Gene Simmons gets honest about the wild mess that was “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park”

KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons discussed the production of the band’s 1978 Hanna Barbera-produced made-for-television film “Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park” (also known as “Attack Of The Phantoms”) in a recent interview with Movie Moments, as per Blabbermouth. On October 28, 1978, “Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park” debuted on the American television network NBC. The movie, which was mostly shot on site at Santa Clarita, California’s Magic Mountain theme park, follows KISS members, who are portraying themselves, as they use their “superpowers” to fight a malevolent creator.

All kinds of people wanted us to make a film, because KISS was the Gallup Poll biggest band in the world — above The Beatles and [Led] Zeppelin, everyone — for three years in a row: ’77, ’78 and ’79. So, obviously, cartoon shows came and movies — the industry all wants to take advantage of somebody’s popularity. And we settled on this one idea, which is kind of silly when you think about it. You had the Frankenstein monster, Wolfman and Dracula all coming alive. There’re automatons in a theme park. That’s the hook. And, of course, there are fake KISSes in the movie who are automatons that come alive.

It was fun. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing. There was a fine director who did a lot of mysteries, a guy named Gordon Hessler, who was trying to be nice and would come up to us after we did a scene and he would say, ‘Did you like that?’ He was very English. We’re kind going, ‘Uh, yeah. We were kind of hoping you’d tell us that.’ ‘Uh oh, very good. Very good. Would you like to do another one?’ ‘Uh. Sure.’ ‘Did you like that?’ He was a very kind English guy. For all we knew, we sucked, but he just made it just go down a little easier.