In 1998, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider wrote and starred in the underrated horror film Strangeland… and for more than twenty years, he has been struggling to get a sequel to that film into production. He had hopes of turning his Strangeland character Captain Howdy into the next big horror icon, but it just hasn’t worked out that way. While he still wants to make a Strangeland sequel someday, Snider has also been developing other projects recently. Yesterday he took to Twitter to announce that one of his genre projects has been given a greenlight and will go into pre-production next month.
While Strangeland was directed by John Pieplow (who hasn’t directed anything since), Snider will be directing this new film himself. He said,
Wanna talk about a major distraction? My next scary movie (I wrote & I’m directing) is green lit & starts pre-production in 4 weeks! In between I’ve got 3 week pre-planned vacation (two years ago before covid, cancelled twice). When I get home I leave next day! Yes/Yikes!
Given the bad luck Strangeland 2 has had over the decades, it’s probably safe to assume that the movie Snider will be directing this year isn’t that one. Speaking with Metal Casino Live back in 2020, he said (with thanks to Blabbermouth),
I’m scheduled to direct two movies. I was supposed to be directing one right now, but the COVID thing shut down production — a new scary movie called ‘My Enemy’s Enemy‘ that I wrote. I’ve been hired to rewrite a cult classic from the ’80s that I may be directing as well. … ‘My Enemy’s Enemy‘ is powerfully disturbing. People said to me, after ‘Strangeland‘, why didn’t I do something else, and I said ’cause I didn’t have an idea; I didn’t wanna just do something typical. And there was a crime committed where I grew up on Long Island in 1982. It’s considered the most horrible of crimes in the history of the area where I grew up. Each of the people convicted got 365 years in prison — each — for the crime. And I took that story, and I said, ‘Well, what if…?’ And I’m being very general, ’cause I don’t wanna give away too much at this point. But I said, ‘What if when this crime was happening, a Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees showed up — someone who was more evil. And ‘My Enemy’s Enemy‘ is about, can we join each other, when we’re enemies, to fight a greater enemy? If you’ve just had horrible things done to you by people, but could you work with them to fight somebody who was even more horrible. So it’s based on a true story, but then I just went with what I call the X factor and go into fantasy world. So I think people are gonna be very disturbed, but they’re gonna enjoy it.”
Snider later told our friends over at Bloody Disgusting that Halloween franchise producer Malek Akkad was developing My Enemy’s Enemy with him. So there seems to be a good chance that My Enemy’s Enemy is the one moving forward. But we’ll have to wait to find out for sure.
Are you excited to hear that Dee Snider is directing a scary movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
(Using Rob Zombie videos in this article because we don’t currently have any Dee Snider videos on our YouTube channels.)