‘Dee Snider’s Strangeland’ Is Twisted Beyond a Doubt

Capt. Howdy is the kind of guy who likes to hear himself talk. So he sews together the lips of visitors to his surgical dungeon in otherwise lovely Helverton, Colo.

Unless the name Dee Snider means something to you from the heavy-metal group Twisted Sister, there’s no reason to read on. “Dee Snider’s Strangeland” is the kind of movie your parents warned you about. And they were right.

It’s a disturbing, hopeless, irredeemable series of images that will scar you if you wander into it unprepared. The images are strong and violent, and ultimately shocking. But the effect is not horrific, just numbing. And there’s no reward for sitting through “Strangeland,” a standard crime-against-a-cop’s-family plot larded with the tools and incantations of body-piercing and torture.

Far from being a new horror-genre icon, Snider’s Howdy is a serial sadist who draws his victims from Internet chat/try-on rooms for a little sew and tell, until he traps the teenage daughter of Det. Mike Gage. Then it’s www.war.com.

In short order, he is arrested, found insane, learns to wear cardigans and take his medicine, returns to his home, is visited by the Helverton vigilante society, stops taking his medicine and sprouts his old studs and spikes in a revenge spree that sweeps up the town’s moralizers. Robert Englund makes an appearance, which makes it an official horror movie. Even the technology ratchets up to full frontal video.

That the petard on which Howdy is hoisted is of his own making, not society’s, is the best indication that “Strangeland” is strange for its own sake. Capt. Howdy--the name of the unseen hand that invited evil into “The Exorcist”--claims a spiritual foundation, but it’s entirely one way. Howdy has no acolytes, only victims.

The only rite of passage his rituals offer is passage into death. And his own willingness to cross over removes him from the roster of characters to care about.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong graphic torture/violence, language, nudity and sexuality. Times guidelines: graphic scenes of body piercing among many hard-to-watch scenes.

‘Dee Snider’s Strangeland’

Dee Snider: Captain Howdy

Kevin Gage: Detective Mike Gage

Elizabeth Pea: Toni Gage

Brett Harrelson: Steve Christian

Robert Englund: Jackson Roth

Linda Cardellini: Genevieve Gage

A Raucous Releasing presentation. Directed by John Pieplow. Written by Dee Snider. Produced by David L. Bushell, Larry Meistrich. Executive producer Dee Snider. Cinematography Goran Pavivevic. Costume design Jillian Kreiner. Production design Debbie DeVilla. Editing Joe Woo Jr. Special effects Michael Burnett Productions. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

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* In general release around Southern California.