[Pride 2020] Revisiting Hellbent With Director Paul Etheredge

At the beginning of quarantine, I had the pleasure of having a Skype interview with the writer and director of Hellbent (2004), Paul Etheredge. Hellbent is widely considered the first openly queer slasher film and in recent years has seen a growing in appreciation.

Sixteen years later, Etheredge is just as proud of his work as when it was released. One can tell that this film is his baby; he deeply cares about it and its legacy. In honor of Pride Month, I found it fitting to sit down with this queer horror creator and revisit this fun and significant film.

To keep up with Paul, follow him on Instagram @dogheaddog.

So would you just start by telling me a little bit about your journey into the film industry?

Well my mother taught film, so I was indoctrinated at a very early age. She used to bring home movies that we would project on a sheet in our living room, and she'd invite people over and have big parties. This is from when I was three years old on, and I always went to the movies with her when she went out, even the ones that were not at all appropriate. Pretty early on I was fascinated by movies and by the age of eight, I knew I wanted to make them.

Have you always had an interest in horror? Were there films that inspired you to make a horror movie?

I have always had an interest in them. My mother got me horror film periodicals from when I was six years old on. She taught a lot of horror too because it's great storytelling when you're talking about metaphors and that kind of thing.

Well interestingly about Hellbent, I did not set out to make a horror film. I was literally walking down the hallway of a production company that I was working for and got pulled into a pitch by the producers. They looked at me and they said, “Alright, we want to make a gay horror film. What do you got?” Literally that was it. And I was like, “Uh, um,” and I threw out the film, Black Orpheus, which you may or may not be familiar with.

I think it's from the ‘60s. It takes place down in Rio during The Carnival. Essentially it's the story of death stalking this woman The whole reason I got pulled into that is because I've written a comedy, romantic comedy, that the producer had read and he liked it. So there was no horror background. It was this romantic comedy.

Hellbent has been kind of dubbed “the first gay slasher film”. How do you feel about that title and have you maybe seen other films taking inspiration from yours?

I love the title. I think it's appropriate. I mean horror has a lot of gay elements, but to my knowledge this is the first one. That is where the protagonists are explicitly gay. “We're gay”, has been moved from subtext text. Yeah. Uh, yeah, yes, absolutely. I've seen other movies take some notes from Hellbent by now. Just recently Blumhouse released one on Hulu, what was it called?

Midnight Kiss?

I saw that and I was like, “Oh, we did that. We did that.” Which is great. You know, I'm glad there's more, there are more queer movies being made. More queer horror films.

The name of the film Hellbent came from a contest in which people submitted the possible titles. Do you still like the title all these years later?

I love the title. That was really one of the most nerve-wracking periods of that making that movie, because I couldn't come up with a title. For months, I mean, like probably a year and a half, I worked on trying to find a title. I couldn't figure out one that worked for me. So, the producers opened up the floor to a whole bunch of people. I think because there hadn't been a queer art film like this that was, you know, serious. Everyone just assumed it was camp. So a lot of the titles, thousands and thousands and thousands of titles were camp. “Queer eye for the dead guy,” that kind of thing. They were terrible, terrible. Luckily one of the last eight submissions Hellbent was there and I was like, “Oh, it's perfect.”

Did you find this idea of a gay slasher film difficult to sell in 2004 or were people fairly okay with the gay elements of the film?

To an audience? Yeah. Only recently has it sort of found a vocal audience of supporters. I think it's having a resurgence. We have plans to appraise it and re-master it and do all that treatment. It's the fifteen year anniversary, I think this year. So, within the next year or so that’s the plan.

I think it was [hard to sell] because the producers were used to pitching to a gay audience and so they positioned it as a gay film. Queer audiences don't, at least at the time, they didn't really show up for queer films. Unless there was nudity and it was someone famous or something like that. I think it's different now. Horror people didn't really show up either because it was being sold to them as a gay film. So I think it was, it was a challenge, but we did get, you know, a proper theatrical release, which I'm grateful for. I don't know many that get that chance.

The killer in Hellbent uses a sickle to attack his victims. Why did you choose that weapon?

It looks like a talon. He's dressed in a costume, so it kind of went along with that. If he was just running around with a butcher knife, I just felt like it was, “Eh, yeah, we've seen that before.” We've seen a sickle too, but, you know, not as often. It just felt predatory in a way that a regular knife didn't to me. And also, you know, he was dressed in a devil costume and something about the sickle felt a little old world.

Most slasher movies have this whodunit aspect, but your killer is much more anonymous and you chose not to reveal the identity. Why did you decide to go that route?

There’s a couple of reasons. Firstly, the film takes place in under 24 hours and it focuses on this group of kids and they're not going to have any kind of insights into who the killer is. I didn't want to bounce back and forth between cops who are on the trail. It seems like there was a lot of information that they would have to discover in a very abbreviated amount of time. Also, I often feel that once the motive is revealed for the killer, that it kind of takes the air out of the rest of the horror for me because it always just sounds insane. The killers are always crazy, that's the reason why they're killing people. So I chose not to reveal it so that we as an audience can imagine the most horrific reasons.

It’s something I fought the producers on. For a long time. I mean, even while we were shooting, you know, we were down to the last week of shooting and they were like, can you reveal it?

If Hellbent were made today, what would be different from the 2004 film?

Technically I think it would be much improved with an upgraded camera image. But as far as story goes, I mean, there are small aspects of the film that I think would need to be changed. Like Eddie, the protagonist talks to his sister about, “Please don't let this be a fag bashing.” I don't think now that would have as much resonance as it did back then. As far as the rest of the stuff, I mean, it still feels reasonably current to me.

How do you feel about queer representation in horror films today?

It’s getting better. There are a number of queer art films that were until last week, kind of chugging along. Our industry is shut down now. So it's like, who knows. I think that queer representation in all films has been pretty dismal up until recently. But I know that queer horror is finding a foothold, especially because Get Out came out. Now everyone's looking for the queer Get Out. People are scrambling for that. There's a documentary that Fangoria is releasing about queer horror. The Child’s Play television series. There’s a gay character who is a lead in that,  so we're coming out, in these films, along with, you know, all kinds of minorities, different races. Thank God. So tired of white stories.

So can we expect any more horror content from you in the future?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I actually have a script meeting this week, probably over Skype now. Actually, all the projects that I was working on so far this year have been queer horror. I haven't been attached as a writer or director to all of them. I did production design for one a couple of weeks ago, but there's a lot brewing. We'll, we'll see.

PLEASE DONATE IF YOU CAN