Macaulay Culkin's latest role... as a killer

Fans who loved Macaulay Culkin as a face-slapping moppet in ”Home Alone” may want to take a few deep breaths. Not only is Culkin all grown-up, the 21-year-old, who last starred in 1994’s ”Richie Rich,” is making his return to the big screen as a drug addicted, homicidal, homosexual club promoter. As Mack himself once said, Aaaaaaaah!

The film — based on ”Party” directors Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey’s documentary of the same name — is the true story of Michael Alig, the infamous ruler of New York’s early ’90s club scene who was convicted of dosing his roommate with drain cleaner and chopping the body into pieces. The digitally-filmed flick, which costars Seth Green (”Austin Powers”) as Alig’s pal James St. James, is being produced by highly regarded indie banner Killer Films (”Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” ”Boys Don’t Cry”). ”It’s going to be ‘Legally Blonde’ on crack,” jokes Barbato. ”Funny, yet tragic and dark — and certainly not a movie of the week.”

The casting of Culkin as Alig shocked many. But when you think about it, he’d long outgrown his G-rated roots. Family squabbling (his parents famously feuded for control of Culkin’s estimated $17 million fortune) and a teenage marriage (to actress Rachel Miner in 1998?they split two years later) kept him in the tabloids throughout the ’90s. As an actor, he was briefly attached to the never-filmed ”Diary of A Mad Freshman,” described as a down-and-dirty look at life in New York, and he got critical raves playing a teen seduced by his French teacher in the London and Off-Broadway productions of ”Madame Melville.”

As Bailey points out, Culkin’s bad boy potential actually predates ”Richie Rich.” In fact, it was Culkin’s performance as a pint-sized sociopath in 1993’s ”The Good Son” that nailed the part for him. ”You could see in that movie he had an ability to do something very different than ‘Home Alone,”’ says Bailey. As different as playing a once small-town innocent (Alig grew up in South Bend, Indiana) turned drug addled murderer.