‘Detroit Rock City’ won’t jibe for legitimate KISS fans

“Detroit Rock City”

Directed by Adam Rifkin. Written by Carl Dupre. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated: R.

Not to KISS and tell, but the new rocksploitation film “Detroit Rock City” is likely to disappoint fans of the rock group KISS — indeed, the band appears only in the film’s final moments. But even then we only see them at a distance as they go through the arthritic motions of performing the weakly staged title song.

That their faces are only fleetingly glimpsed is probably a blessing. The film takes place in 1978, when the band members still had some spring left in their silvery platforms and used only grease paint to accentuate their faces, not so much as a putty to fill in the deep ravines caused by age and lots of hard KISS living.

Still, the film, which is about the travails of four stoned teen-age boys trying to score tickets to a KISS concert, is a rip-off that cheats its audience of that old KISS spirit, not that one should expect much from a movie that exists in a meandering, drug-induced haze.

This is, after all, the kind of film that features a nun whose name is Sister Gonorrhea, a scene in which these four charmers beat up a group of disco fans just to show them who’s who, and another scene in which sex takes place in a priest’s confessional.

The film does have a surprising residual effect — it actually makes you appreciate the 1978 made-for-NBC movie “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park,” which featured such cultural highlights as lasers shooting out of Ace Frehley’s eyes and flames erupting from Gene Simmons’ mouth. Now, the only thing shooting out of Simmons’ mouth is his exhausted tongue, which, after all these years, is still wagging…but why?

Grade: D

“Brokedown Palace”

Directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Written by David Arata. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated: PG-13.

Any movie that features a character whose name is Hank the Yank (Bill Pullman) can’t be taken too seriously. That is the case with “Brokedown Palace,” a fair, sometimes surprisingly poignant film that features Claire Danes in a good performance as Alice Marano, a spoiled, manipulative American girl who believes she is invincible.

A trip to Thailand changes that.

The film, which recalls “Red Corner,” “Midnight Express” and “Return to Paradise,” puts Alice and her goody-goody friend Darlene (Kate Beckinsale) in a whole lot of Thai trouble: Apparently, these girls have been taken advantage of by Nick Parks (Daniel Lapaine), a good-looking Australian stud who plants a few kisses — not to mention six kilos of heroin — on them before sending them off to a weekend in Hong Kong.

The girls never see Hong Kong, but they sure see lots of a creepy Thai women’s prison, nicknamed the Brokedown Palace. There, in a film that’s shot and edited like music video, they have a look at the real world — the one MTV should be showing kids.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith’s “The Week in Rewind” appears each Thursday in “the Scene.” Each Tuesday on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he appears in Cinema Center.