Tonight, from 1976, we have The Paul Lynde Halloween Special.
In this special, actor and comedian Paul Lynde celebrates Halloween with Betty White, KISS, Donny and Marie Osmond, Florence Henderson, Billy Barty, Margaret Hamilton (the original Wicked Witch of the West), and I’m going to guess a mountain of cocaine that was probably sitting backstage.
This special is definitely a product of a very certain era in America’s cultural history.
Sadly, the rumors that started to show up on social media earlier today have been confirmed. Ace Frehley, the Spaceman, has passed away at the age of 74.
Here he is, performing New York Groove at the during 1996’s KISS reunion tour.
Rest in Peace, Paul Daniel “Ace” Frehley.
In 1978, KISS appeared to have it all. The band was famous for both their makeup and their anthemic stadium rock. They had just released not only a new studio album but also four solo albums. They had starred in their own Marvel comic and gained notoriety for supposedly allowing their blood to mixed in with the comic’s ink. Teenagers loved KISS and parents and religious leaders feared that the band’s name stood for Knights In Satan’s Service. KISS had everything except for motion picture stardom.
KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park was supposed to change that. The film starred Anthony Zerbe as Abner Devereaux, an engineer and an expert at animatronics who loses his job at Magic Mountain and seeks revenge by using robot versions of KISS to drive the audience of their concert to riot. Fortunately, the real members of KISS are not just rock stars but also alien beings who descend from the heavens and shoot lightning bolts from their eyes. (Gene Simmons can breathe fire.) The real KISS isn’t going to allow their fan to be manipulated by a robot version of the band, which leads to a battle between KISS and the robots that protect Abner’s underground lair.
KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park aired on NBC on October 28th, 1978. It was later given a theatrical release in Europe, where it was re-edited and retitled Attack of the Phantom. Since then, it has become a very difficult film to see. (On Amazon, old VHS copies go for several hundred dollars.) One reason why the movie is so hard to see is because the members of the KISS hated the movie and felt that they were portrayed as being clowns instead of super heroes. Even though the members of the band have since mellowed out about the film (with Gene Simmons suggesting it should be viewed on a double bill with Plan 9 From Outer Space), KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park is still a film that is more talked about than actually watched.
While looking for clips of the movie on YouTube, I came across an upload of the entire film. The only problem was that all of the dialogue was dubbed into German and that’s not a language that I speak. Still, figuring that you have to take your opportunities when they’re available, I decided to watch. I figured that the dialogue might not actually be that important and it wasn’t. I was able to follow the plot just fine. (The only weird thing about watching the move in German was listening to the members of the band speak in something other than a New York accent.) Fortunately, there’s actually more singing than talking in Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park and the songs are untouched and in English. KISS plays Magic Mountain in the film and they actually performed a real concert for filming. Those are real fans of the band going crazy whenever Gene Simmons sticks out his tongue.
The movie itself is definitely a product of its time and not meant to be taken seriously. The members of KISS are both aliens that descend from the heavens and rock musicians and they are never seen without their makeup. Even when they’re hanging out at a hotel pool, they are in full costume and they’re wearing their makeup. When the members of the band enter the Phantom’s underground lab, they have to fight a series of very 70s robots, including some that know karate and two who have lightsabers. For better or worse, it’s a very silly move that epitomizes an era. The special effects are cheesy, the members of the band often look straight at the camera, and the rest of the cast does what they can with what they’ve been given. Anthony Zerbe plays the Phantom with a hint of empathy while Deborah Ryan is the ingenue who searched for her missing boyfriend while Beth plays on the soundtrack. Keep an eye out for Brion James, playing a security guard.
Overall, the band probably would have been smarter to just release a concert film but then the rest of us wouldn’t have the fun of watching Paul Stanley face off against a robot version of Bruce Lee. KISS Meets The Phantom of The Park is worth watching at least once, even in German!
For today’s music video of the day, KISS (sans makeup) once again proves themselves to be the masters of subtlety with (You Make Me) Rock Hard.
Director Rebecca Blake also did videos for Prince, Sheena Easton, and Michael Bolton.
Enjoy!
This song is from KISS’s fifth studio album, Rock and Roll Over. This music video is from the age of simple music videos, when the focus was more on the band playing than on trying to tell a story with song. When its comes to KISS, their simple videos, like this one, are the best. Also, their videos with the famous KISS makeup are better than the videos they shot during the period of time when they tried to abandon their trademark look.
