Born as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer in Santa Monica, California, and growing up in Hollywood, he made his first film when he was 15. He thus got an invitation to visit Jean Cocteau in Frane, where he lived and made short films in the 1950s.

He then returned to the US, where his movies remained designated as "underground". Of interest to gay audience, were the revelations of which the major stars had led closeted lives. He is considered one of the most important underground filmmakers of the post-World War II era. His role in rendering gay culture visible within American cinema, commercial or otherwise, is impossible to overestimate.

He was a lifelong friend of Anton Szandor LaVey, both before and after the founding of the Church of Satan in the 1960s, and lived with LaVey and his family during the 1980s.