I admit the acting is a little mediocre and some of the torture scenes made my skin crawl. But none of that disturbed me as much as the ending did.

I didn't like Mike at all throughout the movie. I was sympathetic to him because of his daughter's predicament, but that quickly faded half-way through the movie.

I hate it when the town tried to lynch Captain Howdy. Here's a guy who seems to have genuinely turned around and they string him up based on suspicion. And Mike by all means as an officer should have stopped it. But he didn't. He just sat there and watched them drag him off.

The whole attempted lynching and the aftermath just proved to me how sick the whole town was. I couldn't see them as mere "upstanding citizens" as they stood there laughing as he choked. Even more so, the guy leading the mob after leaving him forgets completely about his own "missing" daughter and goes home to watch kiddy porn.

Of course, because they tried to kill him his evil side re-emerges and he gets back to his old ways, this time by torturing the people who tried to kill him. I almost wished he'd taken Mike along, and the fact he kidnapped his daughter again for torture irked me completely. Then again, I can imagine that's the best way to hurt him.

Anyways, onto the ending. After rescuing everyone, Captain Howdy and Mike get into a typical fight to the death. And here's where Mike's sick side comes out; he beats Captain Howdy to a bloody pulp and instead of arresting him as, you know, a cop SHOULD do, he murders him. Viciously. Sadistically. Like a monster, NOT the cop he SHOULD be. I can't even watch this movie all the way through anymore because of this. It was even more sickening afterward when his COP comrades commend him for it!!

I'm not denying Captain Howdy deserved justice for the horrible things he did. But he didn't murder anyone. And the horrible way he died wasn't necessary. All this movie did was show me that "normal" people can be just as monstrous, if not more so, than the very criminals they scorn.

I first rented this movie on the infamous day of September 11, 2001. Since then I've seen it a number of times. My only complaint is that it's too short. "Strangeland" would've be a complete piece of horror art at two hours. As it stands, the running time is only an hour and a half.

Ex-Twisted Sister member Dee Snider wrote, produced and stars in this 1998 shockfest set in a small Colorado town. He plays Carleton Hendricks, a crazed sadist who has psychotic ideologies on human evolution and a love for near-death experiences. Hendricks is no pushover, he's a pumped up six-foot "modern primitive". Someone who has tattooed and pierced their body to the very extreme. When he makes his first full appearance in the film, it is a truly terrifying sight.

Hendricks' main hobby in life is to share his "spiritual awakenings" with his kidnapped victims. He visits Internet chatrooms under the name "Capt. Howdy" and then invites people over to his house. They believe they're going to a party. Instead, they find themselves in a house of pain and suffering. Hendricks sows their eyes and mouths shut and tortures them by sticking blades and hooks in numerous parts of their body. If it sounds sick, it's because it is.

One of Hendrick's victims is Genevieve, the teenaged daughter of detective Michael Gage. Gage not only manages to save her, but arrests Hendricks as well. Four years later, Hendricks is released from a mental institution completely rehabilitated to the disapproval of the community. A group of rednecks led by Freddy Krueger himself, actor Robert Englund, decide to kill him. They fail and Hendricks reverts back to his old self.

The rest of the film I'll leave to you, only to say the conclusion is satisfying and will leave you in shivers. With the exception of Snider, the acting isn't too good, but it's serviceable. The direction is okay, too. There are some humorous parts in "Strangeland" and they are very funny. I also loved the soundtrack, it's awesome and worth buying if you love rock. Overall, this is a movie worth watching. If you love low-budget horror films with a sense of humor, check it out. You'll probably like it.

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