Strangeland

This movie looked pretty good a first. A somewhat original idea for a horror movie, I was looking forward to this movie to come out. I rented it on DVD, and I just had to laugh. Dee Snyder needs to stay out of the horror movie business! Probably the movie business altogether. The movie starts out promising, but goes downhill from there. The "bad guy," Captain Howdy is laughable, and the piercings and tattoos make you laugh, instead of making you scared! The actors in this movie are horrible, and I'm shocked they ever landed parts in their lives. I just found out the girl from Freaks and Geeks is the young girl who is tormented by Howdy, and I think she was awesome in Freaks and Geeks, but here, she's just like the rest of them. When it comes down to it, she doesn't even have any lines in the entire film, and her part is just a tiny piece of the puzzle. The detectives in this movie are fake, and both of them can't act for nothing. Like I said, the start of the film is ok with an internet stalker/murderer played by Snyder, but his character just isn't scary. Not much in the movie is scary, and most of it is just a way for Snyder to try to freak you out with horrible scenes of girls tied up naked with hooks going into their bodies, etc. I wouldn't waste my time on this movie. It's a bad movie, and an even worse horror movie.

As a simple but interesting story, Strangeland is in the middle of good and bad. It borrows too much from other flicks, like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. Some lines ("What a rush?") are kind of terrible. And the Twisted Sister references that no one picks up on are laughable: the "we're not gonna take it" sign that the angry mob is holding and Dee's character "Capt. Howdy". Yes, it's in the Exorcist, but it is also a Sister song. On a good note, Dee Snider is a creepy looking character. The first time you really get a good look at him he's intense. And there are a few gross sadist scenes, one involving piercing an unwilling man in the most dreaded of all places. That part made me wince. And that's fairly hard to do. Also, I loved the fact that Robert Englund plays a character that is the exact opposite of his role in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Instead of playing the killer, he is the leader of the mob going to find the killer. Krueger fans will know what I'm talking about. It's a brilliant and appropriate piece of casting that genre fans should appreciate. Overall, the good outweighs the bad, and I would recommend watching it (at least once). You have to give Dee some credit, there are a lot worse movies out there.

"Strangeland" isn't that bad if it features fears of yours.

**SPOILERS**

Genevieve Gage, (Linda Cardellini) is just the latest in a series of disappearances plaguing a small town. Her father Mike (Kevin Gage) just happens to be the detective on the case, and his partner Steve Christian, (Brett Harrelson) convinces him to check out a club that specializes in piercing and scarification, which is also the secret hideout for Captain Howdy, (Dee Snider) also known as Carleton Hendricks, who is the suspected cause of the disappearances. With the help of his cousin Angela Stravelli, (Amy Smart) Captain Howdy is caught and brought to justice. After a couple years in an insane asylum, he gets released back into the community, and a local militia group led by Jackson Roth, (Robert Englund) kidnap him and leave him for dead. When new evidence confirms that he may not be dead, Detective Gage tries harder than before to stop him.

The Good News: As it gets more and more commonplace for people to chat online and in instant messaging, the fact that this one was the first out of the gate to show the potential evils and dangers of the situation is a nice and original approach. Even though it deviates from it towards the end, the original set-up is pretty great. The ending is also pretty great and pretty exciting, with a great bit of action in there as well. Most of the focus on this film is the discomfort one gets when exposed to extreme forms of scaring and skin piercing, and it is a subject most get uncomfortable viewing. This is mostly played out in the psychical form of Captain Howdy, who does look pretty creepy. His look, though, drives the film, so I won't spoil it, but it is a really disturbing and shocking look that will definitely get you a little crept out the first time his full appearance is shown.

The Bad News: This film basically relies on the belief that extreme piercing, full-body tattoos and scaring are scary images for the average person. If none of them are scary or frightening, then most of the film's power will be lost. Besides that, there really isn't a whole else in the film. It's not a traditional horror film in the slasher sense, so for some it can be quite boring, as there's no real jumps, suspense or anything similar.

