The Shrinking of Gore’s PLANET.

There are parts in VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET where Jerry Lewis astounds us with his physical art, yet that is not enough to save this attempted comedy from an atrocious script that exudes astronomical ignorance, and by that I mean: ignorance in astronomy… or maybe, also…?

Jerry is Kreton, from an alien race that lives “on the other side of the universe” (whatever that means), who revels in visiting Earth against the orders of his supervisor, Mr. Delton (John Williams – not the composer, just an old That Guy). On this particular visit, Kreton befriends a middle-American family and stays with them a few days, with the approval of Mr. Delton, on the proviso Kreton only studies them and doesn’t get involved. But Kreton starts helping the family with his omnipotent alien magic, and seemingly gets entangled romantically with the daughter, so Mr. Delton removes Kreton’s powers. It’s played as “a lesson to Kreton” to show him how painful it is to be an Earthling – but Kreton never once wished to be an Earthling. Unless I missed something.

Also, Kreton maintains all love and sex has been excised from his species, so how does he end up desiring the family daughter Ellen (Joan Blackman)? Or is it a simulacrum of desire that he cannot comprehend is not real? So many interesting questions never posed or answered. Kreton gets hubristic, thinking “falling in love” won’t lead to any trouble, and that Mr. Delton won’t be the wiser of Kreton contravening his conditions – all while being part of a culture where he KNOWS he can be spied on 24/7 by Mr. Delton, who can intervene with magic at any time. Which Delton does, zapping Kreton’s powers away. And in doing so, causes Kreton’s trouble. Is anyone paying attention to the contradictions? Or did I miss something else?

VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET was originally a Broadway play written by Gore Vidal, which starred none other than Eddie Mayehoff (Jerry’s father in THAT’S MY BOY)! Earning three Tony noms, it also aired as a TV play in May 1955, and was apparently an intelligent satire on Earth’s self-destructive nature and how aliens misapprehend that nature, the tagline being: A visitor from another planet arrives on Earth and seems anxious to provoke a war – “one thing you people do really well”. (Almost THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951.) Which might explain why Vidal was incensed at Jerry Lewis being tapped for the film version. He knew his concept would be shrunken down to a mere nub of its original intent. But if only Jerry had followed through on his GEISHA BOY introspection and made VISIT faithful to its source material, that might have elevated his cache as a serious filmmaker, and might have saved this confused mess of a dog turd.

Bland, irritating, minimally funny, screenwriters Edmund Beloin and Henry Garson, with director Norman Taurog (who did six other Martin-Lewis movies), scream their inadequacy of astronomy dialect with almost every line of “space” dialogue. In the beatnik bar (which is the most cogent sequence for being so “far out”) someone asks where he can get silver space-duds like Kreton’s, and Kreton replies, “Well, do you know where the Milky Way is?” and points up somewhere. (Daddy-O, you’re IN the Milky Way!) “Well, you turn right at the second nebula” (they obviously don’t have any clue how amorphous a nebula is), “and it’s the third planet at the end of the star cluster.” (Jargon they picked up from an encyclopedia supposed to sound space-y.) To fully deconstruct even this one sentence, we’d have to re-educate the writers from kindergarten: How do we find the third planet past a star cluster if all the stars have planets too? And planets don’t float in arbitrary deep space – isn’t the planet you speak of orbiting a star itself, and doesn’t that make the planet’s star part of the cluster? It’s like Han Solo saying, “It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Bullshit dialogue that someone thought sounded like legit space jive. Speaking of which, Kreton’s age is “21 million light years” – and we thought Han was the first doofus to confuse distance with time.

As a youth, I was inclined to think GEISHA BOY was a slow-pacer, and now appreciate it for its depth, whereas VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET was a great lark when younger, but now I realize it is purely for kids and non-thinking adults.

Fred Clark is the father (veteran of two other Martin-Lewis adventures), and Lucille Ball’s own Mr. Mooney, Gale Gordon, over-emotes as a scared neighbor. Buddy Rich cameos as a beatnik drummer.

Tangling with her boyfriend Conrad (tiresome, overacting Earl Holliman), on the couch, I did a double-take when Ellen actually said the line, “Conrad, as you may have suspected, I find you sexually attractive. But you just don’t have any money.” In a 1960 movie! With her mother in the room! Also – blatantly coming right out and admitting she’s a gold-digger. With her mother in the room! Also, Conrad accosting her openly and begging to get married, if not, laid – with her mother in the room! Our culture has moved too far for me to discern exactly how inappropriate or not these kids are being, or whether it’s just another poorly-written scene. Later someone says, “We do think an awful lot about sex around here – but it only happens when no one is looking.” Is this a Jerry Lewis movie, or are these lines left over from Gore Vidal?

