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Strangeland Reviews

Former Twisted Sister front man Dee Snider looks pretty darned scary: teeth filed to points, torso and face covered with tribal tattoos, scalp crowned with industrial pink dreadlocks, piercings everywhere you can see and some places you can't. But movies -- even horror movies with relatively modest ambitions -- don't live by scary-looking super creeps alone. Carleton Hendricks (Snider) is the guy you don't want to meet in an Internet chat room, especially if you're a gullible teenage girl. Friends Genevieve (Linda Cardellini) and Tiana (Amal Rhoe) get friendly online with Hendricks -- who, in homage to The Exorcist, goes by the snappy name "Captain Howdy" -- and thinking he's a boy their own age, accept his invitation to go to a party at his place. Since he's really a psycho sadist, they're soon very sorry they did. Genevieve's dad, Detective Gage (Kevin Gage) actually rescues her from the monster -- though he's too late to help Tiana, who has a weak heart and dies before the real fun begins -- but Hendricks is declared insane, sent to a mental home and released fewer than four years later to pick up where he left off. Snider, who also wrote the screenplay, shows no particular aptitude for dialogue or story construction: The story hangs on about 20 minutes of body modification scenes showcased for maximum freak-show appeal, interspersed with a whole lot of boring police procedural stuff, cops (including Woody Harrelson's less talented brother Brett) barking things like, "Where's that list of known sex offenders, dammit?" And he's an actor of limited gifts: Snider's thin whine is more annoying than frightening. Robert Englund, better known as Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street pictures, plays the small role of a loathsome redneck, and Elizabeth Pena toils gamely in the thankless role of Genevieve's mother.