HellBent, directed and written by thirty-seven-year-old Paul Etheridge-Ouzts, is strangely billed as the "first all-gay slasher film." Although Hard (1999), an earlier film in the genre, carries a message (indeed, an exposé about the homophobic LAPD), HellBent offers only the narcissism of Caucasian men in their early twenties with fantastic bodies. Whereas Hard has a realistic sex scene, HellBent presents only foreplay. The plot of HellBent is rather simplistic. When the movie begins, two young men are in a car in a West Hollywood park near gay bars; while having sex, they are attacked, killed, and left with their heads chopped off. As is later revealed, a fortysomething muscled perpetrator (played by Michael Louden), wearing a Batman-type devil hood over his face, uses a scythe to make clean cuts. The next day, handsome Eddie (played by Dylan Fergus), who is a civilian junior police officer at a gay-friendly West Hollywood police station (LA County Sheriff's Office actually does the city's policing), learns of the dual murder from his sister Liz (played by Nina Lanley), who is a full-fledged cop. The captain in charge at the police station (played by Wren T. Brown) asks Eddie to pass out flyers, warning West Hollywoodians of the fact that a serial murderer is on the loose, thus enabling Eddie to cruise about town in his Halloween costume, his deceased father's police uniform. That evening is Halloween, so Eddie and his three silly roommates, bisexual Chaz (played by Andrew Levitas), muscular bottom Tobey (played by Matt Phillips) and nonmuscular bottom Joe (played by Hank Harris), get their costumes ready to participate in the event, go in the same car, and idiotically park in the same spot where the two gays were murdered the previous evening. As they walk through the park, they hear a sound in the dark. They respond by ejaculating campy monologues in the slasher's direction and moon him, thus daring him to attack them. The slasher does not respond, but now has his sights on his next victims. After walking two blocks to view the Halloween festivities on the gay boulevard, they enter a mythical leatherbar called Meat, which has quite a show to entertain the half-naked guests. The slasher follows and decapitates first Joe, then Chaz. As he carries one of the heads in a bag, Tobey (in drag) unwisely follows him down an alley, begs for action, and throws his driver's license on the ground to prove his gender, whereupon the slasher obliges by chopping his head off. Filmviewers are now supposed to infer that Tobey's driver's license provides a home address that will serve as the next venue for the slasher to await more prey. Meanwhile, Eddie has allowed himself to be picked up by Jake (played by Bryan Kirkwood), a leatherclad stud who motorcycles him to his apartment, handcuffs him to his bed, and then the slasher appears from hiding. Predictably, there is a scuffle, and good triumphs over evil, that is, if the two unapologetic drug users are considered the good guys. But there are apparent hidden agendas in the film. Although the motive of the anonymous serial killer is not revealed, the speculation in the dialog is gerontophobic--that a man in his forties has recently discovered that he is gay, cannot attract those in their twenties, and reacts by murdering those whom he envies. That part of HellBent would presumably have been slashed if those marketing the film wanted older gays to purchase the DVD version. But the offensive line is left in, suggesting instead that some of those involved in the production have a peculiar form of homophobia. And there is a further hint of prejudice, since the slasher is quite adept at the scythe, an implement once commonly used in Russia and the Ukraine. Filmviewers might infer that the slasher is one of the recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union whose numbers are increasing in West Hollywood; such a person, old enough to have an impressionable son, may perhaps be shocked by daily life within a community where gays are hardly closeted. But even if conjecture about the identity of the slasher is a wide stretch of the imagination, those who recall the boycott of the slasher film Cruising (1980) as an unwelcome portrayal of gay life will wonder why HellBent was ever made. The title of the disgraceful film perhaps will be said to apply to the novices who crafted such a travesty. MH
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