Detroit Rock City is a 1999 cult film about four teenagers in a Kiss cover band who try to see their idols in Detroit in 1978. It takes its title from the Kiss song of the same name. The movie failed at the box office, grossing fewer than five million dollars domestically. It has since become a cult classic for Kiss fans and metalheads in general. It has been often compared to the 1993 film Dazed and Confused.
The film was shot in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.[1]
Plot
Hawk, Lex, Trip, and Jam are four rebellious teenagers living in 1978 Cleveland, and would do anything to see Kiss live in concert. They have tickets to see the band in Detroit, but Jam's ultra-conservative mother hates Kiss, thinking they are devil worshippers and that KISS stands for "Knights In Satan's Service." Jam's mother finds their Kiss tickets, humiliates him in front of the whole school, then burns them before the boys' eyes. This leaves the boys in a state of shock. Jam's mom then places him in a Catholic boarding school upstate.
The three remaining friends form a plan to get Trip out of class, so he can call a contest line to try to win tickets. They win the tickets, and then they ditch school to bust Jam out of the Catholic school. They place hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms on a priest's pizza so he is too high to notice that Jam is gone.
On the road, Trip throws a slice of pizza out of the window after dropping it on himself. It hits the windshield of the car (a gold-colored 1978 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am) behind them carrying some disco-loving "guidos" and their "stellas". The car then pulls in front and stops them, pulls out Hawk and smashes his face in the pizza on the windshield. Hawk knocks the guy to the ground (by kneeing him in the groin and then the face) after he destroys their 8-track of the Kiss album Love Gun. The other guido guy tries to negotiate a compromise, but they beat him down and leave the car that the guidos were driving in a ditch. The guidos awake from a daze and find that they are chained to a guard rail, and their faces are painted to look like Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Christine, one of the stellas who walked away from the fight between Hawk and the guido, is walking down the road and the boys decide to give her a ride. While in the car, she and Hawk have an argument. After they stop fighting, Trip lights up a joint and passes it to Christine, who later passes out and is left in the car when they reach Detroit.
When they get to Detroit, they find out that Trip did not stay on the phone long enough to give the radio station his information, forcing the station to give the tickets to the next caller. Lex notices that their car has been stolen, and they suspect Christine, who they left in the car. The boys go their separate ways in order to find Kiss tickets, and agree to meet in the same place later. Lex sneaks into the loading crew to help set up the concert, and eventually find himself using a group of junkyard dogs to help get his car back, and save Christine from possible rape by the chop shop guys who stole the car. Meanwhile, Hawk winds up dancing for money at a strip club to win the money for the tickets. Trip goes into a gas station to find a small kid to mug for his tickets and is confronted by the boy's older brother. Trip tries to pay them so they don't mug him, but they take his wallet and threaten him to come up with more. Trip decides to rob the store to get the money to pay the kid, but another man beats him to it. Trip gets the robber on the floor and saves the store.
Jam's mother finds him walking in front of her anti-Kiss rally, and drags him to a church across the street. Jam's classmate Beth sees that he has gone into the church and follows him. They confess their feelings for each other (which they could never get the courage up to act on in school, and Beth is now moving away), and lose their virginity in the confessional booth. They share one last kiss, and Jam goes back to the rally, determined this time to take a stand.
Jam finally stands up for himself against his mother for her controlling and domineering ways by yelling at her before the assembled crowd, telling her that forcing religion and morality down his throat are the reasons that he has been rebelling lately and demands his drumsticks be given to him, only to get one of them back (the other one being broken in half, most definitely by his mother in protest). As Jam walks away with his remaining drumstick, his mother watches him with a smile and eventually says "They grow up fast, don't they?", apparently not offended by Jam's previous argument.
When the boys meet up again, none of them have had any luck getting tickets, so in a last-ditch effort, Jam decides that they should beat each other up and say that muggers took their tickets. They do so, and upon arrival at the concert, they tell the guards that they were mugged by four people. The guards don't believe them, so Trip points out to the guards the guys from the gas station, who are just entering the concert hall. The guard finds Trip's wallet (with his Kiss Army picture ID) in one of the guy's pockets, and hands him the tickets, ejecting the others outside. In the concert, Gene Simmons blows fire and spits blood, Paul Stanley sings his heart out and smashes his guitar, Ace Frehley's guitar smokes and Peter Criss throws his drumstick into the crowd; Jam, jumping up, catches it, making up for the one that his mother broke. The song KISS plays is the title song of the movie, "Detroit Rock City."
