Shout It Out Loud: Metallica Are Even Dumber Than Their Last Movie Made You Think They Are

Like most boys my age I guess KISS was one of my first (if not THE first) musical loves. For no other reason, really, than the fact that they wore evil clown makeup. I guess that means that if Phyllis Diller put out an album I woulda been into her too. I’d see those album covers and man, I’d beg my parents to order the face makeup kit from Sears so I could be Gene or Paul or Ace. My parents, being as thrifty as they were, instead bought me the knock-off version, “LICK.” You’d spread the stuff on your face, look in the mirror and think “I don’t look like Paul at all…is it getting dark in here?” then you’d wake up 3 days later with a squirrel attached to your face. Not good. The country store down the road sold KISS bubblegum cards, which I’d snatch up anytime I got a quarter. I can still picture myself walking down the road after buying a pack and flipping one of the cards over to read that ABC was airing “KISS and the Phantom of the Park”…ON THAT VERY NIGHT!!! Of course, even at age 7 as I was watching I was like “boy…this is terrible…unwatchable even…what’s Neil Diamond doing here?” - XMASTIME

Apparently, it's taken Metallica putting out another shitty movie to finally make someone write about Kiss and the Phantom of the Park:

Oh, right: because KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park was a work of such cautionary folly that only Michael Jackson was crazy enough to attempt anything like it. This made-for-TV camp landmark, in which the aforementioned perforated laser beam was employed, was the simultaneous apex and nadir of glam rock outfit KISS’s career. It was the second-highest-rated televised event of 1978 (behind only Roots) while also inexorably contributing to the fracturing of the band/brand. After the purportedly tedious shoot at California’s Magic Mountain amusement park, each member hustled together poorly received solo albums, drummer Peter Criss spiraled deeper into substance abuse and would soon be replaced, guitarist Ace Frehley’s disaffection would lead to his own exile, and the band’s spiraling discomfort with their own identity would lead to such desperate measures as a synth-heavy prog rock concept album, and the shunning of their trademark makeup masks.

I had no idea the movie had such an effect on the band, or that other people actually watched it. The article's worth reading simply because it wishes Metallica had made their movie more like KISS' movie, which I'm pretty sure nobody who's ever made a movie has ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever heard. When someone says "You know what? This would be better if you made it more like KISS and the Phantom of the Park", then you need to launch your camera into outer space and never even think about setting foot near anything resembling the making of a movie again.