Today in 1978, the premiere of the TV movie “KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park.”
This should have been a huge deal: you had KISS, a larger than life rock band, turning into superheroes in front of millions of viewers.
But then sometimes the small screen can shrink even the biggest names down to size.
The band members of KISS had always thought of themselves as a hard-rock version of The Beatles, and since the Fab Four had done movies, KISS wanted to do a movie too.
But this was not exactly “A Hard Day’s Night,” where the Beatles have misadventures in the middle of the chaos that was Beatlemania.
“KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park” was more or less a Scooby-Doo episode brought to life (in fact, the company making the movie was Hanna-Barbera, which produced Scooby’s cartoons).
The premise here is that KISS has to stop a mad scientist who’s trying to invent animatronic robots at an amusement park.
And they have super powers: Gene Simmons can breathe fire, Paul Stanley shoots lasers from his eye, Ace Frehley could teleport and Peter Criss had super strength (I think? it’s not really clear. And also, they dubbed over his voice.)
Super acting was not part of the KISS power set.
The guys in the band have said that if they said their lines without flubbing them, the take went in the movie.
Frehley’s character almost didn’t have any lines; when he first met with the filmmakers, he was making parrot noises for some reason, so the original screenplay just had him saying “Awk!” all the time.
Space Ace said he enjoyed it as a campy rock movie, but Paul Stanley has said he was more or less mortified by the whole experience.
KISS roadies were reportedly forbidden to mention the movie around the band.
But if you like goofy films, this one has a magical talisman, corny jokes, and evil white-haired robotic monkeys fighting one of the biggest bands in the world before they step onstage and play some of their hits.
And while this movie didn’t quite work out the way the band wanted, KISS did have much more success in 2015, when they did an actual team-up with Scooby-Doo and the gang.
Fewer evil robot monkeys, but the line reads were way better.
Today in 1933, a newsreel announced a new effort to stop traffic jams in the community of Bronxville, New York.
During the morning rush, commuters headed to the train station could only give goodbye kisses to their wives and children for three seconds; after that they would be hustled along by police so that they wouldn’t block the other cars.
One officer told the New York Times, “it looks to me as if this new order is a break for the wives.”
KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park (BradyCarlson.com)
Kiss Get Superpowers In A TV Movie (Songfacts)
Commuters’ Kisses Cut By Police To End Traffic Jam (Newsreels.net)