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The Undeads vs. KISS: Who copied whom?
Everyone asks this.
Clearly, the Undeads are intended to call to mind Cesare the Somnambulist, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which dates from 1919, and is generally credited as being the first horror film. Their makeup (particularly Archie Hahn's), costumes, zombielike movements, and the design of their set are all in obvious homage to Cesare.
Conrad Veidt as Cesare, the original Undead.
Nevertheless, we are constantly asked whether the Undeads modeled themselves after KISS, or vice versa.
KISS's first live show in makeup was on January 30, 1973. Over the next few months, KISS had a number of live gigs in New York.
By December of 1973, KISS had secured a recording contract, and was busily recording their first album at Bell Sound Studios, in New York. December of 1973 -- around nine months after KISS had started performing in makeup -- was exactly when the Undeads were being filmed in Dallas for Phantom.
KISS's first album was released (with KISS, in makeup, on the cover) in February of 1974, some eight months before anyone had seen Phantom. By the time Phantom was released, on October 31, 1974, KISS had already performed on national television, in makeup, on the Mike Douglas Show and ABC's in Concert, and had released their second album.
Given this chronology, it's simply inconceivable that KISS got their makeup ideas from The Undeads. Sorry.
It also seems fairly unlikely that Phantom's makeup crew was inspired by KISS (or anything other than Caligari), given KISS's relatively low level of exposure by the winter of 1973, when Phantom was in production; by the time KISS got their first nationwide exposure, Phantom was in postproduction.
What seems far more likely is that the principal inspiration for the Undeads' makeup, apart from Cesare, was Alice Cooper, a pioneer in bringing grisly horror motifs to rock music, who, by 1973, had been wearing ghoulish makeup and performing gory stunts onstage for years. His footsteps have been followed more recently by Marilyn Manson and zillions of goth bands. Cooper's use of stage makeup is very possibly the link that inspired transferring the Caligari look to the rock'n'roll milieu.
While many male rockers of the period were putting makeup on with a trowel (David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and even Mick Jagger), Cooper's act, unlike the others, but in common with The Undeads, featured general ghoulishness, and made the death/entertainment connection: he performed with guillotines and liberal amounts of stage blood, made himself up to be corpselike, and was performing songs with titles like "I Love the Dead", "Sick Things," "Dead Babies," and "Killer". KISS's makeup and overall aesthetic, on the other hand, was more lively and had nothing to do with evoking deathlike or gothic imagery.
So, in the KISS vs. The Undeads contest, the winner is: Alice Cooper
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