STEEL PANTHER FAIL

We’ve all seen a movie in which a monster or alien or alien monster or monstlien spends 90 minutes terrorizing people with its brute strength and supernatural firepower, right? But at the end, some hunky guy who uses tons of hair product fells the beast with some hokey, implausible trick-move like turning on a microwave near it or mounting and riding it while attaching an IED to its nads. It’s a fundamental flaw in this type of movie; comparatively speaking, do filmmakers mean to impy that if a particularly motivated ant so desired, he or she could take me out with a wee little poison dart-shooting taser or something? Fuck that.

Well, that’s what I used to think until I saw a clip (above) of feeble Kiss frontman Paul Stanley heroically toppling the unstoppable party beast called Steel Panther. It’s incredible! That band is all-powerful and merciless — I’ve never seen even a ho-hum Steel Panther performance, in person or otherwise — yet it took Stanley about two seconds to explode a shittiness bomb in their midst and reduce their jam to rubble. Now, Kiss apologists will rush to point out that the clip’s audio quality is unkind to Stanley and suggests a toy microphone inputted direct to a 1989 camcorder. And Stanley is cold and old and just walked onstage to belt “Lick It Up.” And Panther guitarist Satchel kinda jukes Stanley with a premature move to the bridge. Sure, I guess that would justify a C+ performance. This shit is F. F for fffffail.

–ADF

Steel Panther plays Mondays at House of Blues Sunset Strip and weekends in Vegas. Dates here.