Glen or Glenda? Is a film that's either so bad it's good or just flat out bad. There's no middle ground. At least in theory, the fact is having watched I can say a lot of things about it.
It's poorly written, poorly paced, can't make it's mind up over the message it wants to deliver which isn't good when discussing an issue like transvestism, it's poorly acted which makes the dialogue even worse and Bela "I was Dracula for crying out loud" Lugosi contributes nothing relevant to the plot.
And yet for all that I can't say it's truly horrible. From a film standpoint at least, for all the mass amounts of mess throughout the film manages to keep my interest, I can't say why or how but it does. It might be because Lugosi reappearing and doing something completely irrelevant is far too tempting.
And even without discussing its gender issues (though one could argue for a fifties film it's actually progressive) it's an absolute mess of a film made by a man who was making films to pay off debts from making films.
The movie raises the theory that because Glenn's mother used to favour his sister Sheila over him, the psychiatrist believes that Glenn started wearing Sheila's dresses to attract the attention and affection of his mother.
It also mentions at the end of the film that transvestism is something that can be cured (which seems very backwards as Ed Wood was known to dabble in transvestism even fighting in the Second World War during its bloodiest battles in bra and panties).
I know it might be contradictory to say this considering the above but outside of that scene at the very end the film handles the rather sensitive subject rather well. Well for the time it was made at least, the film uses the justification that a transvestite is not a homosexual as if to say being homosexual is worse than being a transvestite.
It's not great justification by today's standards but the fact is it was the best Wood can manage without earning the scorn of every moral guardian everywhere.
"Glen is not a homosexual. Glen is a transvestite, but he is not a homosexual." So not only is it offensive it's also redundant dialogue too.
To add another layer to its offensiveness the film actually includes a scene where a male character undergoes a sex change to become a female and it's shown that he has to "learn" how to be female and also has to "unlearn" being male. The implication being that a woman once a man is unable to do the things he was capable of doing once before. Then again the 50s so it's probably a case of values dissonance or similar justification like the above.
In the end Glen or Glenda is poorly written, badly directed, visually unpleasing, horribly acted, has a message that's all over the place at best and downright bipolar at worst and offensive in at least 3 different ways. Still despite all that it's at the very least fascinating and probably only offensive because of the way the world has changed since.
Whatever message the film has gets lost in the shuffle of mediocrity. And yet it's still very fascinating. For all that can be said about Ed Wood you can safely say while he never made a good one he did make fascinating ones. And maybe that's a good thing all of itself?
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