Kreton’s powers would be a precursor to the Marvel movies that would come 55 years later, where he can do anything the plot calls for, without any rationale: he can time travel to any point in Earth’s history, disintegrate objects, levitate cars, make a camera spurt milk in someone’s face, tune in on people’s thoughts and enable the pets to talk. While he tries to explain some powers, there is no explanation for these others, so why bother explaining any of it? It’s magic who cares fuck you.

For context, this film was one of the first to poke fun at alien beings, or view them as inept pratfallers; released into a movie climate packed with malign extra-terrestrials, like the aforementioned EARTH STOOD STILL, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)…

When Mr. Delton takes away Kreton’s powers, there is no lesson learned: no pondering on what sacrifice Kreton might have made to retain true love; no yearning on the love he lost by choosing to fly away with Mr. Delton. Just a nothing ending; all he’s learned in his time studying humans, is that he doesn’t want to be without his powers.

We don’t like seeing him much without his powers of comedy either…

END

espite opening his 1978 Solo album with a song that suited his demonic persona perfectly, KISS co-founder Gene Simmons then proceeds to jollily stumble along trying to find a cogent direction with his eclectic mix of MOR meets The Beatles. Gene Simmons is a study in a search for identity.

Due to Simmons’ prominence in the media (his visage would come to represent everything KISS in magazines, TV, records and lunchboxes), we were predisposed to favor his album above the other KISS members, believing him to be the “leader” of the band and the instigator of the KISS sound and look. Boy, do we feel like douchebags now! Instead of stealing our souls with a collection of evil-toned heavy pounders that would make us tremble in obeisance, Simmons runs the gamut from ballads to metal and soft rock to operatic rock, delivering a topsy-turvy album that may not be so much a “search” for identity, as a “revealing” of it. A combo-wombo of musical styles that would scour the spectrum and ride rainbows; a paean to being pliable. After all, Simmons himself has told us many times about steak and cheesecake, i.e. That you don’t have to stick to one or the other, but can have both, and/or Sometimes you may not want both at the same time, but can still like them equally, and/or What was the question again?…

All that being said, for pure catchy melodies and hummable ditties and just great rock and roll songs, Gene Simmons runs a close third behind Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley. While he was perfunctorily placed first when I was in bobby sox, nowadays, back-to-backing the KISS Solo albums, we hear the strength that comes from being an extraterrestrial Spaceman and a resolute Starchild. Or maybe just from being guitarists. Gene may not have stretched as far as Peter and suffered Jazz Cramp, but he definitely fell victim to a self-inflicted case of Manilow Monday.

The Demon poster insert

Radioactive is an outa-the-gate stunner, Gene’s voice sounding as powerful and confident as ever, eschewing the demon growl for a high clean delivery. Giving us a taste of something that we would only be allowed to taste in teeny tahny doses on this album – a raunchy electric spanker (with Joe Perry on guitar), replete with an introductory devil’s banquet of horrorshow sound design that would have sat creamy on The Elder.

Prelude: The introductory horror circus is called Prelude, and there is so little information on this 64-second introduction to Radioactive that it probably is an original work, rather than lifted from some 70’s occult movie as I had originally surmised. Laden with chants of “Sanctu!” and womanly choirs of “Hosannas” it is so chilling that it scared many a young listener (myself included), and sets up the album to be more mystical than it could deliver. Rock Magazine tells us it was “…written by composer/arranger Ron Frangipane…” According to Gene the introduction was, “Based on some things that [Ron] heard on the album, and the piece sounds like the themes from JAWS, THE EXORCIST. It’s basically strings, lots of brass, and uh, Janis Ian… singing in Latin… ‘I see no evil, I hear no evil, it’s not around me at all,’ but underneath her is Sean [Delaney] doing a kind of deep voice growl.”

Burning Up with Fever. An excellent discordant acoustic opening (with Simmons whispering, “Lovely!”) heralds this thumping stomper, one of the heaviest songs on the album. Of all the Solo albums, Simmons’ guest list runs longer than his Larger Than Life thingy, including Bob Seger, Rick Nielsen, Helen Reddy, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, et al. And I think they’re all singing on this song. Well, that’s definitely Donna Summer’s voice back there on those female bvs.

