'PARTY MONSTER' IS WAY OVER.

Byline: Fred Shuster Staff Writer

`PARTY MONSTER,'' the just-for-laughs true story of a nasty little clique of drug-addled New York club kids who murder one of their own, dismember the corpse and then brag about it relentlessly, is another of those films that leaves you with the perennial question: ``Who paid for this garbage?''

The sordid story behind ``Party Monster'' is already the subject of at least one unreadable book, a couple of TV crime documentaries and numerous magazine features. In the early 1990s, the club-kid milieu was breathlessly covered by the Village Voice and New York magazine - in weekly installments.

The new film, which utilizes former child star Macaulay Culkin as Michael Alig, a mixed-up gay kid from Indiana who escapes to New York for the glitter, the excitement, the nightclubs, fame, fortune and dime-store mascara before helping murder a two-bit drug dealer, handles the 1996 crime with casual amusement.

``Party Monster'' writer-directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (``101 Rent Boys'') might have been trying to make a warped buddy film of sorts. The pathetic Alig character and his equally unappetizing sidekick, James St. James (Seth Green), are trapped in a love-hate tussle for media attention. But whatever genuine ties the pair had in reality are left unexplored here.

The debauched Manhattan club world of the time seems real enough. As the movie makes stomach-turningly clear, the scene was fueled by Ketamine, an animal anesthetic known as Special K that must be: A) stolen from a veterinarian, B) cooked in an oven and C) sniffed up one's nostrils for the hallucinatory high. Now, that's commitment.

Bailey and Barbato's tawdry movie, based on a documentary they made in 1998, gets one thing right - Gotham's insatiable hunger for the latest shock sensation. Alig and his gender-bent pals were downtown media stars, and rumors of the murder of a dope dealer named Angel Melendez only heightened the underground party scene's appeal.

``Party Monster'' has Chloe Sevigny as one of Alig's best friends and Marilyn Manson as a transsexual club fixture. TV's Dylan McDermott plays a one-eyed club owner. All are instantly and deeply unlikable.

The filmmakers apparently had a lot of snickering fun with the project, playing the whole ugly (and badly lit) mess as a perky drugged-up romp - ``Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' with a little gender confusion, Special K and decapitation thrown in. The real Alig, incidentally, is currently in the pen, where he somehow manages to update his Web diary often.

As a comedy, ``Party Monster'' is a drag. As a warning to animal hospitals to beef up security, it's a tail-wagger.

Fred Shuster, [phone]

fred.shuster(at)dailynews.com

PARTY MONSTER - One half star

(Not rated: violence, drug use, language)

Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Chloe Sevigny, Natasha Lyonne, Dylan McDermott, Diana Scarwid, Wilson Cruz, Marilyn Manson.

Directors: Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.

Running time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Playing: Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Murder, drug addiction and bad haircuts played for giggles.

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Photo:

Seth Green, left, and Macaulay Culkin play club kids whose over-the-top lifestyle leads to murder in ``Party Monster.''