KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park
Yeah, They Should Be Embarrassed.
KISS-Played by Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss. Not only are they the super mega rock stars, but they have super powers too!
Calvin-Owner of the Amusement Park. Wants KISS to put on a good show so he can bring in money. Oddly enough, he's not the bad guy.
Abner-Played by Anthony Zerbe (Made-For-TV actor from the 70's, getting him is like getting Brad Pitt). He's the bad guy. The designer of the park. Wants turn everybody into robots.
Melissa-Chick concerned about her boyfriend Sam. Teams up with KISS.
Sam-Abner's assistant-turned-robot or something.
Chopper, Slime, and Nameless Roughneck Chick-All big bullies in this park. Are turned into robots.
Every Type of Being You Can Possibly Be-Including Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Mummy, Apes, Barbershop Quartet, Civil War Soliders, and even Robo-KISS!
To all the hardcore KISS fans out there, you're gonna have to forgive me. I only have a basic knowledge of KISS in terms of members and songs. While watching this movie, the only one I knew on sight was Gene Simmons. I know the names of the others but have no idea who's who. And I'm only aware of a handful of KISS songs, two of which are sung in this movie.

With that said, I tried not to be hard on this movie. This obviously was made for the KISS Army back in the '70's. So I'm sure the fans "got" this movie and understood some parts of it. Including one scene that baffled me but that's a bit later.

For now, we start almost instantly with the credits and KISS "performing" under them. I put performing in quotes because clearly the instruments aren't plugged in. And the drummer (Google says Pete Criss) is just using his stick to hit air. It's kinda comical. And the song they are "performing" is "Rock N Roll All Night".

So the credits end and we start at the amusement park. Get use to this park cause 98% of this movie takes place in this park. One random day, there are banners everywhere saying KISS is coming to perform for the next three days, starting tonight. People are excited. Well almost everyone.

Calvin is walking around, talking to head of security Sneed (Wasn't there a Sneed in "Peter Pan" and "Hook"?) about KISS and how he can't wait to rake in the money this KISS Army is gonna bring in. Funny, what I hear about KISS, they feel the same way about their fans.

We focus on the Park Bullies, two of which have names: Chopper and Slime. The chick isn't given a name cause she's a woman. Give me a beer, nameless woman! Anyway, the bullies are walking around causing lame trouble like simply pushing people off of a human pyramid? A human pyramid? Why a human pyramid? Ok...

When the bullies start dry humping this robotic monkey, Abner steps in and says "Hands off". They go in to kick some Made-For-TV ass when Calvin steps in and explains that Abner is the park designer, while Calvin runs it. For some reason, this calms the bullies down. Abner gives them a free pass to some ride or something. He just says "here's a free pass for a ride" and the bullies are like "Whatever".

Meanwhile, Sam and Melissa are on a roller coaster having fun. WEEE!! Another movie where the characters waste 10 minutes riding a roller coaster! FUN! When they get off, they have this exchange, word for word:

Melissa: Do you have to go to work?
Sam: There's something here I don't understand.

Um, those are two separate train of thoughts. I don't get it. At least right away. It's later revealed that Sam works for Abner in this weird underground lair that Abner built. I wonder if this movie is trying to make some correlation to Walt Disney. Maybe the end of this movie will have Abner freezing himself.

Sam goes into the lair and is for whatever reason feeling up the walls when he finds a secret panel. He walks in and the panel closes around him. Then he vanishes. Cue dramatic music!   Later, Abner returns to his lair and is working on more robotic creations. The more time we spend with him, the more we get the feeling he's not quite right in the head. And we almost know something is up with him.
Ok so overall, this movie is kinda fun. It's not super horrible but, yeah, it's not great either. KISS's acting leaves something to be desired and it was a made-for-TV movie from 1978. You can't ask for a whole lot regarding that. Kinda funny that because of this, Gene Simmons went on to take on other acting roles. I'm not sure why. At least it isn't the other three.
Read The Reviews!
KISS will be played by the Warren G. Harding High School Marching Band
"Gah! Where's that damn Fire Extinguisher?!"
The bullies decide to take Abner up on his free ride offer and the ride ends up being some dark cave full of weird monsters. There's Dracula in a coffin, there's Frankenstein's Monster rising up from the table, there's a Mummy, and there's even some guy whipping another guy. Damn Universal Studios was weird in the '70's.

The bullies are looking around and being dumbasses when one by one they are sucked down a long tube. This scene goes on way longer than it needed to. Abner could've just taken all three right away, but we have two hours to kill (it was a TV movie so they had to factor in commercials), so take your time why don't you?

