When we think stadium rock the kneejerk association is the decadent hairbands of the 80's. But there was a time when it was more pure. Or, less pure, but in a more original way. The time is 1978. The band is KISS. The place is director Adam Rifkin's Detroit Rock City, temporary mecca for MyStery, a KISS-tribute band made up of Jam (Sam Huntington), Hawk (Edward Furlong), Trip (James DeBello), and Lex (Giuseppe Andrews), skipping school and driving in from Cleveland on borrowed wheels and stolen time. Just four guys on what for them is a pilgrimage, with all the necessary pitfalls, pratfalls, obstacles, etc to make it interesting. To make it seem like they won't make it, that this will be 'that' kind of coming-of-age movie. Refreshingly, it's not that kind of movie. Instead, it's the kind of movie with a soundtrack, maybe the best since Robert Alt's Dazed and Confused. And yes, Detroit Rock City toys with some of the same torch-passing type of generational material as Dazed and Confused, but in a significantly less introspective manner than Alt. Which gives it the freedom to go overboard, to have an overweight Elvis security guard chase this KISS-tribute band into the future, a little retrospective allegory we can all appreciate via dramatic irony: we know how the music wars went. We know that KISS is in facepaint again and nobody has Saturday Night Fever anymore. All the same though, Detroit Rock City isn't just a movie for the faithful. Instead of writing it for the heavy metal equivalent of the snickering in-group Star Trek: Insurrection appealed to--and thus relying solely on the nostalgic appeal of a mythic KISS concert to propel things--writer Carl V. Dupre chose instead to make the concert's importance proportional with the obstacles MyStery has to deal with to get to that concert. And, as they're big issues, especially for Jam, having to deal with his MATMOK (Mothers Against The Music Of Kiss) mother, the concert is important, even pivotal. In case this isn't enough, though, Dupre also has a back-up structure: this is Jam's last night of freedom before two years of boarding school. Which is to say tonight they're going to let it all hang out, even dancing at a male strip club for ticket money. Which is where Shannon Tweed has her big cameo, playing Sylvia again from Hot Dog, coolly oblivious to the 15 years between then and now, but still in full possession of the camera. And then of course there's Paul and Gene and Ace and Peter, playing themselves on stage, still breathing fire and spitting blood. There's even a strange little shot of the audience from the POV of Gene Simmons' throat, down along his legendary cow-tongue, which is perhaps the one moment when the Detroit Rock City goes a little far. As for the rest of it, though, just be satisfied that it's not Phantom in the Park. It's 1999 now. Suddenly the devil's music is in DTS. (c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones
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