Scooby-Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery

As the Scooby-Doo direct-to-video movies continued to be pumped out every year, it was hard not to notice from a casual glance that there was at one point more of a reliance on crossovers, including Hanna-Barbera’s own Blue Falcon, DC’s Batman (the Brave and the Bold version) and two movies with the WWE of all things. To be fair on the last one, crossing over WWE with other Hanna-Barbera properties such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons was in style at the time. One that stood out to me, however, was a crossover with the band Kiss, named Scooby-Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery. While I wouldn’t consider myself a member of the Kiss Army, I do enjoy some Kiss songs and I was curious to see how such a crossover would work, which I got the chance to do after recording a Boomerang airing of the movie. Though I wasn’t sure what to expect, I ended up enjoying to a degree, though it seemed more like a Kiss movie than it did a Scooby-Doo movie.

At Kiss World, a Kiss-themed amusement park, a pair of maintenance workers are attacked by a spirit known as the Crimson Witch, leading the park owner to call in a group of mystery solvers. Later, the Mystery Gang, Fred (Frank Welker), Velma (Mindy Cohn), Daphne (Grey DeLisle), Shaggy (Matthew Lillard) and Scooby (Frank Welker), arrive at Kiss World in anticipation of Kiss’ Halloween concert, only to be refused entry. The group then sneaks into the park under the idea there might be a mystery to solve, learning about the Crimson Witch in the process. When the gang are caught, they learn that the park manager actually did call in some mystery solvers, which turn out to be Kiss themselves.

Kiss plays an important role in the movie.
From left: The Spaceman (Tommy Thayer), The Starchild (Paul Stanley),
The Demon (Gene Simmons), The Catman (Eric Singer)

The story is generally pretty easy to follow, with the Mystery Gang having to work with the current line-up of Kiss in order to solve the mystery. There is also, from my understanding, a rather heavy focus on Kiss lore and how it factors into the story, to where the Scooby-Doo characters more or less take a back seat to Kiss for the most part. It’s also established for the sake of the story that everyone except Fred is a fan of Kiss, with Fred instead favoring the fictional band The Ascot Five. This does, however, come into play with Fred being a bit jealous of Daphne’s infatuation with Starchild (Paul Stanley), including a scene where Starchild playfully gets back at Fred for a moment of obvious sabotage. Incidentally, Starchild gets the most focus between the members of Kiss, seconded only by The Demon (Gene Simmons). It should be noted that the members of Kiss are only ever referred to by their stage names in the movie, however they are still treated as though they were the actual band members.

One thing I will give the movie credit for is that, because of its deep dive into Kiss lore, it actually comes the closest since Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase to actually having a real monster, even if it ends up muddying itself towards the end. The more light-hearted nature of the movie lends itself well to some amount of slapstick, though the Kiss elements are mostly taken seriously. A particularly funny running gag is the amount of joke product placement for Kiss, based on the absurdity of some actual Kiss products, complete with fake adverts and mundane products such as flashlights, batteries and barf bags bearing their logo. There’s also a one-off bit featuring a Kiss toilet, though since the band has infamously put their name on a casket, one of which was famously used to bury the late “Dimebag” Darrell of Pantera per his request, I would not be surprised if the toilet or any of the other products mentioned in the movie actually exist or would likely exist at any point.

The animation is very fluid, with a great amount of detail put into Kiss’ iconic makeup and costume designs while still being animation-friendly. One point of particular praise is the scenes involving Kiss revealing themselves to be actual superheroes and traveling through space with the Mystery Gang on a guitar-shaped spaceship. These scenes feature a number of gorgeous and lovingly-detailed comic book-style backdrops and designs, bringing to mind the iconic style of comics legend Jack Kirby.

The planet of Kissteria brings to mind comics legend Jack Kirby.

The voice acting from the Mystery Gang is good, with each voice actor able to display a great range of emotion from their respective characters. Rather notably, this would be the last time Mindy Cohn would get to provide the voice of Velma, to be replaced with her current voice actress Kate Micucci, herself a bit divisive in the role. Naturally, the members of Kiss play themselves, or at least versions of themselves matching their stage personas. Their dialogue and delivery sound natural amongst each other, plus they are able to play off the Mystery Gang pretty well.

As per tradition with the direct-to-video series, background songs are to be expected, and this is no exception. Unlike what I’ve heard from the post-Hanna-Barbera features so far, the songs in this movie are actually memorable, though this can be attributed to the fact that all of the music is, appropriately enough, pre-existing Kiss songs, with the exception of a full version of an Ascot Five song (“Don’t Touch My Ascot”) that plays during the credits (which, rather humorously, was also performed by Kiss). The song selection is more or less a sort of Kiss Greatest Hits collection, featuring popular songs such as “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”. The song “Detroit Rock City” is also included, the subject of which is actually relevant to the plot.

Scooby-Doo! and Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery is one of the better post-Hanna-Barbera direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movies, though Kiss more or less takes the spotlight here. There are some actually funny moments in places, especially when it comes to Kiss merch, though the animation is one of the bigger highlights, especially during the second and third acts. The attention to detail in relation to Kiss shows a clear level of passion was put into it, as well as the seamless integration of Kiss songs and the mostly-even storytelling. This is an easier recommendation for Scooby-Doo fans, though Kiss fans will definitely get a lot of entertainment value out of this movie.