Calvin calls Abner for a meeting and this meeting is just so Calvin can fire him, saying Abner has lost his freakin' mind. Well, anyone can see that, what took so long? Of course Abner does the sinister "You'll pay. You'll ALL pay! MU HAHAHAHA!" thing. While walking away.

Later, Melissa finds Abner's secret lair (not so secret now) and asks for Sam. Abner claims he doesn't this "Sam" and more or less sends her on her way. It's revealed that Abner DOES know who Sam is and he put some mind control device on him!
CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC!!
"Pfft. More like Phantom of the PARKING Lot!"
Wouldn't it be funny if this was the only way KISS appeared in this movie?
Ok, so that's the first 30 or so minutes of this movie and so far I was kinda digging it. It wasn't truly awful and it felt like a "Twilight Zone" episode. Clearly, Abner is kidnaping random people and making them "robots" for the attraction. It's like "House of Wax" but more electrical.

Then KISS finally enters the movie. Holy crap.

The concert is about to begin and KISS flies in from the sky and lands on stage and start performing a song. Sorry, don't know what song. Gene Simmons does his fire breathing trick and it's awesome. I do wanna see KISS live in concert, I'm sure it's a fun time.

Abner, who can't stand KISS cause they're ruining the good name that is the park he created, sends Sam to the concert to take pictures of KISS and we get several of these pictures, rather close up. I'm sure this scene was for the female fans and they were suppose to be rubbing their genitals against the screen during this scene. In fact, I'll allow them to do that now.
Hear that, that's the sound of every woman reading this having their panties moistened.
You're welcome, ladies.
Now clean your screen, let's finish this review.

The concert is over and KISS is leaving the stage. Melissa spots Sam and pretty much breaks in backstage. While Sneed is stopping her, Gene points to her and shouts "STAR CHILD!" Ladies and gentlemen, the insanity that is KISS acting has now begun.

A animated red star covers Melissa and she looks like she's in a trance. One of the other members (Possibly the one they call Star Child, which I thought Gene was calling Melissa Star Child so I'm confused) tells Melissa that she is looking for someone but it is not KISS and the person she is looking for was here but are not here now.

Now that was an awkward sentence, so imagine one of the guys from KISS saying it in the most stilted way possible and you have the acting skills of KISS. Melissa is rightly confused as KISS leaves. They decide not to explain themselves. They don't have time for that, they got some pussy to pound.

Abner is in his lair and I guess he has a dark room, or invented the digital camera, cause he got the pictures of KISS and he looks at a picture of Gene and says "so you are the demon?". I guess what's going on here is the movie version of KISS are the persona's the members have taken. Like Gene is suppose to be a demon, so he has demonic powers in this movie.

Oh, I didn't talk about the powers. Well, see, KISS have some sort of super powers. It's not explained WHERE they got the super powers, but HOW. Melissa is now in KISS's room and they're showing her this red box with four tailsmen and each one represents each member's super power. Earlier, Abner gave Melissa this SECURITY PASS (that's all it says) so she can roam around and look for Sam. Apparently he put some listening device on this pass cause he can hear this conversation and now we have another plot: Abner wants KISS's talismen!

From what I can tell, the only powers they have are able to shoot lasers from their eyes, Gene can breathe fire (of course), one of them, the Star Child maybe, can teleport, and they all can fly. That is kinda cool but unfortunately, they are pretty unused later on.

Later that night, two park guards (one of them is played by Brion James, who'd later go on to play the Evil Guy in the most hilarious episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger" I've ever seen) are walking around when suddenly Gene Simmons invokes the powers of the Kool-Aid man and bursts through a wall. OH YEAH!!!

Gene goes on a rampage through the park and fights off security guards. This is explained later but I thought this was KISS helping Melissa find Sam. Just so you know, it's not. The real explanation is stupider.
Gene Simmons' Audition Tape For "Godzilla"
CHEWBACCA! NO!!!
It's the next day and Calvin is outside KISS's hotel room waiting for KISS. They decide to check by the pool and indeed there they are, sitting on lifeguard towers, wearing silver robes. I guess they're lifeguards in the daytime. They ask about Gene's rampage earlier and all of them claim Gene wouldn't do that. Yeah he would if there was fresh teenage poon involved.

Calvin and Sneed walk away and one of them that's not Gene uses his powers of super hearing to hear what they're talking about. Calvin says he needs them to finish playing the next two days then after that Sneed can arrest them. Sneed reluctantly agrees to this.

