Hellbent

Synopsis From Cover:

A night filled with beautiful people, music and dancing at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival turns deadly for four gay friends.  When two men are found dead, the friends find that they are the killer's next target.  No one knows who will survive the night.

Apparently I was still in the mood for scary movies in November because I popped this one in the DVD player the other night and I rediscovered a movie that despite it's low budget, I absolutely love.

The movie was created by filmmakers involved with both "Halloween" and "Nightmare On Elm Street" so it gets a boost in the experience department.  When you have very little money, it helps to have people involved that know how to get the most bang for the buck. 

What I appreciate about this movie is that they didn't go for the cheesy, gimmicky feel that would have been an obvious choice.  When you make the first gay slasher movie, it's probably a little too easy to go over the top.  What they chose to do instead was film it as a great slasher movie that just happened to have gay characters.  The sexuality wasn't the focus, rather the homicidal maniac beheading a group of friends was the basic concept of the story.  Now I'm not saying that sex and romance don't figure in, because they do.  How can you have a slasher movie without those two things?  What I am saying is that those aspects where there to enhance the story, not distract from it.

What I love the most though, out of every other aspect of the movie, was the killer.  First of all he's hot, look at him.  He's wearing black pants, no shirt covering that great body and pretty sexy devil mask that allows us to see the full lips and goatee.  If I'm going to be stalked and beheads, let it be by someone who looks like that.

The best thing about him though is that we never learn his name nor why he's suddenly decided to start beheading gay men.  We don't know if he is some religious fundamentalist that hates gay men, if he's an escaped lunatic from an insane asylum, or if he just got dumped by his boyfriend and decided to seek revenge on everyone else.  I can't stand slasher/horror movies that feel a need to create an elaborate back story to explain the killer's behavior.  Sometimes it's nice to have a homicidal maniac be a homicidal maniac, not some psychological damaged antihero we are supposed to feel sorry for.

Now I'm not saying this movie is perfect, because it's not.  Like most low budget movies the acting isn't Oscar worthy, though it's no worse than most horror movies.  The crowd footage looks more like stock footage used on a network news broadcast, which it probably was.   No matter what though, the minor flaws inherent in a movie of this type doesn't detract from the overall product.  It's an entertaining movies that is well worth the 84 minutes it takes to watch.

This will qualify for this month's mini challenge for the GLBT Challenge 2010.