Glen or Glenda (1953)

Some films earn their place in cinema history not through polish or craft, but through sheer audacity. Glen or Glenda, released in 1953 by Screen Classics, is one of those films. Arriving in an era when cross-dressing was classified as a criminal offence in many American states and gender nonconformity was largely invisible in mainstream culture, the film attempted something almost unthinkable for its time: a sympathetic, semi-documentary treatment of transvestism and gender transition. The picture follows two parallel stories, one concerning a man who cannot bring himself to tell his fiancée about his cross-dressing, and another following a person undergoing medical treatment to live as a woman, both framed by a psychiatrist's narration. That such a film existed at all, distributed theatrically and carrying an exploitation-style tagline ("I Changed My Sex!"), tells you something about the strange, contradictory space that low-budget American cinema occupied in the early fifties, where sensationalism and genuine social commentary could occasionally share the same screen.

The film was written and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., who also cast himself in the lead role of Glen. Wood would go on to become one of the most discussed figures in the history of bad cinema, a reputation cemented by later works that earned him a kind of devoted cult following. Glen or Glenda is an early entry in that canon, and it carries the hallmarks of his particular production approach: low budgets, rapid shooting schedules, and an enthusiasm that frequently outpaces the resources available. Joining Wood in the cast is Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian-born actor whose work in Universal horror films during the thirties had made him a household name (his turn in The Black Cat offers a useful point of comparison for where his career had been). By 1953, Lugosi was taking whatever work came his way, and his presence here is, to put it charitably, unconventional. Lyle Talbot, Timothy Farrell, and Dolores Fuller round out the principal cast, with Fuller, Wood's real-life partner at the time, playing the fiancée Barbara. The film runs a brisk 71 minutes, which, given the nature of the material, may feel both too short and too long depending on your tolerance for its particular brand of chaos.

For context, 1953 was a year in which Hollywood and independent American cinema alike were grappling with social anxieties in sometimes oblique, sometimes surprisingly direct ways. If you look at other films from the period reviewed here, such as The Bigamist, also from 1953, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers a few years later, you can see a cinema preoccupied with identity, conformity, and what lay beneath the surface of respectable domestic life. Glen or Glenda wades into that same cultural water, albeit with considerably less technical finesse and a good deal more bison footage than either of those pictures managed.

Glen or Glenda (1953) is a fascinating artifact, bold for its time, deeply confused by today’s standards, and undeniably a mess in execution. Directed by and starring Ed Wood (later infamous for Plan 9 from Outer Space), it attempts to tackle gender identity and cross-dressing with surprising empathy in an era that criminalized both. That intention deserves respect: at a time when mainstream culture treated trans and gender-nonconforming people as deviants, Wood argued for understanding, even if his language and framing now feel painfully outdated. But good intentions don’t make a good film. The movie lurches between documentary-style narration, surreal dream sequences, stock footage of storms and stampeding bison, and awkward dramatizations that border on parody. The dialogue is stilted, the pacing erratic, and the structure feels less like storytelling and more like someone frantically flipping through psychology pamphlets. Bela Lugosi appears in unrelated scenes as a “scientist” muttering cryptic lines about angora sweaters, a baffling choice even by cult-movie standards. What’s most jarring today is how the film conflates cross-dressing, transgender identity, and fetishism without distinction, using terms and theories long since discarded by medical and social understanding. While it champions personal freedom (“We are all human beings!”), it does so through a lens clouded by 1950s psychoanalysis and pulp melodrama. Historically notable and courageously empathetic in spirit, but as a coherent or effective film? It’s a hot mess, earnest, bizarre, and unintentionally alienating. Watch it as a curiosity of queer cinema history.

I find myself returning to that word: curiosity. Because that is genuinely what this is, a film you watch with one eye on the screen and one eye on the calendar, constantly recalibrating what "brave" meant in 1953 against what "coherent" means at any point in history. The two things are not incompatible, of course, and that is perhaps what makes Glen or Glenda slightly maddening rather than simply dismissible. Wood clearly cared. You can feel it in every lurching scene change and every earnest, poorly-staged conversation. Whether caring is sufficient, well, that is the question the film keeps raising and failing to answer. Worth your 71 minutes if you have any interest in the stranger corners of queer cinema history, just maybe don't expect to come out the other side feeling like you've watched a film so much as survived one.

Rating: ★★  | Year: 1953  | Watched: 2026-04-15

View on Letterboxd →

Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Glen or Glenda (1953) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Cultpix · Amazon Prime Video with Ads · Brew
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Brew · Cultpix · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More with Bela Lugosi: The Black Cat (1934)
More from the 1950s: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Invaders from Mars (1953)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)