Wednesday, April 6, 2011

1978 - KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK, amateur hour.


Worth a laugh or two I guess, the flamboyant rock band KISS got themselves mixed up in a made for TV movie, produced by Joseph Barbera creator of The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Scooby-Doo etc.  A cartoon producer apparently considered the perfect filmmaker for a cartoonish rock group.



KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park, was an attempt to turn the group into super heroes.  Each of them has a special power such as breathing fire, laser eyes, jumping around like Bruce Lee and teleportation which they don't use to get the hell out of this movie.


Super villan Anthony Zerbe, behind him the IBM AN/FSQ-7 computer used to track enemy bombers.

Anthony Zerbe is the evil scientist who is out to destroy the amusement park where Kiss is performing, " I will destroy you! All of you... and you, you KISS will be my instrument!"  Zerbe has created a bunch of deadly robots to do battle with KISS although the robots are just actors pretending to be robots.  Anthony Zerbe has had a long career playing villains in westerns, villains in science fiction films, villains in TV shows you name the genre and Zerbe has played a villain in it, but in this film he seems very uninspired turning in the standard "where's my paycheck" performance.


 Things are not looking good for KISS

As usual with these kind of films, the behind the scenes story is more interesting than the actual film.  Apparently KISS wouldn't or couldn't rehearse their scenes.  One of the band members was actually re dubbed by actor Michael Bell who was the voice of Grouchy Smurf in the old Smurfs cartoon.  KISS wasn't very happy with the final film, but what did they expect considering the next to nothing amount of effort they put into it. 

Now that I think about it KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park was kind of a waste of time.

The film is kicking around (where else) on You Tube in 14 parts.

96  minutes.

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