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Detroit Rock City | 1999 | R | - 6.4.10
A night in the life of four teenage KISS fans willing to do anything to get tickets to the band's 1978 concert in Detroit. With Edward Furlong, Natasha Lyonne, Sam Huntington, James DeBello, Giuseppe Andrews, Melanie Lynskey, Lin Shaye, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, David Quane, Peter Criss, Robert Smith, Pamela Bowman Stanley, Miles Dougal, Nick Scotti and Shannon Tweed. [1:35]
SEX/NUDITY 6 - Lots of sexual innuendo (including references to fellatio and masturbation) and lots of kissing, often passionately. We briefly see many covers of Hustler and Playboy magazines in a boy's room (no explicit nudity is visible). Some scantily clad men dance suggestively in front of women (one is wearing a thong); a boy strips down to his boxers on stage while women cheer. We see some topless women in a hot tub and at a concert; we also see many scantily clad women. We briefly see a man holding a woman's panties. It's implied that a boy ejaculates when a scantily clad woman caresses his boxer-clad genitals with her foot. A priest sternly tells a boy to give him details about his sexual life, then we see the priest obviously enjoying the boy's non-graphic story about a sexual escapade. It's implied that a boy in his boxers and a girl in her bra (her torso is only partially visible) have had intercourse in a confessional booth (we see them kiss and then get dressed). A woman grabs a boy's clothed buttocks and wiggles her tongue suggestively.
VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - Nearly all played for laughs: Some punches; in one scene boys beat up a man, and in another slow-motion scene boys punch each other (we see some blood spray out of their mouths and bloody cuts on their faces). A man falls to the ground while crawling on a ceiling duct (he's not hurt). A woman throws a boy against a car, boys push a cart and a man down a staircase (he's not injured) and a boy is flipped into a pile of trash bags and then surrounded by growling dogs. A boy is hit in the face with a phone, an exercise band and a pencil; a man is hit in the eye with a doll and a boy and girl knock heads. Some chases and falls. A man wrestles a gun away from a man trying to rob a store and a boy shoots a hole in a ceiling. A car rams into the side of another, trying to run it off the road; a boy pushes an empty car into a roadside ditch. A boy throws pizza onto a car's windshield, nearly causing the driver to crash; the driver rubs a boy's face into the pizza (we see pieces of cheese in his hair later). It's implied that men are going to sexually abuse a girl handcuffed to a pipe, but she's released before anything happens. A boy starts hitting a guitar on the ground; at a concert, we see a musician smash his guitar. Fake blood runs out of a musician's mouth during a concert and we see a magazine cover of an extremely bloody skull. We see an extended close-up of a boy vomiting profusely (he eventually fills a pitcher with his vomit). A woman sets some paper on fire and lights her cigarette from the flames. We see a girl sitting on a toilet and hear some flatulence; boys fall off a toilet and cause many toilet stall walls to collapse around a girl (no one is injured). A boy pretends to urinate in his pants (we see a spreading stain on the front of his pants). In the background of a scene, we briefly see a slide of a man's lesion-covered face.
LANGUAGE 10 - About 85 F-words, a few obscene finger gestures, lots of anatomical references, lots of scatological references, many mild obscenities, several insults and lots of name-calling.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - KISS, teen sexuality, drug use, organized religion.
MESSAGE - Do whatever you can to see a KISS concert -- it's worth it.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
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