I should point that anytime Gene talks, his voice has an additional reverb happening to make it sound more demonic, I guess. It was kinda neat but it kinda got annoying after awhile. Thankfully, he doesn't talk too much.

Later that night, Melissa is upset that Sam is missing and/or acting weird. While that's happening, KISS plays "Beth", the only other song I know that was played in this movie. The other songs I know were from the 80's makeup-less era, so my knowledge of KISS songs end here. And this is a weird song to be playing here and brings up a good point. I wonder why they didn't just name Melissa's character Beth if they were gonna have a scene of them playing this song to her?

And the song itself is kinda weird for this scene. From what I can tell, it's about one of their girlfriends and how they neglect her cause the band is too busy playing songs cause they can't find the right sound. Melissa is upset by this and she walks away. Meanwhile, Sam breaks into KISS's hotel room, looking for the tailsmen. He finds it and tries to destroy it but there's some sort of force field around it. Of course. Sam goes back, defeated.

He walks past Melissa and she gets excited but notices that he's acting cold towards her. Hey, baby, I get it on with robots now. KISS runs into their room and find it ransacked, which doesn't matter cause they were gonna do that anyway. With the tailsmen safe, they go back to perform their second concert.
"Yeah, we know you're upset, but can you tell us how this sounds? It's for our acoustic album."
I have no caption for this. It's funny all by itself.
After the concert, KISS breaks into the park to look for Sam. This is where the movie gets really good. First, they are met by robotic white apes. Yeah I don't know either. There's a fight scene with these apes and this gives each KISS member a one-liner. I didn't write any of them down. You're welcome.

After the apes, they are met by a bunch of karate/kung-fu/tai chi robots and they fight them. More one liners. While this is happening, Abner sends Sam to get the tailsmen again and this time gives him this ray gun to blast through the force field. The gun works and now Abner has the tailsmen.

It would make sense to destroy the tailsmen right then and there so KISS would be powerless, but no Abner doesn't right way. KISS ends up in the weird place with Dracula and the Mummy and now those things come to life and start fighting KISS. It's kinda hard getting images during this scene cause everything kept moving.

Eventually, they do lose their powers and can't teleport out or breathe fire or use lasers. Abner immediately sucks them up through a tube. When we come back from commercial (I wish someone had the foresight to tape the commercials like they did with the "Star Wars Holiday Special") KISS is standing in a cell held by laser bars. How futuristic.
This move is from "KISS Meets The Three Stooges".
Again, no caption needed.
Ugh, yet another Star Wars rip off!
"Hey, all that's inside is a flashlight hooked up to two batteries!"
Out of Abner's secret panel come four KISS robots. Abner sends the Robo-KISS out to play the third day of the concert. And this is the part I don't understand. The Robo-KISS go on stage and start playing. The song they play, I guess, is called "Rip and Destroy" and that's all they say. While this song is playing, which sounds like any other KISS song (to me anyway), the audience BOO's them. Is this like an in-joke? Was "Rip and Destroy" a fake song or a song from some other band? Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Well, Abner said he had the Robo-KISS play this to incite a riot and cause the crowd to rip the park apart. The real KISS find this upsetting. Abner more or less vanishes for the rest of the movie, leaving them to sit behind the laser bars. Despite them not having powers, they use their powers to telekinetically carry the tailsmen to them. My fingers just exploded typing that sentence.

They turn on the tailsmen and I guess teleport to the stage and now they must fight the Robo versions of themselves. Oddly enough, Abner gave the Robo versions the same powers as the real ones. But this doesn't stop KISS! They blow their asses up and put on the real concert! And play "Rock N Roll All Night" again!

Here comes the epilogue, which doesn't make a lick of sense. Get it, lick? HA! Anyway. KISS, Calvin, Sneed, and Melissa are standing in Abner's secret lair. Melissa is pleading with Abner to make Sam normal again. Gene simply looks, find this tiny mind control device on Sam's neck and removes it. This causes Sam to return to normal. As for Abner, and this is gonna make you wanna punch someone, Calvin turns Abner around in his chair and it's revealed that Abner looks as if he's 200 years old, with long white hair and a zonked out look. And cue credits!
Abner turned into Granny Clampett!
During the fight scenes, I kept getting reminded of "Scooby Doo" and this was pretty much a "Scooby" episode minus the gang. Then I found out why. Look what production company made this movie:
There ya go.