excerpt from TheKISSVideo Chronicle
BY: SagaFoo with Julian Gill

While there have been literally hundreds of KISS videos released worldwide, official or licensed VHS and DVD releases are the best place to start a KISS video collection. This reference guide will help all of the KISS Army find out a bit more about these releases, some of  which have gone out of print or become otherwise obscure

While no official KISS video release package would be released for several years, the KISS video chronicle actually begins on October 9, 1980. On that date, the night of which would see KISS performing in Stockholm, Sweden during the “Unmasked” tour, Aucoin Management, Inc’s filing for the trademark of the word “KISSVision” with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) was accepted. From the USPTO documentation (Serial Number 73281114), the intended usage of the trademark was to be on “Prerecorded Videocassettes,” in essence what has become known in the vernacular as long-form videos.
 
Simply adding a “Vision” in the stylized design similar to the original KISS logo to that base, the trademark was “published for opposition” on July 27, 1982. During the process of registering a trademark “published for opposition” meant that the mark had been officially published in the Trademark Official Gazette, simply indicating that it appeared, to the USPTO, that the registrant was entitled to have the mark registered; not that the mark had been registered. During the process of registering a trademark this period allows other claimants to oppose the trademark as it stands for numerous reasons. Aucoin management would be awarded the trademark registration for “KISSVision” on October 19, 1982 (Registration Number 1213030).
 
That “KISSVISION” was a trademark owned by Aucoin Management by 1982 is something of a moot point. The mark was cancelled on April 20, 1989 and was never used in conjunction with official KISS videocassette releases. Amusingly, “KISSVision” has become a term synonymous with the KISS bootleg video collecting circuit. More on that later…

Kiss meets the phantom of the park
In early 1982 a small video company called Worldvision released the cult classic “KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park” on the VHS and Beta formats. With basic no-frills packaging this unsanctioned release would not see wide distribution until it was reissued for a second time in 1989 (the first reissue had been in 1986). Worldvision had inherited the rights to the movie from Hanna-Barbera productions, with KISS having nothing to do with any decisions made about the movie. Part of the problem of the early releases of KISS campy 1978 movie was the cost of videocassettes as the market was young. Initially costing nearly $60, the format had become affordable by the late-1980s making this fan favorite finally available for repeated home viewing. With a script by Jan Michael Sherman and Don Buday, and directed by Gordon Hessler, the film included live performance segments that had filmed at Magic Mountain, in Valencia, CA, on May 19, 1978 (KISS’ last live show until June 1979). The band had performed a full concert for the guest audience, and played a couple of the key songs several times to allow multiple camera angles. Only “Shout It Out Loud,” “I Stole Your Love,” “Rock And Roll All Nite,” and “God Of Thunder” would be included in the movie from the concert.

Notably, the movie featured a song called “Rip And Destroy” that turned out to be a basic rewrite of “Hotter Than Hell” with some new lyrics. It was not performed during the band’s full concert at Magic Mountain and had been recorded earlier that day. Technically, “Rip And Destroy” had been the second full studio recording done by KISS in 1978 (the other being the re-recording of “Strutter” for the “Double Platinum” album). The band had originally intended to record all new songs for the movie time but limitations made that idea an impossibility. This song was never performed by the real KISS, just the “Evil KISS.” The movie would include one other “new” recording, an acoustic version of “Beth.”
Speculations are rampant as to who the guitar player on this “new” version of “beth” was, but even with its official release in 2007 it still isn’t known.              

The $2 million movie premiered on October 28, 1978 on NBC and was one of the highest rated TV movies of the summer. There are three versions of the movie, the original NBC print, and a re-edited version with different scenes and running order that was made for late-night television. The third version was put together in November 1980 for the Australian/European theater release as “Attack Of The Phantoms” and was released in several languages including german. It features songs from the KISS solo albums as background music instead of some of the generic incidental music on the original American version of the movie. Attack of the phantoms has some substantially different editing as well including entire scenes which were cut from the original, and the versions of the songs added to the soundtrack are different mixes than the original album releases, (albeit generally short edits). Some of the tracks reveal sonic qualities that are interesting for die hard KISS collectors. The songs added to “Attack of the Phantoms” are; “Fractured Mirror”, “Easy thing” , “Mr. make believe”, “Hold me touch me”, “Radioactive”, “Almost Human”, “new york groove”, and beth.
Finally after many years and to the delighted surprise of fans, a complete version of KISS-attack of the phantoms was released in kissology vol 2. For the original U.S.A.  TV version fans should seek out an official VHS tape, the Japanese laserdisc, or the ‘cheezy flicks’ version. Other bootleg DVD’s exist but range drastically in quality and price, buyer beware!