CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Satan's Muppets

KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM (NBC)

by Rick Johnson

For right or wrong, for better or worse, for richer and richer and richer, Kiss are determined to add an entire second dimension to their personalities, proving once and for all that they're more than just four cruds in crayon-face who exchanged tubes with their televisions one night and achieved instant-on stardom. Gene is supposed to be strong-but-fair, the unfortunate victim of continuous inner sex crimes. Paul is cute-but-noble. His portrait will soon appear on the new 7.98-dollar bill. Ace cackles like the Walter Denton of the group and Peter is just, well, around so they'll have someone to say stuff like "We're really just ordinary people."

As far as personalities go, John, Paul, Ringo and The Swami they ain't, but Kiss Meets The Phantom wasn't supposed to be A Hard Day's Night either, except literally. Mounted with concrete finesse on the type of reversecookie-crumble plot usually reserved for disaster flicks, Kiss's small screen debut certainly had its moments. So too did The Inquisition, but despite the fact that the film's "scary" and "funny" parts were unnervingly interchangeable, criticizing the armored stupor of their performances is about as useful as critiquing your childhood.

The movie totters open with the serious-minded park director, who looks like Mel from Alice after a heavy

iiicui-LVj-iaiu Lam in IMICIHSII, y^mny at everyone in sight because Kiss have replaced his top walrus act. No matter, we can still use the same fish, sez the head technician, who is in reality The ' Phantom. Who isn't?

The spook gets canned for his remarks just as the concert is about to begin. Thousands of kids dressed up as Kiss, Angel and Joe Fernbacher squat on peanut detritus, squealing like the truckloads of doomed piglets that rumble past my window in the night. The villain takes one look at the crowd and vows to destroy all Kiss fans in a sleazy effort to gain audience sympathy.

The band struts out of the No Funhouse and hits the stage, but wait a minute! The Phantom has pulled a switcheroo and substituted look-alike robots for our heroes. The droid-oids rip into something called "Rip And Destroy," set to the tune of "Hotter Than Hell," and although the critics applaud, the kids start chopping down the roller coaster and uprooting poots from the Shoot-The-Chutes.

Meanwhile, the real Kiss are locked in the Chamber Of Boredom, battling a crew of roller-apes and a horrifying wax dummy of Stephen Bishop. One good blast of Gene's Godzilla-molars and the monster-pak (reg. TM) are frightened into accepting a small advance from RCA. The Phantom—always thinking—hightails it for the nearest Arista branch office and Kiss escape just in time to stop the riot and replace their robot doubles. I think.

The single most telling moment of ' the film however, came during the big battle when Peter spots the robot Kiss about to perform on a handy nearby monitor. "They may look like us," Whiskersticks yelps, "but how will they play our music?"

"Faster and louder," the Phantom laughs derisively.

Shaun's Big Brother Grows Up

DAVID CASSIDY-MAN UNDERCOVER

(NBC)_

When David Cassidy made an appearance as a guitar-toting narc in a Police Story special last summer, NBC billed it as "a rare TV performance" so as not to alarm anyone with an IQ higher than the channel number they were viewing.

Little did we know. Cassidy's appearance proved so popular among the nation's captive baby sitters that the show was spun into a new series: David Cassidy—Man Undercover. What he is when he's not undercover is anybody's guess.

Cassidy's rather tame Police Story, where he put his subterranean skills to work helping the ace cheerleader at Lesget High petition the city council to rezone her t-shirts for heavy industry, was merely a stupid question to the stupid answer that is Undercover. As Dan Shay, androgyne Elliot Ness, old bird-build tackles crooks who are too objectionable to menace the American Girls: guys who make coeds have babies for two dollars, people who make fun of Susan Dey's lips and a slave ring that specializes in left-handers.

Best of all—for Cassidy at least—is the possibility of using the show as a staging area for reviving his currently invisible singing career. He's already recorded the title theme for his little brother's label (Wamer-Curb) and plans a whole collection of stock-footage tunes that will be subtly rammed into the show for exposure. Like, just before he throws some illicit Nerf-squeezer in the clink for good, he'll stop and sing "Boogie Oogie Oogie."

Don't go thinking that Man Undercover is just another Partridge Family with pimps and junkies. This is heavy drama, man, and a mighty pleased David Cassidy brags that "every week I get to be someone else. "

Maybe next week he'll be Danny Bonaduce.

Rick Johnson