad. Even Zerbe, who has given many excellent performances over his career (Papillon, Star Trek: Insurrection, Matrix films, and The Young Riders), delivers a rigid and lifeless performance. Out of the four members of KISS, Gene and Peter appear to just be going through the motions (Peter’s voice was dubbed by Michael Bell). Paul looks like he is trying really, really hard to be a serious actor and not doing a very good job of it. Ace seems to be having a blast and not really caring if he looks good or bad on camera.
The special effects were pretty lame. You could see cabling in some of the scenes where members of the band or their adversaries were flying or jumping extreme distances. The lasers and flames also looked pretty cheesy. Stunt doubles were easily seen in many parts of the film as well.
Produced by Hanna-Barbera, fans of that company’s cartoons (and sharp-eared fans of Star Trek) will recognize many of the sound effects used in the movie. Each member of the band was given special powers. Gene blew fire and had super strength. He also had a very annoying reverberating voice. Paul had a star-laser that emitted from his eye and he could read thoughts as well. Ace could also shoot lasers and had a power punch. I’m not exactly sure what Peter’s special powers were except possibly that he had super strength and was (by Hanna-Barbera standards) a brilliant hand-to-hand combatant.
Despite all of these misfires, the show did have a couple of things going for it. Number one, KISS was on top of the world at the time and their concert performances (even though they were lip-synched) in the film were great. Even when the band poses as the animatronic doubles that Devereaux makes of them to sing an alternate version of Hotter Than Hell entitled Rip & Destroy, the track still sounds pretty awesome. Secondly, seeing Ace laughing it up, Paul being very serious and sincere with his performance, and Gene and Peter chewing their way through the film gives the movie a certain charm. It should be noted that there was a lot of trouble going on within the band itself despite their popularity, part of which was evident in the release of the band’s iconic four solo albums just one month prior to the film’s release. If nothing else, the film proves to be a harbinger for the fallout that was to come after albums like Dynasty and Unmasked.
I’m not going to tell anybody to watch this film. It’s a personal decision that’s based mainly on just how much of an interest you have in KISS. I love the band, love the film despite all of its shortcomings, and will probably watch it a few more times. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s still very fun.
Thanks for heading down memory lane with me today. I’ll see you again real soon.
Ken's Alternate Universe! 