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Glen or Glenda?

Glen or Glenda?

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Bevare! Be-VARE! "Glen or Glenda" is Eddy’s best.
Review: Michael Medved’s "Fifty Worst Movies Of All Time" turned out to be a mixed blessing for the late Ed Wood. On one hand Medved’s self-serving book of nonsense inspired viewers to examine films they might otherwise have avoided, thus reviving the non-career of one of Hollywoods many never-made-its; on the other, the editorial preconception of "so bad it’s good" tainted many a movie goer from watching these films with anything close to an impartial eye.

I guess it’s no surprise then, that nice-guy Eddie is frequently relegated to the "Worst Director In History" list. Too bad, because I always thought "Gone With The Wind" was a much harder watch than anything Ed Wood ever directed, and James Cameron and Cecil B Demille were far less imaginative or interesting. Anyways, best known for "Plan Nine From Outer Space", Ed Wood (who’s prior life experience included being one of the Marines to take Tarawa atoll in WWII) actually started his career with "Glen Or Glenda".

He never topped it. It’s bizarre montages (steel ingots, bison, and Bella Lugosi!), the non-acting by the water-cooler, the eccentric voice-over… This is the film Welles might have made… er, if he’d been Ed Wood! And drunk! And stoned! And had sniffed gas from he time he was six!

But seriously, it’s like a David Lynch dream sequence, or a Guy Maddin short – a film from some place films normally don’t come from. Think of it as "Erasure Head" for 1953, "Archangel" as a public service announcement, an "Une Chein Andolou" for the masses!

Any (one) can make "Plan Nine.." (in fact some might argue that in "The Abyss" special edition James Cameron has), but not "Glen Or Glenda". "Glen Or Glenda" comes from somewhere else.

Sure, for the rest of his career he made quirky "diversions". But by accident or design, in "Glen Or Glenda" Ed Wood made a film that defies conventional analysis. Don’t confuse this with a "bad movie" or "a movie-gone-bad".

This is Cinema From Another Planet.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ed Wood: Greatest film maker ever!
Review: No cult/b-movie fan should be without this box set. All three of the these movies are true classics. I just wish there were more movies included.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It's rubbish but entertainingly so
Review: Normally I'd give films 1 or 2 for something that was terrible and that I didn't like. Ed Wood however is an exception. His films are bad but so bad they're good. Basically I could tell you all of what the other reviewers have said here. But I won't other than to say that I got this DVD really cheap in Tower Records ( €6 ) and I can say that this really was cheap entertainment. Lugosi's role in this is somewhat silly given that the film doesn't know whether it wants to be a genuine film or a shockumentary! And in some ways that's part of it's charm while it harms the whole process. It gives Lugosi the chance to spew wannabe crypto mumbo jumbo. In a way, he doesn't really " pull ze strings " so much as cut them off from him.

But give credit to Ed on this. This was a genuine attempt at trying to be risque and his heart was really in this and you can tell that - it just didn't translate as well as it could have. His real life fiance Dolores is in this and well.....she's not exactly a great actress. But in some ways the script is just embarassingly naive on Ed's part that in some ways you just can't really believe in it at all no matter how much heart was put into this.

Another thing you'll notice is the dubbing and it is pretty poor. There's a clear 1 and a half second delay on everyone's speech which can be amusing. In fact some people will be in hysterics and just take the piss out of it

But god bless Ed - he tried, honestly he tried

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ohhhhhhhhhhh....nooooooooo!
Review: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, Ed Wood's "epic" science fiction movie may have been voted the Golden Turkey Award for the worst movie ever made, but obviously they overlooked GLEN OR GLENDA, Ed's semiautobiographical true confession of the transvestite life. It's unendurable.

The most horrifying thing about this film is that, watching it, you can't help but be convinced that Ed was setting out to make a sensitive and sympathetic pseudodocumentary about cross dressers.

Given Ed's legendary ineptitude behind the camera, the results are a boring, laughable, and painful mishmash of irrelevant stock footage, repetitious dialogue, sorta-Freudian fantasy sequences of fat women in bad lingerie spanking each other, serious social commentary, and utterly illogical horror movie filler.

Bela Lugosi stars in this thing. He plays someone (God, or the devil, or Dr. Frankenstein, or maybe just himself), and Ed and his real-life fiancee play Glen and Barbara, "a lovely intelligent girl" as the film reminds us at least nine times.

