Undescribable Perfection

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The Phantom Of The Park is one of the most criminally overlooked avant garde cinematic experiences from late 70s. writers Jan Michael Sherman and Don Budaythe have crafted a sublime, quasi-iambic pentameter loaded screenplay which evokes the very finest of 20th Century American writers (only Fitzgerald, say, or perhaps Mailer could have produced better) and allowed it to be transformed into a motion picture which time has proved to be the personification of an entire decade.outside of his performance in Tom Selleck hit Runaway, this is perhaps the defining role in the astonishing career of Gene Simmons. seldom has he ever been presented with a script of this quality to work with, if the world had not been distracted by the lacklustre performances of Ace surely an Oscar nomination would not have been out of the question.the special effects on display make a mockery of the claim that Star Wars, released around the same time, broke barriers in this field. they must be seen to be believed, and mercy is on us for the recent DVD release has preserved the artistic integrity of them. James Cameron owes a very big debt indeed to the pop band Kiss.you know those lists of 1,001 movies to see before you die? well, this really is one movie you must see before you die.

Whether or not you like the rock band KISS, it's hard not to admit that they are the biggest whores in the history of music. I am not talking about their sex lives, but their willingness to almost anything for a buck. No, wait...considering that they starred in KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK, they would do ANYTHING, A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G for a dollar!! You don't believe me? Well check out their official website as well as Gene Simmons' site. There is KISS wine, KISS skateboards, KISS phone skins, KISS comic books and even KISS toys. Heck, sooner or later I almost expect to see KISS home pregnancy kits, toilet paper and suppositories!! If I were in their position, I might, too, succumb to the lure of cash...it's hard to say. But as far as this made for TV movie goes, it's hard to imagine money holds this much power over anyone and this is way beyond the limit for traditional rock and roll whoring! It is, in my opinion, a travesty and KISS owes its fans something to pay them back for making this film--like maybe some free Gene Simmons Java (this is a real product, I swear).To say this is a horrible film is a gross misstatement. Aside from playing a few of their famous songs (such as "Beth" and "Detroit Rock City"), there is nothing about this film that is good in any way. Heck, even the choice of songs is often suspect, as the group definitely had better stuff than many of the forgettable tunes in this film.As I explain the plot, I want you to understand that I am not insane nor am I on drugs--this REALLY is the plot for the film. An amusement park has invited KISS for a series of concerts. However, the mastermind behind creating the park is a loopy guy (Anthony Zerbe--who made a career out of playing evil and slimy villains) and he hates KISS--though you are never exactly sure why. But, because Zerbe does not control the park, he is forced to spend most of his time living underneath the park--perfecting his weird audio-animatronic creations (similar to Disney's but even more evil). But, when Zerbe is fired, he vows revenge and unleashes his army of robot zombies!! Egad! Can anyone help? Is there any hope? Well, sure...as it turns out that KISS is actually made up of superheroes who make the X-Men look like losers. The Star Child (Paul Stanley) can shoot lasers out of his eyes and sing well. The Demon (Gene Simmons) can growl like a lion, shoot fire out of his mouth and sing...not so well (but he makes up for it by singing loudly). The Space Ace (Ace Frehley) can appear and disappear at will (sort of like his career with KISS, actually). And, the Cat...is a guy painted like a cat. So how do they have all these cool powers (that look REALLY bad on film, by the way)? They have a case with magic talismans which enable them to live many lives, play great tunes (sometimes) and shoot things out of their bodies (I'll say no more).So, Zerbe can't get himself a decent hairdo, but he is able to figure out that his next step is to steal these talismans. Unfortunately, they (like most talismans) are protected by a force field and his robot-zombie can't get them--that is until Zerbe creates a cool ray gun which renders the force field inert (by the way, how did he test this to know that it would work?!). In addition, he has created four exact replicas who will take KISS' place after they are kidnapped. Step one (get the talismans) and step two (kidnap KISS) work out great, but considering that Zerbe did not appear to have a step three it's not surprising that it all fell apart at the end. You'd think step three would be global domination or at least getting some hot chicks, but you never hear or see anything that would indicate there is any plan other than to replace KISS with robots (and, judging by this movie, this MIGHT have already been done by some other mad scientist before filming began!).Overall, this is a god-awful mess of a film which happens to have a few good songs, but otherwise it's 100% terrible and ONLY of interest to rapid KISS fans (who STILL might insist this is better than STAR WARS or the works of Akira Kurosawa) or bad film aficionados like myself. What makes this especially bad is not just the terrible script but the fact that it's obvious that the band could have cared less about the film--putting no energy into it and not even bothering to show up for the dubbing sessions or scenes (see the IMDb trivia section for more of this). Basically, it's just a change to whore themselves out and get even richer!

I gave this a 10 out of 10 for campiness. This is a fantastic homage to the 70's. The scenes at the amusement park brought back memories of going to Ponchatrain beach in New Orleans (torn down in 1984 to put up condos sadly) I remember watching this at Halloween time when it was shown on TV. If you want to see it in it's greatest, get the old video version with Peter Criss' lines voiced over by another actor. A bit of a friendly correction to the comment above. The song "Rip and Distroy" was an evil version of "Hotter than Hell". A bit of trivia. When Gene jumped over the fence, he k/o'ed one of the cameras.I've got the DVD of this movie and I still watch it occasionally. Good stuff.

I must admit to being a KISS fan.It had been ages since I'd seen this movie.Got my girlfriend interested in watching it by describing it as one of the "worst train wrecks of ALL TIME" You know this movie really must stink if Gene Simmons....who will shamelessly hawk ANYTHING (a kiss coffin that doubles as a beer cooler while you're alive?) cringes at the mere mention of the "project." (I'd at least thought Gene would try to make a few bucks on the disaster aspect) Expect only the cheesiest plot and script imaginable. The "special effects" are so BAD you absolutely have to see them to believe them.All I have to say is smoke a little weed for this one and prepare to bust a gut laughing!