See You Tonite. Did someone say John Paul George Ringo?

On Tunnel Of Love and True Confessions Gene flaunts his love of female backing vocals time and again. Tunnel is metal heavy, while True sports a banging piano and The Citrus College Singers.

Simmons writes and plays electric guitar (not bass) on all songs. Living In Sin is the only co-written song (with Sean Delaney and Howard Marks); the mythos of the rockstar “Living in sin / At the holiday inn,” with then-girlfriend Cher guesting as Outraged Groupie on phone.

Always Near You/Nowhere To Hide. This segued twosome is another experiment, in soft rock and epic rock juxtaposed.

Man Of 1,000 Faces. With Simmons’ encyclopedic love of classic movies, I’m presuming he’s singing about Lon Chaney (1883-1930) in this catchy soundtrack-styled tribute, zinging with horn and string sections.

Mr. Make Believe. We do a double-take: As the acoustic plucks the intro, it almost sounds like the intro to Frehley’s masterpiece on his Solo album, Fractured Mirror. No, just an easy-listening cockle-shell, with Simmons foraging in falsetto and cleancut MOR. As on later releases (Childhood’s End 1997, We Are One 1998), Simmons displays a knack for capturing a nostalgic drift.

See You In Your Dreams. Who loves this mediocre track from Rock And Roll Over so much that he re-recorded it for his solo album? THIS guy! Gene’s vanity project is bombast times two, with female backing vocals, added repeated verses, angry bees guitar solo, and lots of background noise like someone left the isolation booth door open when they pressed Record. He extends the 2^nd verse, longer than the KISS version – and if you are wondering what profound lyrics Gene was sitting on for two years just waiting to get back into the recording studio to finally nail them into place in this masterwork, well, you’re in for a treat. Here are the extra lyrics to Verse 2: “I love you / You know I do / Take me home tonight / Think of me / I think of you / Baby baby, it’s alright!” Phew. Creativity. Workmanship. Craft. Passion. Nowhere near this dog of a song. This song won in the category for Most Banal Lyrics On A Recorded Work By An Adult Male.

When You Wish Upon A Star. People will mock and deride, people will scratch their heads, people will call Dr. Love for professional therapy, but Simmons bravely takes a Disney song (from PINOCCHIO, originally sung by Cliff Edwards, written by Ned Washington and Leigh Harline) and, with an orchestra backing and a hitch in his voice, croons like a jiminy cricket, accompanied by a chorus of chipmunks and fairies.

Though it bares Simmons’s soul, revealing that young Jewish immigrant, eyes filled with wonder in the theater dark, mind agog with dreams that could only be pursued in the Land Of The Free, we now know that “If your heart is in your dreams / Nothing else is too extreme…” can only be applied in hindsight. To those who “made it,” those words are as magical as wooden boys coming to life. To the rest of us – utter bullshit. And the writers of that song should be tortured slowly over a spit for creating such false, outlandish expectations with that line alone, let alone the rest of the song that means absolutely nothing. But enough about my three failed record deals… When sung from the POV of the bassist in the biggest band on Earth at the time, it all makes perfect fucking sense.

When Gene dated Cher, the makeup was still on – so No Faces in public. Or tennis ball ta-tas.

Gene Simmons would “ship platinum.” There is constant contention over the actual sales of the KISS Solo albums because before Nielsen Soundscan (instigated in March 1991), not only was there no standard system in place to track record sales, Gold and Platinum designations have changed over the years. Originally, a Gold single meant one million units sold, then in 1976, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) stepped in and standardized Gold as 500,000 units (album or single), and Platinum as one million units (album or single). A Gold ALBUM prior to 1976 meant $1 million in SALES not units. So you can see how the whole mess got outa hand. Which is why no one can figure sales and status of KISS Alive! (1975).

Casablanca Records spent $2.5 million in marketing for the four KISS Solo albums. The gigantic, albino, hairy African elephant balls on CEO Neil Bogart! To even think that FOUR members of the same band releasing simultaneous albums would be a marketable viability is either the height of hubris or stunning foresight. The only reason they were a loss is because they printed too many; they should have shipped them in response to demand, rather than greedily ship 1,000,000 copies of each to record stores nationwide. Still, what a powerhouse statement! History will record this actually happened – and no band has done it since! The albums all sold respectably, and we hear they’ve been “certified platinum” – although, like When You Wish Upon A Star, I’ve given up trying to figure exactly what the hell that means…

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