The movie only runs 60 minutes, but you'd never know it. Watching this film is more painful than root canal, and more exhausting than transcribing the "Collected Speeches of J. Fred Muggs." This one hour movie lasted at least a month of my life, I swear, and I watched the whole thing in one sitting.

This could be a really hot film, if somebody'd put a match to the 35 mm print. Unless you are a diehard Ed Wood enthusiast ..., or a masochist with time on his hands, give this one a miss...unless, like rubbernecking a car accident, you just can't help yourself!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ed Wood is God him self !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Poorly made yet ultra funny, Ed Wood stars writes and directs this story about the reasons why people get sex changes and are transvestites. Seems to get better every time you watch it. Lugosi playing a god olso brings a laugh. WATCH THIS FILM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The RESTORED Version of GLEN OR GLENDA with Missing Footage!
Review: The dvd release (and presumably the vhs version as well, since both are from the same distributor) is the best presentation yet of Glen Or Glenda. Out of all the reviews that customers here have posted, they've all apparently missed something I just realized. A reviewer who wrote "a close to 15-minutes long, totally unrelated, episodic dream sequence containing lots of women wearing lingerie while performing various acts (like one woman pouncing upon another woman, binding and gagging her), all to the tune of "Czardas", the most rushed piece of violin music ever, while Wood's dream ego looks horrifiedly at the proceedings" was unaware of what that footage really is... There exists a famous reel of "outtakes" from the film, running about 5-6 minutes. That's what the footage is that the other reviewer described! Apparently, Wade Williams (who released this version on dvd) did a "restoration" of Glen Or Glenda and reinserted the footage at the appropriate point in the film (during Glen's dream/nightmare near the end). That also accounts for the difference in the running time between this release (68 minutes) and any other previous releases (generally 62 minutes). Fans of Ed Wood and this film in particular no longer have to search for the "missing" footage...it's all here on the dvd! I didn't realize this at first, until a friend who is a collector described the outtakes to me, and I remembered them from this dvd. So there you have it, Ed Wood and grade-z cheese film fans!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What a drag!
Review: The essential drag queen film! Ed really did it with this celluloid eyesore. It screams to be made into a musical!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: bad DVD transfer of demented masterpiece
Review: The Rhino video of Glen or Glenda is quite a bit superior to this somewhat seedy DVD transfer. The periodic jumps are remarkably annoying, and the sound quality is no picnic either. Someone needs to do Ed Wood's pics the right way, and this isn't the right way.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: lunacy
Review: The star ratings above don't adequately express what this film is like. It it horrendously bad, but there are times when the unspeakable awfullness is just too unbelievable to hate. Bela Lugosi's scenes, in which he sits in a dark room and utters cryptic phrases in a creepy Hungarian accent, form a counterpoint to the cross-dressing story that is funny beyond belief.

Like many demented films, this one is made in earnest. Viewing it in earnest will be very very painful. But if you're in the mood for slow-paced but comically incompetent cinema, or if you are stoned, this might be the film for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This Movie is PRICELESS
Review: There is no trick to making a normal bad movie. Most of the movies out there are bad or boring, or both. The people involved generally know the movie isn't very good. They are film professionals who realize they haven't brought what is necessary to create a quality movie. It may be due to time or a lack of money to hire the best actors and script writers. It may be pressure to clone the latest box office smash and capitalize on it's success. Whatever the reason it isn't because the director is so inept, incompetent, foolish, and inexperienced that they think incoherent rambling makes a fine picture.
That is precisely why "Glen or Glenda" is a priceless gem. Ed Wood poured his heart and soul into what he considered a hard hitting drama to enlighten the masses about cross dressing men. A cross dresser himself, Wood even wore women's underwear under his uniform while in the military. He felt this movie would educate, inform, and bring a better understanding about cross dressing. He actually thought it was a great movie.
Of course what he made was a wildly incoherent mess, full of unrelated scenes and crazy dialog. The Bela Lagosi character, who is playing God, rambles about "Pulling skrings" while buffalos stampede across the screen. There are dream sequences where scantily clad women slink about while Wood stands offstage and looks "Horrified". It simply cannot be described and has nothing to do with the plot. In fact, nothing in the movie has anything to do with the plot. That in itself is a remarkable achievement.
"Glen or Glenda" is a high water mark in bad movies. Along with "Robot Monster" and his own "Plan 9 from Outer Space", it has stood the test of time to become an icon. Watch it and be amazed.


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