Detroit Rock City (film)

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Detroit Rock City
Directed by Adam Rifkin
Produced by Kathleen Haase
Written by Carl V. Dupré
Starring Giuseppe Andrews
James DeBello
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date(s) August 15, 1999
Running time 94 min.
Language English
Budget $15,000,000
IMDb profile

Detroit Rock City is a 1999 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 less than five million dollars domestically. Despite the title, the movie was filmed not in Detroit but in Hamilton, Ontario, with Copps Coliseum and Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute taking the place of Cobo Hall. The intersection with the Church where the boys duke it out is at Church Street in Toronto.

Contents

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Trip, Lex, Hawk, and Jam are four teenagers living in Cleveland during 1978, who would do anything to see KISS. They have tickets to see the band in Detroit, but Jam's mother hates KISS, believes they are devil worshipers and that KISS stands for Knights In Satan's Service. Jam's Mother finds their KISS tickets, and humiliates him in front of the whole school by burning them. This leaves the boys in a state of shock. Jam's mom then places him in a Catholic 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 skip class to bust Jam out of the school. They place hallucinogenic mushrooms on a priest's pizza so he is too distracted 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 car of some disco lovers, who beat them up. Hawk knocks a disco-loving guy to the floor after kicking him. The other disco lover guy tries to negotiate a compromise, but they beat him down and leave the car that the disco lovers were driving in a ditch. The disco lovers awake from a daze and find that they are chained to a guard rail, while covered with KISS makeup. Christine, who walked away from the fight between Hawk and the disco lover, is walking down the road and the boys decide to give her a ride. While in the car, her and Hawk have an argument. After they stop fighting, Trip lights up a joint and passes it to Christine.

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 while Hawk gets drunk and winds up dancing naked for money at a strip club. Trip is beaten up by a jock and his friends and goes to a gas station, thinking about robbing it, but when another man with a shotgun decides to rob it first, Trip gets the robber on the floor and saves the store. Jam, whose mother finds him walking in front of her anti-KISS rally, drags him to a church across the street. Jam's lover sees that he has gone into the church and follows him. They end up getting together and Jam goes back to the rally. He curses his mother and asks for his drumsticks, only to get one of them back. When the boys meet up again, none of them have had any luck getting tickets, so Jam decides that they should beat each other up and say that muggers took their tickets. Upon arrival at the concert, they tell the guards that they were mugged by four people. The guards don't believe them, so Trip tells the guards that it was the people that beat him up before. The guard finds Trip's wallet in the jock's pocket and hands him the tickets. In the concert, Gene blows fire and throws up blood, Paul sings his heart out and smashes his guitar, Ace's guitar smokes and Peter Criss throws his drumstick into the crowd, when Jam, jumping up, catches the drumstick, making up for the one that his mother broke. The song KISS was playing is actually the title of the movie "Detroit Rock City."

[edit] DVD

The DVD is on both Region 1 and Region 2, although the special features differ.

[edit] 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 & 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, and productions notes

[edit] Region 2 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
  • Cutting Room Floor
  • Behind The Scenes
  • Music Videos
  • Play
  • Theatrical Trailer
  • Cast And Crew
  • Angle Shots On Kiss Concert Only
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