By Geno McGahee
When I was a teenager, I loved Twisted Sister and still do. Their music is catchy and defiant and who doesn’t like that? In 1998, when STRANGELAND was released, I was quite excited and it seemed like Dee Snider, the writer and lead singer of Twisted Sister, was the right guy for the job and could bring a certain perspective to the genre that would be interesting and edgy. When I watched it in 98, I was far from impressed and thought that the entire film was shit, but it’s been over 20 years and it was time for another look.
The late 1990s was not a great time for horror movies with titles like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, SCREAM 2, HALLOWEEN: H20 and THE FACULTY on the big screen. Part of the frustration with STRANGELAND for many was that there was plenty of room for something new and fresh, but the film plays out much like those titles. It fits right in with the mediocrities of the time and has the same look and feel of those and is arguably one of the more forgettable entries of that time.
Genevieve Gage (Linda Cardellini) is in a chat room talking to complete strangers. This was new at the time. I remember when chat rooms were the thing in the late 90s and it was sort of fun shooting the shit with complete strangers, but there was always a risk. You could run into a perv or a killer and Genevieve does just that when she starts talking to a man with the handle of Capt. Howdy, which is really serial killer Carleton Hendricks (Dee Snider). She agrees to date him and then disappears, freaking out her dad, a detective, Mike Gage (Kevin Gage).
The hunt is on for his daughter and it leads through a large rave. I think it was a rave. I’ve never been to a rave, but I thought it was supposed to be music, drugs and glow sticks. This party had men in leather masks, a strange band that couldn’t sing, and a lot of other weird shit happening. I think that the point was to show the demented underground of humanity but it came off as silly.
The cops are closing in, but they end up at the wrong house as Carleton pierces some poor guy’s dick with some cock ring thing. I’m so naïve. I don’t know what you call them. I would ask, but where do you start? Anyway, the cops kick in the door and go upstairs and find some 80 year old guy plowing his equally old wife. Part of this film is to disturb and old people fucking is disturbing but it seemed forced. I know a lot of old guys and they always say that they haven’t fucked anything in 30 years. Take 20 points off for lack of realism.
After more investigation, Mike tracks down Carleton and finds his daughter naked in a cage and that poor guy that got his dick pierced along with some other unfortunate souls that Hendricks was torturing. Mike just walks past them, shocked, but didn’t help any of them until he found his daughter. He arrests Hendricks and saves his daughter but I wonder if he got the others out as well. I feel bad for that poor pierced pecker guy. How the hell did he get there to begin with? Dee Snider looked SO fucked up with tattoos from head to toe, piercings from head to toe and fang teeth, how the fuck would this guy trust him and go to his house? If you meet a dude that looks like Dee Snider does in STRANGELAND and you go to his house and you don’t expect to be sexually abused and have your dick fucked with, you are clueless.
Hendricks goes away to prison, but he’s not there long. They treat him and decide that he is no longer a threat and that, if medicated, will not present any threat. Unfortunately, the town has different feelings and a group of guys get together to bring justice to Hendricks, led by Jackson Roth played by Robert Englund. Now Robert Englund is great as Freddy, but I’ve always found the rest of the stuff he does to be piss poor, with the exception of V.
Jackson is a white trash drunk that watches rape porn to get hard for his old lady. When he’s not doing that stuff, he is organizing a group of fellow white trash guys to administer punishment to ex-convicts. They kidnap Hendricks and beat him down and bring him to a big tree and hang him. He hangs there and is presumed dead but after the crowd walks away, the branch breaks and he regroups and becomes Capt. Howdy again. Hendricks kidnaps Gage’s daughter again and the hunt is back on again, leading to a showdown, one on one with Mike Gage and Hendricks and ends in predictable way.
STRANGELAND is terrible. It’s not scary. It’s not good. It’s an attempt by Dee Snider to create something disturbing and new, but it fails miserably. I love Snider’s music and his heart was in the right place, but this movie is worse than I remember it when I first saw it in 98. Avoid it.
