Following his split from Twisted Sister in 1987, Snider would continue to make music.

With this, Snider would add screenwriter and actor to his growing resume. His first film, Strangeland, would surprise horror-lovers and has since become a bonafide cult classic, with Dee in the starring role of Captain Howdy. This brings us back to the fact that Dee Snider has pretty much done it all. The band had been broken up for ten years, we had sold tens of millions of records and we had not gotten one royalty check.' In order to get the band to reunite the record label wiped our debt out. ' Twisted Sister didn't start receiving any album sales royalties until we recorded 'Heroes Are Hard To Find' for the Strangeland soundtrack. Here's Dee on being broke back when the band was at the height of their fame: Despite Dee's heroic takedown of the PMRC in 1985 (which helped illuminate the fact that Snider wasn't just a shock rocker with no substance), the band wasn't blowing their dough on hot cars or chicks, because they didn't have any. As a child of the 80s, it seemed pretty reasonable to believe that Dee and the members of Twisted Sister were living the high life thanks to the titanic success of Stay Hungry.Д«ut the reality was light-years away from the truth. Later, in 1984, the album Stay Hungry would turn Twisted Sister's rising star into a full-fledged comet, burning through Earth's atmosphere that nobody could look away from. The first Twisted Sister album ( Under The Blade, produced by Pete Way) wouldn't arrive until 1982, and their well-established fan base ate it up. Once Twisted Sister shifted from glam to heavy metal, things started happening for the band, who had already played thousands of shows, recorded demos, and sold out the three thousand-seat New York Palladium without the help of a record label or radio stations. The vision of an already 6' 1' Dee Snider dressed to shock and impress while wearing boots that helped him tower over the crowd at nearly seven feet (much like Tubes' vocalist Fee Waybill) is certainly one of the more compelling images from the world of 80s heavy metal. The band officially transitioned from glam-rocking their way around New Jersey and the East Coast вЂ“ often dressed in women's clothing and platform shoes вЂ“ to a more heavy metal sound. After forming Twisted Sister, Dee and his bandmates would be instrumental in the creation of the hurtling comet that was heavy metal starting in the late 1970s.