Cast
- Note: The KISS Tribute band Hotter Than Hell claims on their website to have been personally selected by Gene Simmons to double for KISS - they were used to appear as KISS in technical rehearsals. The real band appears in the film.
DVD
The DVD is on Region 1, Region 2 and Region 4, although the special features differ.
Region 1 Special Features
- Commentary by Gene Simmons and Director Adam Rifkin
- Commentary by all four original Kiss members
- Commentary by Rifkin and the cast and crew
- Multi-Angle Views of the Kiss Concert
- An instructional segment featuring a step-by-step guitar lesson by SongXpress on how to play the Kiss song "Rock -N' Roll All Night"
- Over 15 Minutes of Deleted Scenes
- 2 Music Videos "The Boys Are Back in Town" performed by Everclear & "Strutter" performed by The Donnas
- Original Screen Test Footage
- DVD-ROM Features: Script-to-Scene Access, website access, email-able trading cards featuring characters from the film, M.A.T.M.O.K. (Mothers Against the Music of Kiss) spoof newsletters, updated cast and crew biographies and filmographies, productions notes
Region 2 Special Features
Region 4 Special Features
- Commentary by Director Adam Rifkin
- Individual commentary by all four original Kiss members conducted in interview form by Director, Adam Rifkin
- Multi-Angle Views of the Kiss Concert
- Over 15 Minutes of Deleted Scenes
- 2 Music Videos "The Boys Are Back in Town" performed by Everclear & "Strutter" performed by The Donnas
- Original Screen Test Footage
KISSology Volume Three
In December 2007, the film was re-released on DVD as an exclusive bonus fifth disc contained within Kissology Volume Three: 1992–2000. This disc was only available with initial pre-orders sold during VH1 Classic's 24 Hours of KISSmas weekend marathon.
Factual inaccuracies
- Some songs in the movie were not released until later periods of times, such as David Naughton's "Makin' It" (the disco song the "guidos" and the "stellas" on the highway were listening to) which was released early 1979, and the AC/DC song "Highway To Hell", which was also released in 1979. However, the latter served only as ironic background music and was most likely not intended to be diegetic.
Miscellaneous
- Lex's car appears to be a 1977 Volvo 240 sedan
- Kiss reenacted the Love Gun/Alive II tour (See Kiss Tours) for the end of the movie, which included 8,000 fans serving as extras. The footage was shot on December 3, 1998 at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario the day after KISS played in Toronto.
- The KISS sign used for the concert scene filming was the same KISS sign used on the Hot In The Shade tour in 1990.
- During the concert footage filming in Hamilton, Gene noticed one fan dressed up in a very impressive Dynasty era Demon costume (who had driven to Hamilton from NYC) due to the red cape on the costume. Rumors have circulated online that the fan was escorted off the set, however he was only asked by a crew member to remove the red cape.
- Many of the Kiss collector's items were from Gene Simmons' own collection.
- The girls' names, Beth and Christine, are references to the Kiss songs "Beth" and "Christine Sixteen".
- The first protesting mother outside the Kiss concert, the woman with brown curly hair, was Paul Stanley's own wife. The pair divorced in 2001.
- Director Adam Rifkin has used the Blumps restaurant in every one of his movies. The old woman pictured in the Blumps logo is Rifkin's grandmother.
- Shannon Tweed, who portrays the lady that picks up Hawk in the bar, is Gene Simmons' long-time partner. The couple have two kids together, Nick and Sophie.
- At the start of the movie when you hear the guys playing "Rock and Roll All Nite", the music you hear is actually performed by the four actors.
- In the Mystery band logo, the S is the same design as the lightning bolt S's from the KISS logo. It also closely resembles that of the skateboard company, Mystery.
- The external Detroit scenes were shot in Toronto in October 1998 at the corner of King and Church Streets. The church is St. James Cathedral, Toronto (west façade) and the strip club entrance was in a parking lot SW of the intersection (the entrance was a false door). The finale before the concert when the four run together is in the middle of the intersection of King and Church - note the TTC tracks!
