By Lawrence Ferber

Hot director Paul Etheridge-Ouzts and his sexy star Bryan Kirkwood discuss their sizzling new slasher film Hellbent.

Imagine if A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger was hot (and not in the burned-to-death sense). Or Halloween's Michael Meyers had a bubble butt. Or Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees boasted perfect abs. That's pretty much what out writer/director Paul Etheridge-Ouzts did in creating the mysterious, super-sexy shirtless serial killer for his raucous and gory gay slasher film, Hellbent.

"I wanted someone who had an imposing physique and one that would be appealing," he explains of the film's killer, a hottie who wears a devil mask and wields a head-chopping sickle. "I didn't want evil to look like it's traditionally shown, as twisted or deformed. I didn't want that to feed into the explanation -- 'oh, he's pissed off because he's ugly.' I think that's very shallow. I wanted him to be a killer in part because he is so stunning and people can't resist him."

Halloween in West Hollywood: A young police officer, Eddie (Dylan Fergus), and his friends -- hunky party boy Chaz (Andrew Levitas), dragged-out lonely heart Tobey (Matt Phillips) and nerdy Joey (Hank Harris) -- unwittingly become the targets of a slasher (Luke Weaver) whose specialty is decapitations. As they negotiate the crazy streets and parties of Santa Monica Boulevard, the devil stalks and gruesomely dispatches these unwitting young friends. At first, Eddie is too distracted to realize what's happening -- he's focused on Jake (Bryan Kirkwood), a motorcycle-riding hottie who takes a sudden interest. Unfortunately, this burgeoning romance adds one more potential victim to the killer's list ... unless Eddie can stop him first.

With a BFA in directing and design for theater from Pomona College, Etheridge-Ouzts got his start in film as an art department assistant on Oliver Stone's JFK (at the time he was living in Dallas). A longtime horror fan, it was while working as a co-producer on 2001s Circuit that he was approached with a chance to write and direct. "The producers, Sneak Preview Entertainment, had decided they wanted a gay slasher film set on Halloween in WeHo. They brought me in to listen to their pitch and asked 'what would you do?' They commissioned a script from me and there it is. The right place at the right time."

From the get-go, Etheridge-Ouzts was determined to set Hellbent apart from your run-of-the-mill slasher film. "I thought slasher films had a meanness to them I found unsavory," he notes. "I rarely cared about the characters and any explanations given for the killer were always so far-fetched. So when I was given the opportunity to do Hellbent I felt I had to address all those problems. I wanted the lead characters to be people we would want to spend time with, to be sympathetic, and have this camaraderie. I didn't feel like an explanation for the killer's motives was necessary. Even in real life I think the motives behind serial killers defy understanding. I wanted it to be fun and I didn't want an audience to feel icky afterwards. Or me."

He also wanted to distance Hellbent from some typical "gay" films by avoiding techno and circuit music -- he "had pretty much enough" working on Circuit -- instead opting for punky tracks by local Los Angeles artists including Nick Name. Yet Hellbent is guilty of one slasher film trapping: Only young hotties get stalked and killed. No bears, daddies, or "average" gay guys lose their heads to this body-conscious devil. "As far as you know that's what he does," Etheridge-Ouzts admits with a laugh. "I think that's very funny! The 'average' gay man is completely safe! Eat more popcorn!"

To bring his three-dimensional victims to life (killer Weaver, by the way, is a former Abercrombie & Fitch model), Etheridge-Ouzts made sure to cast actors who would "be real to be themselves," he says. "It wasn't that I tried to avoid the nelly Will & Grace stereotype, but when we auditioned people and they would use that effeminate characterization, it felt like acting. I wanted these guys to feel credible, like the guys I know and grew up with."

Masculine, edgy, and tattooed (the tats seen in the film are fake - his real tattoos are Polynesian in origin), Kirkwood certainly fit that bill. Born in Olympia, Wash., the motorcycle-riding actor appeared in a 2001 horror film, The Forsaken, and admits to having at least one real-life scare to draw upon while playing Jake. "When I was in eighth grade, I sneaked out of my house one night to meet some friends," he recalls. "I was on my skateboard and a car started following me with its high beams on. I hid, the guy stopped his car, found me, and started to say, 'I am going to kill you!' I took off and ran through people's yards, setting off alarms, and ended up at my friend's house where I called my mom and she picked me up. It's the most frightened I ever was in my life."

A shock from real life also gave Etheridge-Ouzts a jolt of inspiration that funneled into Hellbent. "My best friend in high school was sitting across a table from me scratching under his eye with a metal ruler," he recalls. "I said, 'Don't do that, you're going to put your eye out,' and he put the ruler into his eye and popped this glass eye out onto my desk. It so took me by surprise and always stayed with me!" As a result, the writer/director gave his protagonist, Eddie, a glass eye, which serves pretty spectacular narrative purposes.

As for the chemistry and onscreen romance between Kirkwood and Fergus (both of whom self-identify as straight), Etheridge-Ouzts says it benefited from the actors' different approaches to acting. "Dylan plays the cop who's regimented and more personally restrictive and Bryan plays Jake, this wild card," he explains. "Dylan is someone who studies his lines and character and creates all his back story while Bryan taps into something very primitive and instinctual. That kind of clash was very interesting, it kept the physical chemistry exciting, and both seemed comfy with letting loose in the romantic sense."

After casting the film, Etheridge-Ouzts and a small crew took to West Hollywood's streets to get some real Halloween night footage. "Nothing can get too outrageous in West Hollywood," Kirkwood notes. "Living in L.A. can sometimes be like a horror film." And there were a few authentically scary, out-there happenings captured. "People would come up in front of the cameras and vomit on us," Etheridge-Ouzts reminisces. "That was horrific. The excess!"

The gory beheadings in Hellbent were executed with a combination of prosthetic and digital FX, and on an extremely tight budget. "I pulled in every friendship card I could with my special FX friends," Etheridge-Ouzts admits. Yet one of the most hair-raising aspects of making Hellbent was coming up with its title -- a challenge given to the public. In 2003, the producers announced an online contest to title the film, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of entries.

"Initially I thought this is a great idea," Etheridge-Ouzts says. "We're going to have the world's gay geniuses working on our title and surely someone's going to come up with something brilliant. And they were all campy! We had 28 Gays Later, Boy Meets Knife, Tricks or Treats, Halloweener. Because the film's not campy, it needed something aggressive and straightforward. So when the contest was winding down, I was very concerned. Then on the last day, one of the final eight submissions was Hellbent, and when I saw that I breathed a sigh of relief. Something that I can use!"

Perhaps a simple Hellbent 2 will suffice for the sequel. Speaking of which the producers conceived of Hellbent and its killer as a franchise a la Friday the 13th, and Etheridge-Ouzts already has a storyline in mind. He's not exactly forthcoming with details, but does divulge a couple of tidbits: some back story and motivations behind the devil-ish killer will be revealed and the first film's survivors will return. "It picks up right where the other film leaves off so it's with the same characters," he adds. "And depending on what their [pay] rate is, they'll either live through the sequel or be killed immediately!"