A Hard Day’s Night Meets Star Wars

In 1977-78, there was no bigger band on the scene than Kiss. At the time, their Creative manager felt that the cycle of album releases and touring had taken the band as far as they could go, and that it was time to elevate the group's image to the next level.

The Beatles had A Hard Day’s Night and Help and The Who had Quaddrophenia – So why not have Kiss star in their own movie?

On October 28th, 43 years ago, the movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park aired on NBC. Produced by the animation studio of Hanna-Barbera Productions, the movie's plot revolves around the band using their superpowers to battle an evil inventor and to save a California amusement park (Magic Mountain) from destruction.

Sound good to you? It did to the band. Paul Stanley, lead guitarist and singer said once that it was described as A Hard Day’s Night meets Star Wars (which had just been released the year before). Still not convinced? As filming began, neither was the band.

Lines were fed to each of the band members before each take, stunt doubles and stand-ins stood in longer than normal and the special effects were terrible.

The band, none of whom had any prior acting experience, had difficulty adjusting to the demands of filming. Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, in particular, became increasingly frustrated with the long periods of downtime normally associated with filmmaking. They were both also dealing with increasing levels of substance abuse.

I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that it was a huge flop. Shortly after the movie, the band broke-up and all put out solo albums. But in the many years that followed, the film garnered a cult following and, watching it now, has a Mystery Science 3000 feel to it.

Have you seen it? If you did, what did you think? If you haven’t, do you want to see it?