GET 'HELLBENT' FOR LEATHER IN GAY SLASHER FLICK.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE ONLY THING missing from ``HellBent'' is topless girls running for their lives. The audience this movie was made for won't care; it's got more than enough shirtless men to compensate.

Other than that, this self-proclaimed first gay slasher film plays up the genre conventions. Pleasure-seeking himbos are stalked through West Hollywood's Halloween carnival by a sickle-wielding killer in a devil mask. The joke - and surprisingly for a film that you'd think would be all camp most of the time, it's about the only funny thing - is that everyone is dressed and acting so freaky, Devil Man barely gets noticed.

Until someone realizes that the decapitated corpses left in his wake aren't really well-made holiday decorations.

Writer-director Paul Etheredge-Ouzts wanted to make this a character-based thriller. So that means the main guys, headed by wannabe cop Eddie (Dylan Fergus), are the usual thumbnail-sketched types: lovelorn nerd, try-anything hedonist, etc. Only in Anna Nicole drag and fetish leather.

Etheredge-Ouzts stages the stalkings and slashings effectively enough, but too much of the movie is devoted to suspenseless cruising. There is also no attempt to explain why Hornmask is collecting homosexual heads. If this movie truly took itself seriously, you'd think it would make at least a token attempt to examine motivation for this extreme form of gay-bashing.

But, like I said, ``HellBent'' really isn't any different from most pointless slasher movies. I guess, by some definition, that's progress.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

HELLBENT - Two and one half stars

(Not rated: violence, sex, nudity, drug use, language)

Starring: Dylan Fergus, Bryan Kirkwood, Hank Harris, Andrew Levitas, Matt Phillips.

Director: Paul Etheredge-Ouzts.

Running time: 1 hr. 25 min.

Playing: Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Regent Showcase, Hollywood; Art, Long Beach; Regal, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Gay slasher movie. No worse than the straight ones. No better, either.