My set visit last week was fortunately on a night when a handful of thematic elements came together: in the course of a few hours, I was witness to a machine-gun-toting mercenary gunning down a handful of Christian newsmen, a head being splattered on a cigarette machine, and a group of the queer undead vamping out (and not in the usual way) and ripping the throat out of a hunky unfortunate. The atmosphere was high-energy and the pace quick (as it always is on small-budget projects), but the cast and crew were in excellent spirits and the common goal was clear: "let's make a kickass horror flick."

Producer Michael Hein, who wrote and directed the zombie splatter flick Biohazardous and co-founded the New York City Horror Film Festival, was firing on all cylinders when I arrived (and yes, that's a good thing) but took a few minutes out in between setups to chat.

"I loved the idea of doing something different with vampires, a different kind of horror film," says Hein, "and you're talking to a guy who sees 250 independent horror films a year... so no more bites on the necks; now they're ripping out chunks of skin." And the differences between this and other vampire fare aren't just superficial -- Hein considers Dead Serious to be at its core a social commentary played out as a horror thrillride. "(Director) Joe's script was a statement for the gay community, and knowing that I was a horror guy, he knew that I could come in and make it the horror film it wanted to be, and he could still say all the things he wanted to say as a filmmaker."

It's certainly a trip through the looking-glass when two gay men named Richard and Troy are action leads in a vampire film. But that's just the tip of the iceberg...

Anthony Pepe, a NY-based effects man who has been who has been making quite a name for himself lately, definitely has his hands full with all the mayhem: "We have a head that gets set on fire, we have a head that gets a grenade shoved in its mouth and blown to pieces, we've got 30-40 more gunshot wounds, an Adam's apple that gets ripped out, lots of stuff. I worked on Satan's Little Helper, and we did a whole evisceration with a guy's guts falling out, but this is the most effects I've done for a single movie." Considering that Anthony has films like Dead End Massacre, Biohazardous, and Rockabilly Vampire on his resume, that's no small feat.

I was lucky enough to be there to see a particularly nasty prosthetic setup, which involved Marcus Cliff (who plays the heavy Rainfeather) getting his throat ripped out by a pack of hungry vampire homos. Not that you could blame them, as Cliff certainly adds to the Hunk Factor of the film. In fact, Serious seems to be avoiding the typical waxed-plucked-and-moisturized aspect of many gay films. The guys here are not Queer as Folk -- they're more Two Guys, a Girl, and a Gay Pizza Place. With the emphasis squarely on social satire, expect more terrorists and zombies, less bare chests and G-strings.

Writer/director Joe Sullivan, a soft-spoken, very friendly man who looks more like the type of person you'd run into at a coffee shop than on a horror film set (as would I, Joe... as would I), explained the social satire emphasis this way: "The reason that genres are so successful is that they speak about very basic things... horror films, for example, work on the basic fact that everywhere around us we are surrounded by death -- how do you deal with this? Today, with the problems of terrorism and war, the horror genre speaks to concerns that human beings have." He elaborates: "We are victims of the world, we are prey of the world, and yet we must somehow find a way to go on -- that's what attracts me to horror films".

When I asked Joe (who himself is openly gay) who the target audience was for a gay horror movie, he said, "On the one hand it's for people who want to see what is hopefully a good horror film with lots of blood. On the other hand, it's a film for people who want to see a film about gay people -- and then again, hopefully people will just want to see the film for its interesting characters and twisted story. So it's for the horror audience, the gay audience, and the socially liberal audience."

The socially liberated aside, the horror audience hasn't always been known to be particularly gay-friendly, and there's a history in the genre for mistreatment of gay relationships and characters. When I asked Joe how he thought the "Evil Dead t-shirt-wearing audience" is going to react to a gay-heavy horror flick, he let out a big laugh. "I like to fantasize that the people who are truly straight and not conflicted about it won't give a shit. Is it a cool story? Is it scary? Is it violent? I like it."

"The gay people here are turned into vampires by straight characters, and I think this is a world where gay people are used by straight people to act out their own fantasies and exploit power. Talk about a metaphor!"

I'll say! When I asked how he felt gay audiences might feel to another "Killer Queer" movie, Joe replied, "I've had people tell me that Deathtrap is a homophobic movie. It's a movie about two evil people who happen to be gay. There's no sexual orientation that has a monopoly over virtue or vice."