- The announcer in the strip club is famous porn star Ron Jeremy.
- Even though the film is supposed to take place in Detroit, the concert scenes were shot in Hamilton, Ontario at Copps Coliseum and some of the highway scenes were shot using Highway 407 in the Burlington/Oakville area.
- (quotes from the scene after picking up Christine)
- Christine: Hey, you know what? Disco's so fucking big right now, I wouldn't be surprised if Kiss did a disco song.
- Lex: Man, if there's one thing Kiss will never do, it is a bullshit disco song.
- Jam: No shit man!
- Trip: Yeah man. Disco blows dogs for quarters man!
(obviously ment to forshadow Kiss's Dynasty album that would come out in 1979 that would feature the disco flavored hit I Was Made For Lovin' You. )
- When Trip defeats the shoplifter, he says his name is Dr. Love, which is a song Kiss wrote, "Calling Dr. Love" from their album Rock and Roll Over.
Soundtrack
Track listing
- "The Boys Are Back in Town" performed by Thin Lizzy
- "Shout It Out Loud" performed by Kiss
- "Runnin' With The Devil" performed by Van Halen
- "Cat Scratch Fever" performed by Pantera, cover of a Ted Nugent song of the same name.
- "Iron Man" performed by Black Sabbath
- "Highway To Hell" performed by Marilyn Manson
- "20th Century Boy" performed by Drain STH
- "Detroit Rock City" performed by Kiss
- "Jailbreak" performed by Thin Lizzy
- "Surrender (Live)" performed by Cheap Trick
- "Rebel Rebel" performed by David Bowie
- "Strutter" performed by The Donnas
- "School Days" performed by The Runaways
- "Little Willy" performed by Sweet
- "Nothing Can Keep Me From You" performed by Kiss
The soundtrack album however contains some covers of the original songs, some of which were not in the movie itself. The following originals were played in the movie...
- "The Boys Are Back in Town" performed by Thin Lizzy
- "20th Century Boy" performed by T. Rex
- "Highway To Hell" performed by AC/DC
- "Cat Scratch Fever" performed by Ted Nugent
- "Strutter" performed by Kiss
Other songs performed in the movie but not featured on the soundtrack are:
- "Come Sail Away" performed by Styx
- "Frankenstein" performed by The Edgar Winter Group
- "Fox On The Run" performed by Sweet
- "Ladies Room" performed by Kiss
- "Radar Love" performed by Golden Earring
- "Love Gun" performed by Kiss
- "Christine Sixteen" performed by Kiss
- "I Wanna Be Sedated" performed by The Ramones
- "Shock Me" performed by Kiss
- "Godzilla" performed by Blue Öyster Cult
- "Strutter" performed by Kiss
- "Blitzkrieg Bop" performed by The Ramones
- "Popcorn" performed by Hot Butter
- "Beth" performed by Kiss
- "Love Hurts" performed by Nazareth
- "I Stole Your Love" performed by Kiss
- "Cat Scratch Fever" performed by Ted Nugent
- "Funk No. 49" performed by James Gang
- "Conjunction Junction" performed by Bob Dorough
- "Good Old Days" performed by The Beau Hunks
- "Lights Out" performed by UFO
- "Making It" performed by David Naughton
- "Wild and Hot" performed by Angel
- "Problem Child" performed by AC/DC
- "Turn to Stone" performed by Electric Light Orchestra
- "Black Superman (Mohammed Ali)" performed by The Kinshasa Band
- "Monster Attacks" performed by Hans Salter
- "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" performed by Rupert Holmes
- "Black Magic Woman" performed by Santana
- "Every 1's a Winner" performed by Hot Chocolate
- "Convoy" performed by CW McCall
- "Boogie Shoes" performed by KC & The Sunshine Band
- "Fire" performed by Ohio Players
- "Muskrat Love" performed by Captain & Tennille
- "Calling Dr. Love" performed by Kiss
- "Rock Your Baby" performed by George McCrae
- "Whole Lotta Rosie" performed by AC/DC
- "Love to Love" performed by UFO
The Donnas, an all-girl band, came out with a song "Strutter" a cover song from Kiss which they made a music video in tribute to the 4 main characters to help promote the film. The music video reflects on the 4 main character's wild acts in school to their passion for rock music.
See also
References
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