Glen or Glenda (1953)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Pretty Good

How sad is this?

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

A psychiatrist tells two stories: one of a transvestite (Glen or Glenda), the other of a pseudohermaphrodite (Alan or Anne).Ed Wood is often seen as a bad director, and this is often seen as a bad film (though not his worst). As I type this, IMDb gives it a 4.4 out of 10. Not atrocious, but still low. In my opinion, much too low.Yes, it is campy and is bloated with stock footage and scenes of Bela Lugosi that make no sense. But it also happens to be fun. And even if the science is not necessarily correct (I have my doubts about "curing" transvestites), it does have a favorable and progressive approach to gender that had to be unequaled in 1953.

How can you describe Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda? Well, it was supposed to be a biopic on Christine Jorgensen, the subject of the first, well-known, sex change, but Wood transformed the story into a semi- autobiography about his cross-dressing habit and how the society looks down on those like him.Essentially, this is a sociological docudrama about transvestites and pseudo-hermaphrodites, depicting tribal rituals and connecting them with contemporary social issues, laced with a slight comedic touch and filled with loads of idiosyncratic stock footage and featuring a narrator speaking cryptic, pseudo-philosophical, non-sequitur lines in a shlocky B-horror film spook-lab, but then it turns into an auto- biographic plea for compassion to viewers and follows two stories of two characters, intercut with strange nursery rhymes and interrupted by an impressionist/psychological horror-themed surrealist dream sequence featuring vignettes of sadomasochism, rape, religious imagery and an autoerotic session, only to shift back and forth between fourth wall-breaking reactions of both the narrator and the protagonist, in a 68-minute film with three separate narrators and NUMEROUS confusing flashbacks-within-flashbacks containing said narrations.We also learn that hats make you bald.Ed Wood certainly outdid himself on this one. It was shot in four days and starred his idol Bela Lugosi, in one of his last roles, as the narrator who sits in a chair the entire time and sometimes does chemical experiments. Wood played Glen under the pseudonym Daniel Davis, and his girlfriend Dolores Fuller was cast as Barbara.Glen or Glenda is a hysterical and entertaining movie, that is until the storyline unexpectedly starts following Alan instead of Glen, about 55 minutes in. Alan's storyline is also over-the-top, but considerably more boring than Glen's, which is an absolute riot. The scenes with Bela Lugosi are pure gold.

I had a particularly masochistic day today, watching both Manos: The Hands of Fate and Glen or Glenda, both of which have at some point been claimed to be the Worst Movie Ever. Watching both movies in one day made Glen or Glenda look good by comparison, but it is, by itself, one of the most bewildering movies I've seen.I say this not because of its pleas for tolerance in gender matters. That might have seemed odder in the '50s, when homophobia was more mainstream. We've since moved on to debating whether gays can marry. What's really striking about this movie, rather, is the extended surreal dream sequences and the inexplicable narration of Bela Lugosi. Throw Satan in there! Why not? A herd of buffalo stampeding below Lugosi? Why not? Being trampled by the herd would symbolize being run over by society for an urge to cross-dress, wouldn't it? Symbolism! Except the symbolism goes on way too long, one sensing in an effort by Ed Wood to drag his movie over the 60-minute mark. Eventually, it becomes incomprehensible.And what of that narration? Bela Lugosi, "the Scientist," is kind of like a half-scientist, half-god character, who's also dark. He has skeletons around him for some reason. He says sinister things. Who or what is he? At the same time, a doctor is telling a police officer about Glen and Glenda. I'm reminded of the Nostalgia Critic's criticism of Rock-A-Doodle- who in god's name is telling the story? "The Scientist" or the doctor?You can find some elements of this style in a movie like Ingmar Bergman's Persona- random flashing of unpleasant things, apparent dream sequences, a kind of god-like "narration" (a boy watching a TV), but that movie was competently done. Glen or Glenda becomes a giant non sequitur- not the worst movie ever, but worth quite the WTF?

I am a fan of movies that are so bad they're good. I've seen plenty, and Ed Wood is the king of cranking out such stuff. But until I saw his "Glen Or Glenda" I never new how genuinely horrific a movie could be! First let me say that I find some of the other reviews almost as ridiculous as this movie. Calling it some sort of 'ahead of its time GLBT' classic or any sort of 'serious look' at anything is simply finding pearls among the dog doo. The storyline is very thin; some parts of the movie are not even related to the storyline and are inexplicable, such as the silent (with background music) scenes of one woman tying up another lying on a couch, or a guy whipping a woman lying on the same couch, or Ed Wood (as Glen/da) making a face that looks like he's being electrocuted while a little girl's voice echoes in the background "Puppy dog tails! Puppy dog tails! Puppy dog tails!" Now really, is this a GLBT treasure? There are obviously some men dressed as women in some scenes of the movie, none of whom are any more of a feminine nightmare than Wood himself dressed as Glenda. He looks like Fred Flintstone in drag with makeup.Many of the cast of actors are seen in other of Wood's films. Actually they must be incredibly, fantastically talented actors to be able to utter this insane dialog without bursting into hysterical laughter:"I guess I've seen just about everything there is for a policeman to see. Yet I wonder if we ever stop learning... learning about which we see... trying to learn more about... an ounce of prevention." "I'm a man that thrives on learning. We only have one life to live. If we throw that one away, what is there left?" "Okay. Here's a story from fact!" Now, most of the handful of men dressing as women in this movie are NOT good basic material. Frankly they all look more like your Uncle Ralph or someone equally non-feminine.This movie is a riot, a howl, a scream. In some places it's a baffling mystery. "What does THAT mean? What is going on HERE?" It alternates between insanely funny and just insane. It is not some deep work as some here have tried to make it out. It cannot be described how truly and riotously AWFUL Glen or Glenda is... watch it, and try not to have your mouth full of Pepsi during the dialog lest it come shooting out your nose.