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
