Video: 'Phantom of the Park,' 40 years later

Forty Halloweens ago, members of the KISS Army across the nation gathered around their rabbit-eared TV sets for what was supposed to be the television event of the year. It was Hanna-Barbera’s KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, starring everyone’s favorite rock ’n’ roll ’70s superheroes — the Starchild, the Demon, the Space Ace, and the Catman — at the absolute height of their fame. But while the $3 million NBC production, lensed by Hitchcock protégé Gordon Hessler, was the second-biggest TV movie of the year (behind Shogun), it was initially despised by critics, fans, and even the band members themselves. And it nearly derailed KISS’s career.

The utterly bizarre fantasy caper depicted the members of KISS miming to prerecorded hits at a Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park concert; kung fu fighting with evil animatronic look-alikes, various robotic furries, and a mad scientist; and displaying such comic-book superpowers as teleportation, mind control, and shooting laser beams from their eyes. So of course it has now reached cult-classic status, just like another how-did-this-get-made holiday phenomenon released that year, The Star Wars Holiday Special. And while KISS reportedly refused to even discuss Phantom for years, the band members — especially the original Spaceman himself, Ace Frehley — now seem to have no problem talking about the infamous flick.

“If you talk to Paul [Stanley] and Gene [Simmons] about the movie, they both hate it. As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s campy, funny — and if you’re a KISS fan, you’re going to enjoy the film,” Frehley chuckles. “I never really had any negative feelings about the film. I thought it was funny. I laughed at some of the scenes, I cringed at some of the scenes, but I was intelligent and smart enough to realize that it was what it was. It was just a silly rock ’n’ roll movie that was designed for KISS fans. I mean, it wasn’t Love Story!”

“I have very mixed memories about it, because we were kind of talked into doing a film that we were told [by KISS’s manager at the time, Bill Aucoin] was going to be a cross between A Hard Day’s Night and Star Wars, and wound up being neither,” says Stanley. “The best thing I can say about that film is that people think we were kidding, and that it was campy. But we were serious! It just goes to show you when somebody is in the room with you saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s gonna be great,’ and your heart is telling you there’s something not great, that you should listen to it.”

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