Standard horror movie score is slightly improved upon by the inclusion of Goth-influenced heavy metal, including a Snider original over the end credits, an element that is likely to be the only thing Twisted Sister fans will enjoy. Otherwise, tech credits are straight-to-video sloppy, with the editing particularly loose and imprecise. Yugoslavian lenser Goran Pavicevic does a solid, if not particularly imaginative, job of shooting the gruesome torture. Sniders track with Anton Sanko, 'Inconclusion,' is dark, Tool-influenced music its well-executed and far removed from the Twisted Sister frontmans roots. Snider is also literally kept in the dark for first half of the film, a particularly strange choice considering he reps the only would-be B.O. Old- and new-school metalheads unite on this 18-track soundtrack to Dee Sniders film. Snider tries hard, but his constant sneering and muscle-flexing are more cliched than frightening, and his thick Long Island accent more suited for a sports-talk DJ than an emissary of evil. The clumsy dialogue, ridiculous plot and slow-motion direction defeat the actors, with talented indie actress Elizabeth Pena seeming particularly lost playing Gage’s long-suffering wife. Its half-hearted attempts at suspense sequences are borrowed from “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven,” and allow the audience to stay at least 10 steps ahead of the dimwitted detectives. It is hard to say which is the film’s biggest crime: not being scary or not being funny. Pic ends indecisively: It’s unclear whether Howdy is dead or kept alive for a sequel that no one will ever ask for.
Howdy quickly extracts revenge on the would-be vigilantes, then re-kidnaps the detective’s daughter, leading to another limp face-off between Howdy and Gage. The hanging doesn’t kill him, and somehow the benign-looking Carleton Hendricks has a serial-killer makeover, compete with the facial tattoos, piercings and hairdo. It’s left open as to whether Howdy, properly medicated, is truly reformed, but it doesn’t matter: Within hours of his return home, he’s hanged from a tree by an angry mob led by a redneck (Robert Englund, trading in his Freddy Krueger claws for a beer bottle). I’m thinking that this guy saw Dee Snider’s film and based himself on the main character. If you don’t know about him look him up but there were lots of similarities. Unaccountably, the child-murdering Howdy, having traded in his bright-red dreadlocks for an Ichabod Crane-style ponytail, is released from the institution in less then four years. Secondly, as I was watching it I was wondering if anyone else thought that perhaps Captain Howdy in Strangeland was the inspiration for the real life killer Pazuzu Algarad. Despite his ineptitude, Gage finds the culprit and his captive daughter in the film’s first 45 minutes, resulting in Howdy being hauled off to a loony bin. Howdy, make a date and, before you can sing a line of “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” one of the girls (Linda Cardellini) is strung up by her wrists with her lips sown shut.Īny potential is quickly doused when story switches gears and becomes a badly staged police procedural documenting the bumbling work of detectives Christian (Brett Harrelson) and Gage (Kevin Gage), the latter of whom just happens to be the captive girl’s father. Initial five minutes provide the only real scares: Two young girls innocently flirt in an Internet chat-room with someone named Capt.
0 kommentar(er)
