Laikals
The greatest movie ever made..!
Megamind
To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.
Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Marynewcomb2013
You have to watch & understand Ed's movies from his point of view. He did have vision for his films but just never had the budget.
mark.waltz
The world of cross dressing took a beating in this Ed Wood debacle, the first to feature long faded horror star Bela Lugosi, still reduced to touring in wretched productions of "Dracula". In need of quick cash, Lugosi took what he could get to quote non-Edgar Allan Poe poetry that started off with "Bevare!" and concludes with his melodramatic cry of "Pull da strings!". Those who saw this film probably thought, hey that guy reminds me of that dead actor who played Count Dracula, not realizing that like Abe Vigoda, the actor was still very much alive.Lovingly recreated by Tim Burton for " Ed Wood", this film has achieved a legend all its own. Yes, it is wretched, the cross dressers (obviously the transvestites of their day) are sad looking and desperate. Times have changed for men who long to live as women, and in a sense, this film did more harm than good. Wood at this point wasn't the trollish looking man he would ultimately be a decade later, and his efforts to tell what he considered an important story is respectable if ill-advised.Lugosi stands out of course, as a shell of himself, but determined to have some sort of dignity, even if they just meant paying off creditors. In the first of his three Ed Wood appearances, he remains commanding even if the vehicle he prayed would be his comeback failed. Every serious moment Wood intended just brings on laughs, and ultimately, that is why Wood is remembered today.
bkoganbing
Glen Or Glenda has to rate as one of the most personal films ever done by any director, anywhere, even if that director happens to be Ed Wood. He not only wrote and directed it, he acted in it himself and told his own story of cross dressing. It's sad that Wood did not have the talent or the budget to bring this off.As we all know now thanks to Johnny Depp's biographical portrayal of Wood that Wood liked to wear feminine attire. So given the accepted knowledge of the time, no doubt gleaned from his many visits to a psychiatrist, Wood fashioned Glen Or Glenda and gave himself the title role.The film is done documentary style as police detective Lyle Talbot investigates the suicide of a man found dead in women's clothes. Seeking information for future encounters, Talbot meets with psychiatrist Timothy Farrell who talks about two cases of men dressing as women one of those being Glen/Glenda the other being Alan/Ann.Knowing several transgender individuals as I do they and I both see this thing as laughable in its ignorance. Not to mention the acting and writing was on the level of a high school play. Bela Lugosi has a part in here as an overall narrator who is given to saying cryptic things in a sinister fashion that you will search in vain in trying to figure out what they mean. No one talked sinister better than Bela Lugosi, but this was Bela's first association with Wood and Wood being so happy to have a box office name of sorts for his project just shoehorned him the best way he could. Why he just wasn't playing the psychiatrist is beyond me. Wood was a terrible actor to add to being a terrible writer and director. But he was not alone as the rest of the cast is pretty bad as well. Yet in his own clumsy untalented way, Ed Wood was giving us a glimpse of his world and how people in general saw individuals like him in 1953. No doubt most who see this especially transgender folks will think this as bad a film as I do, but it's an incredible insight into the world of its creator.
rooster_davis
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.
