Bela Lugosi Week Film 6: Glen or Glenda?

This week I've decided to do something a little different here at Blues In The Night. Every film reviewed this week will star Bela Lugosi. For film #6 one of Bela Lugosi's final performances from his brief friendship with director Ed Wood.

Glen Or Glenda?
1954
Directed By Edward D. Wood Jr.



SYNOPSIS

After the suicide of a transvestite, a police inspector (Lyle Talbot) seeks out more information on transvestism. He turns to a psychologist (Timothy Farrell.) The doctor tells him the story of a patient of his, Glenn (Edward D. Wood Jr.) who was coming to grips of telling his fiancee (Dolores Fuller) of his unusual fetish.



MY THOUGHTS

A truly bizarre film that you cannot turn your eyes away from.

Many people know Ed Wood from the Tim Burton film and know of his 'unique' talents as a filmmaker.
Many traits of Ed Wood's later films sprout here for the first time. Horrible acting, seemingly unrelated stock footage, repetitive and/or elliptical writing are many of them.

We don't see any shots where it is day, then night, then day again in the same scene. However, the film's unusual, mostly non-linear story structure would prevent this anyway.

The film, on the surface, is a docu-drama. It remains grounded in fact and reality, presenting the sordid details of transvestism with the psychologist as narrator. Director Ed Wood knew the life well, as he was a transvestite himself and Dolores Fuller was his real-life girlfriend.

But Bela Lugosi also appears in the film. His character is a god-like figure, 'pulling the strings' of life and speaks directly to the camera often cryptically about existence. This clearly knocks it out of reality and as a result makes the film work on far deeper and more abstract levels than anything Wood had done or would ever do again. The seemingly unrelated stock footage can be explained this time.

The narrative of the film stops for nearly 15 minutes as we're shown an extremely well crafted and bizarre dream sequence of how Glen is fraught over telling his fiancee his secret and facing his feminine side. Buxom strippers, S+M, and the devil all appear. It's esoteric and experimental filmmaking that directors like Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch or even surrealist filmmakers like Luis Bunuel would be proud of.

Story-wise there is little going on. But with such interesting ways to pad the story and the different directions the film veers... it makes the film insanely watchable. It is never boring.

Glen or Glenda provides a stark opposite of the perceived view of 1950's life and remains a fascinating, bizarre, and totally original film more than 55 years after it was made.