Enjoy!
In 1988, long before Frank Sinatra started teaming up with pop artists and Tony Bennett had his brief moment of MTV popularity, Tom Jones and Art of Noise teamed up to cover Prince’s Kiss. The song was an unexpected success in Europe and Asia, hitting number one in both New Zealand and Spain while entering the Top Ten in many other countries. In the U.S., it peaked at #14 on the Billboard Top 100.
Of the two co-directors, Stephen Lowe also did videos for Duran Duran and Lisa Stansfield. Martin Brierly has worked as cinematographer and a second unit director on several projects, including the third Alien film.
Enjoy!
Kiss destroys a house, just through the power of their music. That seems like a Kiss thing to do. This video is back from when the moral majority still thought that KISS stood for Knights In Satan’s Service.
Significantly, this was not only the last video to feature Ace Frehley as a member of Kiss but it was also the last video that Kiss filmed before they officially took off their makeup. The “unmasked era” lasted for 12 years, from 1983 to 1995. Unfortunately, it turned out that Kiss, without the makeup, wasn’t really that interesting of a band. With the makeup, they were beings from another world. Without the makeup, they might as well have just been a slightly more talented version of Poison. Kiss eventually did the right thing, put the makeup back on, and got back to destroying houses.
The father in this video is played by Howard Marks, who was Kiss’s business manager at the time.
Enjoy!
This is yet another KISS video from the era when the band was performing without their makeup because who needs a memorable gimmick when you can just be another overage hair metal band singing about banging groupies?
This video begins with Paul Stanley’s hands on fire. Judging from the rest of the video, which features scenes of KISS performing mixed with scenes of KISS entertaining their fans, those hands probably weren’t the only thing that felt like it was on fire by the time filming on this video was completed.
Over on the imdb, director David Lewis has exactly two credits. One is for this video. The other is for directing a Linda Ronstadt television special. Both of them came out in 1984 so it appears that Lewis went straight form Linda Ronstadt to KISS. That was probably quite a journey.
Speaking of journeys, KISS eventually put the makeup back on.
Enjoy!
Right. What to make of this?
Lick It Up almost sounds like the title of a song that you would come up with if you were attempting to parody a KISS song. However, KISS beat you to it because KISS is a band that has never been afraid to descend into self-parody.
The video has a very Spinal Tap feel to it, opening with a group of beautiful women living in a burned-out city. They’ve figured out how to survive on their own but they’re still not happy. Then the members of KISS come walking down to the street and start singing “Lick it up,” and everyone realizes what this post-apocalyptic hellscape has been missing.
This video was from the period where KISS stopped wearing their makeup because, when you’ve got a songs like Lick It Up, who needs a gimmick?
This video was directed by Martin Kahan, who also directed the video for KISS’s All Hell’s Breaking Loose. That video also featured KISS performing in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. I guess that was the thing to do in 1983.
Enjoy!
As you can tell from watching this video, this from the period of time where KISS was performing without their trademark makeup. All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose was their second single from the album Lick It Up and, while the video itself got some airplay on MTV, the song failed to chart in the U.S. Compared to their success in the 70s, KISS struggled through the 80s and the early 90s. Taking off the makeup and essentially looking like every other hard rock band that was around at that time did not help.
Today, All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose is best-remembered as the song in which Paul Stanley raps. The majority of the song was written by KISS’s then drummer, the late Eric Carr and Carr was initially not happy with the decision to have Stanley rap one of the verses. However, later, Carr said that Stanley rapping was actually what the song needed to distinguish itself from the rest of the album and that the rap was probably the reason why All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose was eventually released as a single.
The video is a hard rock fantasy, with the members of KISS walking around a burned-out city and running into criminals, circus performers, and, of course, barely dressed women. This was probably a video that KISS could only have made during the period when they weren’t wearing their makeup. The Demon and the Starchild would have looked out-of-place wandering around the city but Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Eric Carr, and Vinny Vincent fit right in.
In retrospect, it’s hard not to be amused that, back in the 70s and 80s, so many parents groups viewed KISS as being a threat to young minds. (There are people who still believe that KISS stands for Knights In Satan’s Service.) I would guess that few of those concerned parents actually listened to any of the music that they were so concerned about. Instead, they just saw songs with titles like All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose and jumped to their conclusions.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 