Hellbent (2004)

i must have seen a different film!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I caught this title a while ago as I became quickly intrigued for obvious reasons namely an all male cast and the fact that it's the first gay slasher movie, I caught the trailers online and became quickly interested, even though "Hell-bent" offers nothing new or original to the genre, a pretty much by numbers a routine slasher movie, but with a fresh approach. Although there have been gay characters in other horror movies, this is the first time that a movie centres round a group of gay men. For the movie itself, it's very well made nothing groundbreaking though and plus it's full of classic clichés and an interesting group of characters and a decent cast.The beginning we have the cliché couple making out in the car and then quickly killed off, quite violently but fun none the less and as the movie goes on its a pretty simple straight forward movie that never gets over complicated . But the fact that the killer's motive is never revealed seems rather lazy and uninspired, and the dialogue at times seems inane, and plus it lacks tension in certain places and the killer wasn't scary looked more like a gay porn star, I was more like falling in love than fearing his presence, but he did do some pretty decent kills, quite slick. But I just thought that this movie could have pushed the boundaries a bit more, as it doesn't feature any sex scenes which did kind of disappoint me in a way, but I still found this movie really fun and entertaining and the set pieces were shot brilliantly, like the carnival, the nightclubs and the final chase were all made decent good use off.Another factor that I liked about this movie was the decent cast that could have easily been one dimensional typical gay characters that feature in TV shows but gladly they weren't they were well rounded and well written firstly there was Dylan Fergus who plays the obvious final boy Eddie was just heart-warming and lovable, well at ease in his role and someone to root for in the end. Bryan Kirkwood who plays the love interest to Eddie was rugged and cool in his leather jacket and made the romance sub plot interesting and wanting more. Hank Harris who plays the shy boy Joey whose in love with the football player was very likable and gave a quite touching performance, definitely one of those characters that you'll miss. Andrew Levitas who plays the slutty character Chaz was a definite stand out for me, he oozed charm and worked well with the material he was given. And finally Matt Phillips as the drag queen Tobey, who to be honest annoyed me at first, I dunno maybe it's the fact that we never see him out of the drag costume, but I warmed to him as the movie went on, okay his acting wasn't perfect but he still had great chemistry with the other cast members.All in all "Hell-Bent" is a fun enjoyable movie that although doesn't offer new (apart from the gay angle) to the slasher genre or change your life in any way, it's still entertaining.

This is a low budget, slasher film set in West Hollywood on Halloween. Being low budget some of the acting isn't world class, but that really doesn't hurt the film because of the campy, sexy, spooky nature of the film.There are some wonderful moments in the film, like when Eddie first sees Jake, and has trouble hitting on him because he's nervous, or when Joey gets the phone number of the guy he's interested in. On the flip side there's the scene where Eddie is handcuffed to the bed while the killer is lurking about, undetected, in his apartment. That was more suspenseful and more thrilling than "1408" and "Vacancy" combined.In the end, like any slasher film, the killer survives, and I hope there's a sequel set in New York on Halloween. How cool would that be?

This movie, like a number of movies that have been churned out since the New Queer Cinema days, suffers from a genuinely bad script and performances by actors who obviously don't want to be in a gay movie.Richard Ruccolo obviously didn't want to kiss a gay guy in All Over The Guy but gave a good performance, given the bad dialogue and general sitcom-quality of that script. The best thing that can be said about the main actors in this movie is that they give plausible enough performance IN SOME cases in A VERY FEW scenes, with some of them giving really bad performances nearly always. Bryan Kirkwood was patently uncomfortable that he brings new meaning to the word "trade." Some gay-for-pay straight models in gay adult films have given far more believable "acting" performances. If Hank Harris was supposed to be Dylan Fergus' (Eddie) and Eddie's cop/sister younger brother, he needs better skin care and makeup. The producer should have also, at least, sprung for the buck to buy some black hair coloring at the 99 Cents Only store to make the family resemblance at bit more plausible.SPOILERSBut plausibility isn't something this film seems to want to care much about -- for example, the Luke character leaves a crime scene or shows up at the "West Hollywood Police Department" in a motorcycle, sans helmet without hearing word one about it from a "WH" cop; the Chaz character get not only sliced but decapitated on a crowded dance floor and no one notices, hears about it, or stumbles on him; Eddie ends up at the crime scene where his younger brother (whom he was earlier so concerned over and about) was killed, gets attacked there himself, goes to the "WHPD," runs into his sister and yet no one (not even the sister) mentions to him that his brother was the victim at that crime scene. By this point, even some stupid queen in a k-hole would have realized there was a bloody, decapitated body on the dance floor and since the "devil" wasn't taking wallets, it shouldn't have been that hard to ID the bodies. Yet, when he gets homes, Eddie walks around the apartment wondering where everyone is. . .I could spend another few paragraphs on the really horrible dialogue or plot points, but it's not worth it. Suffice to say that it would have taken about 1/3 the cleverness of any of the Scream movies with even this exact same cast, to make a movie 10 times better.This isn't even worth spending the time watching on Logo, much less paying $3.95 for it on Here! TV.

Quite a lot of people around here are referring to "HellBent" as being a genuine throwback to the 80's horror sub genre of slashers, but it isn't one, really. Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the whole point of slasher-movies the guessing along for the killer's identity and the search for a link between him/her and the people that got killed? Well, at least mostly that was the point, unless the culprit was Jason Vorhees (Friday the 13th) or Michael Myers (Halloween) who just massacred teenagers because it was in their genes. With his debut "HellBent", writer/director Paul Etheredge-Ouzts entirely disregards this operating routine, but not necessarily for the better. The film profiles itself as the very first gay slasher movie (although that's debatable) so that's exactly what happens! Queer boys are butchered and that's it…period! The maniac is an athletic type of guy wearing a devil-outfit and his chest is perfectly waxed. He dwells around the places that the homosexual crowd of West Hollywood considers to be paradise, like the park, dark bathrooms in clubs and the annual Halloween parade. After murdering a couple of boys in their car, he focuses on a group of gay roommates that anxiously look forward to a Halloween night full of wild parties, kinky costumes and – of course – meaningless sex with handsome strangers. Whose is the face hiding behind the mask is anyone's guess, as the script doesn't attempt much to provide this handsome devil with motives for his truly sick – he chops off and collects his victims' heads – killing spree. Is he a homophobe gone crazy? Is he a homosexual himself but too scared to come out of the closet? Did Michael Jackson assault him? You're not meant to know and, frankly, it doesn't matter because "HellBent" delivers exactly what it promises: bloody murders and a wide variation of eccentric characters. The players are all stereotypical characters that always appear in slashers, only they're all gay this time – duh! The main star is a yummy "scream-queer" who's friendly and looking for true love, while his friends circle contains the typical macho, the sex-addict and the overly shy and emotionally vulnerable virgin. Oh well, I'm really not in the mood to nag or complain too much about the weaknesses in this film. It's short and funny, the soundtrack is excellent and every cast-member is a fresh-faced youngster that plays his role with a lot of enthusiasm. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend "HellBent" to any horror fan that isn't too shallow.PS (and SPOILER): Although "HellBent" is technically the first horror film with an all-gay cast, the formula of a homosexual murderer was used already once, namely in the long-forgotten and truly abysmal 80's flick "Hide and Go Shriek".