Extremely Online: 'Dee Snider's Strangeland'

Dee Snider’s Strangeland (1998) 

Freaking out about: Keyboards, computer monitors, automation of any kind whatsoever. Serial torturers and murderers disguising themselves as “cool guys” in internet chat rooms. Also Christian-coded vigilantism and people who are too judge-y about body modification. 
Panic level (out of 10): 10. The internet is little here but a confounding portal to what amounts to a hunting ground for anonymized violent freaks. 
Reason for optimism: Fax machines, beepers, landlines, and other essential technologies from the late 20th century are still in operation. 
Tech gizmo du jour: Low-resolution web cameras where you can kinda make out your loved one being tortured. 
Most 1998 things: The dazzling “Locate-a-Member online search engine.” A dial-up screech followed by an off-brand “You’ve got mail”-style welcome page. A soundtrack that includes “Fuck Off,” a pre-beef, pre-Slim Shady team-up between Detroit chart-toppers and future political adversaries Eminem and Kid Rock. 

In the first scene of Dee Snider’s Strangeland—a film I have referred to as Dee Snider’s SearingGasPainLand almost exclusively since reviewing it for The A.V. Club forever ago—two typical teenagers from suburban Colorado are hanging together in a bedroom. Our bright-eyed heroine is Genevieve Gage, played by Linda Cardellini, who was only a year away from a lead role in Freaks and Geeks and a future where she’d never have to appear in Z-grade shockers like this one again. Sitting excitedly in front of a computer monitor, Genevieve motions her friend Tiana (Amal Rhoe) over to check out the “Teen Chat” she has just entered under the username MissXXX151. Lately, she has been vibing with a user named “CaptHowdy” over snowboarding, hip-hop, and what grade she’s in, and he’s invited her to IM him. 

Tiana is confused by the acronym. “What’s ‘im,’?” Rolling her eyes a little, Genevieve explains instant messaging to Tiana and proselytizes about the future of relationships. “Where have you been?” she asks. “Someday we’ll meet, marry and have cybersex with the man of our dreams online.” The natural follow-up question from Tiana is to wonder how Genevieve can verify that “CaptHowdy” is a fun-loving man-of-our-dreams candidate and not, say, some creep trying to lure naive teenagers into an S&M torture chamber. Her answer is to point to his chatroom details, which I will reproduce in full below: 

Profile: Captain Howdy
Member name: Randy Williams
Location: Helvertown, CO
Birth Date: 9-16-78
Sex: Male
Marital Status: Single
Hobbies: Street hockey, snow boarding, going to concerts
Occupation: Duh… student
Quote: Hey bud, where’s the kegger?

Even at a time when people were still grinding their dial-in connections through AOL or Earthlink discs or Netscape browsers—I was basically unreachable on my home line during waking hours—Strangeland felt conspicuously like the work of a panicked Luddite. (My review called it “a braindead, humorless cross between Internet For Dummies and Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist.”) The Luddite in question here was Snider, the hair metal icon behind Twisted Sister, which got its start in the early ’70s but didn’t hit commercial pay dirt until the mid-’80s, when their third album, Stay Hungry, converted two hit singles, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock,” into over two million copies sold by the summer of 1985. The videos for both mashed the teen-rebellion button expertly on MTV, sending up stick-in-the-mud teachers and parents, and it upset enough people to draw interest from Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center, which put Snider in front of a Senate committee. He turned up with his signature fizzy blond mop (not a wig) fully extended, wearing sunglasses indoors and a sleeveless jean jacket over a sleeveless shirt, and read a statement he unfolded from his back pocket—all ideal for his public image.