The Final Verdict: If any of the acts or ideas featured in this one are fears of yours, this could be a pretty scary film. If not, this can be a pretty dull experience. Otherwise, it's pretty middle of he road and pretty forgettable. Use your own judgment to determine if you will like this one or not.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, some Language, a brief sex scene, scenes of torture and extreme images of body modification

It was hard to expect a lot from Strangeland. Its star and writer is Dee Snider, formerly the frontman for the metal band Twisted Sister and not known for his acting. It's also a bloody horror movie, which can be hit or miss for even the most fervent of fans. Oddly enough, though, the result is a passable representative of the genre, with Snider's Captain Howdy a memorable, if underexplored, villain.

Two teenage girls, in the early years of the Internet, encounter someone calling themselves Captain Howdy in an online chat room. He invites them to a party, and naturally they accept. Seems legit! I mean, his profile information makes him look like a cool dude! What could possibly go wrong? A lot, turns out. The girls go missing, and soon teen Tiana (Amal Roe) is found in the trunk of her own submerged car, hands and feet bound and mouth sewn shut. Her friend Genevieve (Linda Cardellini) is nowhere to be found.

Genevieve's dad happens to be a cop named Mike Gage (Kevin Gage), and he and his rambunctious young partner try desperately to find Genevieve. It doesn't take them long, because all they have to do is visit the same chat room, and using the leet hacker skillz of cousin Angela (Amy Smart), find the name of the last person to whom Genevieve chatted, strike up a conversation, and away they go. Very little cat and mouse follows, and it isn't long before Mike finds the good Captain, who's as wacked as you'd expect him to be, what with the sadistic attitude (setting aside the facial tattoos and multiple piercings). Turns out the guy's really into S&M, such as putting pins through people's skin and suspending them from a ceiling or in a really small stand-up cage.

From there on out, it's a cat-but-mostly-mouse game. Captain Howdy is much more interesting than anyone else in the movie, even redneck Jackson Roth, played by Robert Englund. Mike Gage makes for a boring lead. Snider appears to be having a lot of fun, pontificating like a megalomaniacal Batman villain, and is a good fit for the movie. Kind of a shame that more Strangeland movies weren't made. They weren't made, by the way, partly because of the film's sluggish second half, in which Howdy appears to be running a race in which everyone else is crawling on their backs. Yes, their backs. And it's kind of a shame, because the character is so strikingly charismatic. Was Captain Howdy always insane? We'll never know

That Twisted Sister's Dee Snyder wrote and produced this may have turned some people off from even giving it a try. It's also in no small part inspired by The Silence of the Lambs (from which it steals at least one scene) and Se7en, and as with other movies that have taken inspiration from those movies, such as 8mm, Feardotcom and Saw, took some flak for that too. The title is a stumper, I don't know what it means and it doesn't seem to suit the movie well. The shocking cover image is well chosen, though it might surprise some that a person's mouth sewn shut could be found in the opening scene of a movie from the early 1930s, Murders in the Zoo.

In truth, it's not all that bad. A young woman is lured to a party through an online chatroom and an IM from "Captain Howdy," and her friend turns up dead with signs of body modification-inspired torture. A large septum piercing found in the trunk of her car provides a clue (I didn't understand how it could have been accidentally left, or why it would have been planted). The cop learns a bit about "modern primitives" (I think there's a shot from the RE/ Search book of that name) and online chatrooms, still a danger to the unwary today.

Somewhat surprisingly, partway into the movie we get a "four years later" intertitle, and the discovery of a second set of victims seems awfully convenient. The ending confrontation is disappointing.

There are nods to other movies as well, as when a group of neighbors tries to lynch the bad guy, led by Jack (Robert Englund). This is quite reminiscent of the lynching of Freddie Krueger (Robert Englund again) by his neighbors in the Nightmare on Elm Street backstory.

I saw the version on video, and am not sure how the unrated DVD might differ.