Addendum - sorry, just re-read your post and saw that your budget was $400 for the guitar AND amp! The recommendations you got above from Allthumbs and Fly135 are very good - the only things I could add that you might want to check out would be:
Guitar - the Yamaha Pacifica 'Strat copies....they seem to get pretty consistently good reviews in the budget guitar category.
Amp - The Roland Cube 15. This is a "modeling" amp, and would give you a great variety of sounds without having to buy stompboxes. They have settings for everything from super-clean to high-gain fuzz distortion, along with several onboard effects (reverb, echo, phaser, flanger, etc.). Musician's friend has the Cube 15 on sale right now for 69.99, which is a pretty killer deal - that's almost half the price of it's little brother, the Micro Cube!
Mac
"I wish I could play that fast - then I would have the option of not doing that."
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