Glen or Glenda? (NR, 1953) Directed, written by Ed Wood. Starring Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi.
Certainly no one would rent Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda? expecting to see a good movie, but this screwy discourse about transvestitism betrays a level of incompetence that I didn't know was possible. In fact, Wood's infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space actually seems pretty tame by comparison. Watching Glen or Glenda? I found myself occasionally wondering if Wood had originally made two or three separate movies and accidentally edited them together; as a result, it is actually quite entertaining in that it is unintentionally hilarious.
The movie starts out as what mostly seems like a bad documentary, with endless, repetitive narration about transvestites, how difficult it is for a transvestite to look at his girlfriend's clothes without being able to wear them, how transvestites are not necessarily homosexuals, and how the main character, Glen/Glenda is (as it reminds us probably half a dozen times) "not half man and half woman, but man and woman at the same time." The camera work is terrible-occasionally the camera lingers on, say, a closed door while the characters talk off-screen, or inexplicably zooms in on someone's ear or nose. Wood also makes copious use of mostly irrelevant stock footage, which leads to voiced-over non-sequiturs like, "Yes, our world is a busy and frightening place, with so many people driving their automobiles." Finally, there is occasional commentary from Bela Lugosi as a sort of omniscient being who seems to inhabit a Frankenstein-style laboratory, delivering pointless lines such as, "People . . . all with their own thoughts . . . their own ideas . . . ." while lightning crackles quasi-ominously overhead.
Had Wood continued in this vein, Glen or Glenda? probably would have been remembered as nothing more than a poorly done documentary with the occasional inappropriate horror-movie touch. Unfortunately, he then wanders so far off into left field that you have to wonder if he had been eating some funny mushrooms when he wrote the script. "Pull the string! Pull the string!" announces an alarmed Lugosi as stock footage of buffalo appears. There is another crash of lightning before Lugosi returns, this time warning us, "Beware . . . beware the big green dragon that lurks outside your door! . . . It eats little boys . . . and puppy dogs' tails . . . and big fat snails!" A bizarre nightmare sequence, which is probably meant to be symbolic but instead is just incredibly stupid, ensues, during which Glen/Glenda finds his fiance trapped under a fallen tree-in the living room. Someone who is apparently intended to be the sinister "green dragon" (but looks more like a Klingon from the original Star Trek series) appears to be orchestrating all this, though the film is far from clear on this point (to put it kindly). Near the end of this scene-and here I must confess that Wood lost me completely-is a violent sexual encounter on a couch that features two characters who do not even appear in the rest of the movie and is scored by goofily upbeat folk music.
After this scene ends (not a moment too soon), Glen or Glenda? returns to its documentary style, but at that point any lingering sense that Wood had the slightest idea what he was doing is pretty much gone. The film wanders to a dumb happy ending that also seems to abandon much of what it was trying to say about transvestitism, but at that point it didn't matter much what happened. As soon as the aforementioned sex scene was over, Glen or Glenda? had pretty much cemented its place in my mind as the most incoherent film I had ever seen. I honestly think that if I picked up my camcorder and deliberately tried to make the worst movie I possibly could, it still might not match Glen or Glenda? for sheer cinematic disaster. I am giving this movie an F, but I'm not sure that quite does it justice. Grade: F
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