Condoms Suck. But They Keep You Safe.

Humpy young boys hook up, then get decapitated -- what's not to love? Hellbent, a gay/horror crossover movie, opens today at the Lumiere in SF and the Shattuck in Berkeley. We caught a sneak preview earlier this week with an enthusiastic crowd at the Bridge, and had a swell time. The movie shifts between cheesy-gay-romance and cheesy-horror, comfortably hitting all the notes we've come to expect from both genres: one minute, there's the "shy nerd learning to trust in himself" scene; the next minute, there's the "twitching headless body in a bathroom stall" scene. Good times.

The film was introduced by Bridge manager Joshua, who told the audience, "If you find any of the gays to be tired, just stick with it. ...They all pay." Well, "tired" is putting it nicely; this is a film fueled by archetypes, and as the vacuous bitches got mowed down, we felt a bit like someone had made a revenge fantasy just for us. LAist didn't like that -- too shallow, they felt (coincidentally, the same reason we don't share their city) -- but honestly, it's a shallowness that works. The pleasure of watching Hellbent comes from its cheesy familiarity and adherence to the rules: when one character, searching for condoms, mutters, "condoms suck," we think, "oh, that means he's a slut and he's going to get killed," before he adds, "but they keep you safe," and then we think, "oh, that means he'll live," before also thinking, "wait, who the hell talks to themselves out loud like that?" The suspense is predictable, sure, but that's part of the fun: by the end of the film, audience members were gleefully shouting, "don't open the closet!" and "get the gun!" at the screen. And there's just enough surprises -- including two flat-out shocking moments involving the unexpected use of prosthetics -- to keep us on our toes.

So, to review: heaving boy-boobs; lots of fake blood; and cheese-laden dialogue. You know what that means: Hellbent is grade-A midnight-movie material.