KISS Loves You

The makers of insightful Hellacopters documentary Goodnight, Cleveland provide us with another rock’n’roll film worth its weight in celluloid. A decade in the making, KISS Loves You captures the reality of being a dedicated KISS fanatic during the band’s least productive years — 1994 through their mid-’00s reunion tour success. Following a variety of diehards, including tribute bands, respected original musicians (Dee Snider, Todd Youth and more), as well as legions of general Joes that celebrate the band’s earliest make-up years, KISS Loves You attends unofficial KISS conventions, gigs and conducts personal interviews to get to the core of what makes a KISS fan so resolute. Through these means, we witness a blue collar family give every bit of their essence — time, money and anything else the can relinquish — to the band, stare awe-struck at how much effort cover bands put into their recreations and are relentlessly hammered with nothing but accolades for KISS from everyone in between. That is, until the actual KISS hold a press conference announcing their return to the stage in full garb. At this point, the film’s title reveals its sarcastic side, shifting from propaganda piece to uneasiness as tribute acts worry about their bread’n’butter suffering, fans fork over even more dough for "the cause” and unofficial conventions are nixed by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley so they make take the reins, and cash. Concluding on a sad note, we see a four-year-old boy’s $100 gift to Stanley carelessly tossed aside, an Ace Frehley devotee and friend crushed by being ignored and more. Completed by extras, including endless and amusingly candid outtakes, bootleg KISS footage, conference films and television spots of legionnaires purporting their allegiance, KISS Loves You proves that while it’s indelibly interesting, the depths of KISS’s love only shines for the almighty greenback.