Former UCSB students-turned-filmmakers used City College campus in creating their new thriller-movie “Rites of Passage.”

Peter Iliff, the director, executive producer and co-writer, wrote the film with his best friend from college, Richard Halsey. Iliff later became a screenwriter and wrote “Point Break” and “Patriot Games,” while Halsey became a biology teacher and writer.

“Rites of Passage,” tells the story of a college student and his brother recreating a Chumash Indian ceremony on a family ranch. It stars Wes Bentley (“American Beauty”) and Christian Slater (“True Romance”) and will premiere at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 18 at the Magic Lantern Theater in Isla Vista.

The film started as an idea when Iliff found a story entitled “The Joys of Anal Sex” in a Goleta newspaper.

“I thought, ‘What the hell was this story doing in the newspaper?’ you know?'” Iliff said. “It’s very different to be a college student nowadays compared to when I was one. I mean, the drugs are harder drugs… it’s tough to be a kid today. Eventually, trying to survive becomes a rite of passage.”

A particularly important scene of the film happens in Administration classrooms 160 and 161. Actor Stephen Dorff (“Immortals”) and a co-star share a semi-love scene on a desk.

“It’s sort of a quasi-love making scene, I guess you can say,” Halsey said.

Curious about what it was like to be a student again, Iliff and Halsey began to think of a “darkly funny” thriller about an anthropology student and his friends recreating a Chumash Indian ceremony.

Further inspiration struck while Iliff was on Halsey’s rose ranch in the Goleta area.

“It’s on an old Chumash burial ground so we really tried to bring in Chumash elements and ended up with Jimson weed,” Iliff said.

The Chumash Indians often used Jimson weed, a toxic hallucinogen that grows around the Santa Barbara area, in their spiritual ceremonies.

Iliff and Halsey worked for nine months to gather enough money for “Rites of Passage” to begin production.

“We had always talked about doing a movie together so we finally decided to just do it,” Halsey said.

Because of its use of the Chumash ceremony, the movie has been called “sacrilegious” to the Chumash culture.

Iliff was unperturbed by this claim.

“They have every right to speak out for their culture,” he said. “We have only respect for the great Chumash nation, but we’re not making a documentary. We’re making a thriller.”

Halsey echoed this sentiment.

“I know it’s not normal, but I think the abnormal thing is more interesting.” he said.

Most of the filming took place on the Halsey’s rose ranch, which was falling apart after the family rose business shut down in the mid-1980s.

“It’s a wonderful movie.” Iliff said. “If I could tell the film students who have an idea one thing, it would be ‘Just do it.'”

He plans to screen the film at City College in the near future.