On 11. May 1978, Kiss started filming for their movie “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park”. Most of the picture was filmed at Magic Mountain in California, with additional filming taking place in the Hollywood Hills. Much of the production was rushed, and the script underwent numerous rewrites. All four members of Kiss were given crash courses on acting. The movie debuted on NBC, 28. October 1978.
Ace Frehley:
“I should have had some idea what to expect when I got the original script and discovered I didn’t have a single line of dialogue. Not one! Every time my character was supposed to speak, the only thing that would come out of his mouth was the sound of a parrot: “Awk!” That’s exactly what was written on the page. Three capital letters, A-W-K. I guess the writers had picked up on a quirk of my personality, although I’m not sure how they got the information. I’d mimic the squawk of a parrot until the other person gave up and walked away. Pretty silly, I admit. And that was the Ace Frehley persona the screen writers wanted to present.“
– “No Regrets: A Rock And Roll Memoir” by Ace Frehley
Paul Stanley:
One of Bill’s follies was the movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. He thought that film was the next step for us. The Beatles had 4 Hard Day’s Night and Help/, and we should have our film. He sold it to us as 4 Hard Day’s Night meets Star Wars, which had come out the year before. It would have lots of cool special effects.
Nobody in the band had the slightest clue about acting. None of us read the script. We didn’t care. We trusted Bill’s judgment. When we started filming, it didn’t take an expert in the field to know we were in deep shit and there was no getting out of it. The director asked us after each scene whether we thought it was good. We had no idea what we were doing. For us, a good take was one where we didn’t blow our lines. If we said the right words, we moved on to the next shot.
Someone off camera fed us our lines. When we got ready to roll the camera, I yelled, “Line!” and someone said something like, “Gee, Ace, it’s time we get going.” Then I said, “Gee, Ace, it’s time we get going!”
“That’s a keeper.”
It was horrific — it didn’t remotely resemble acting.
In one scene we levitated a box using wires. We assumed the wires would be rendered invisible by special effects people. Not so.
Meanwhile, the four of us weren’t speaking unless we were delivering lines. Peter and Ace frequently left during filming. In one scene, we had to use Ace’s stunt double—who happened to be black—after Ace left without notice. It was clear as day in the final version that it wasn’t Ace.
We had to play a fake concert at Magic Mountain amusement park for another scene. When we were onstage, I turned around and saw some random old man in cat makeup and a wig playing the drums and chewing gum. Peter had taken off, and they threw this guy up there.
When the movie was finished, we saw it at a screening at the Screen Actors Guild Theater on Sunset Boulevard. If you thought it was bad on a TV screen, you should have seen it on the big screen! People openly laughed. I slunk down in my seat. It was humiliating. The finished film was absolutely awful, and to have to stand when the lights came up while various people who had been involved with it came over to lie to me about how great it was made it that much more humiliating.
– “Face the music: A life exposed” by Paul Stanley
