Hardcore Kiss fans around the world know about the song and film ‘Detroit Rock City,’ but there’s so much more to the band’s Michigan connection, as a new movie titled ‘Cadillac High‘ is about to explain.

In October 1975, the band arrived in the small central Michigan city of Cadillac to participate in the high school football team’s homecoming game weekend, and that special moment in Kisstory will be revisited in this film.

Cadillac, as well as Pontiac and Detroit, will serve as filming locations for ‘Cadillac High,’ and that’s just fine with Michelle Begnoche of the Michigan Film Office. “It was a project that we wanted to make sure to do everything possible to keep here in Michigan,” she says.

The story about Kiss visiting Cadillac certainly is worthy of the big screen. In 1974, Cadillac High School assistant football coach Jim Neff thought his players could use a lift, so he played some Kiss tunes on the bus. The team started to win, and Kiss music became a staple as Cadillac High’s Vikings racked up seven straight victories to close out the season.

Neff subsequently contacted Kiss to let them know that the band’s songs were used as the team’s “battle cry and their rallying music,” Paul Stanley recalled recently.

The historic homecoming parade, which also included a Kiss performance at the Cadillac High School gym, took place on Oct. 9, 1975. Seeing the people of Cadillac with their faces painted in the same style as the band members “was like landing on planet Kiss,” remembered Gene Simmons, who looks back on the event as “a lifetime memory and a source of pride for us.”

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