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While the horror genre touched on queerness well before Hellbent was ever released, Paul Etheredge-Ouzts’ 2004 film is considered to be the first of its kind: an openly queer slasher. Without question, there is no ambiguity about the characters’ sexualities as they partake in the annual Halloween festivities in West Hollywood. The only real mystery about these men is the masked killer following them, hoping to add their names to his growing list of headless victims.

Art director Etheredge-Ouzts was first approached by producers Michael Roth, Joseph Wolf and Karen Lee Wolf in 2000 about making a gay horror film. By then, the trend of slashers hard on the heels of Scream had already reached its expiration date, but even so, what eventually became Hellbent remains a unique entry in the first major revival of slashers. And what was once coded in both past and contemporary films was now glaring and unapologetic in this one.

Peter Cushing! Christopher Lee! Each is at the top of his game, playing competing collectors of occult incunabula — the kind that comes with a satanic curse, when the purloined item in question is the Skull Of The infamous, despicable and sharp-toothed Marquis De Sade! Freddie Francis directs up a storm in this amicable Amicus chiller: the mysterious skull-duggery is beautifully shot and edited, giving the horror scenes real Bite.

The Skull

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 83 min. / Street Date March 14, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Peter Cushing, Patrick Wymark, Nigel Green, Jill Bennett, Michael Gough, Ceorge Couloris, Christopher Lee.

Cinematography: John Wilcox

Art Direction: Bill Constable

Film Editor: Oswald Hafenrichter

Original Music: Elisabeth Lutyens

Written by Milton Subotsky from a story by Robert Bloch

Produced by Milton Subotsky, Max J. Rosenberg

Directed by Freddie Francis

Nine years ago Legend Films brought us a DVD of this 1965 horror item,...