Kiss Triple Feature

KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, Detroit Rock City, and a live performance by Texas’ premiere KISS cover band, Rip and Destroy, featuring Mike Henry (former owner of the now defunct Electric Lounge) constitutes this Alamo triple feature. @Alamo Drafthouse; Sun (11/7), 9:30pm; $10 advance tickets recommended (come in KISS makeup and get $2.50 off the ticket price.KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, (1978). D: Gordon Hessler; with Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Anthony Zerbe, Carmine Caridi, Deborah Ryan, Mary Jane Persky. In this made-for-TV movie, KISS must stop a mad scientist who is using their performance in an amusement park as a launching pad for his evil schemes. (NR, 96 min); Sun (11/7), 9:30pm.Detroit Rock City (1999). D: Adam Rifkin; with Edward Furlong, Giuseppe Andrews, James DeBello, Sam Huntington, Lin Shaye, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne, Shannon Tweed. This story about four high school dudes trying to get into a KISS concert by hook or by crook is a mildly diverting comedy but has little of substance to recommend it. Broad performances and wild zoom camerawork make this a cartoony slice of Seventies life, but it’s too excessive to be mistaken for satire and too goony to be mistaken for a loving flashback. Many are heralding this movie as a return of the teen rock comedy and citing such antecedents as Dazed and Confused, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and Rock & Roll High School. Granted, the music in Detroit Rock City is pretty great (and not all KISS tunes) and constant, but the movie lacks one thing these other films had in spades: talent in front of and behind the camera. Head KISSer Gene Simmons produced.