Glen or Glenda

Glen or Glenda (1953) is Ed Wood's cult trash drama, free to watch online on iFILM. The director later crowned the worst in Hollywood history made one of the first American films to talk openly about cross-dressing and sex change — and he did it so strangely that the movie became a legend.

A psychiatrist relates two cases to an inspector. Glen is terrified to tell his fiancée Barbara that at night he slips into angora sweaters and calls himself Glenda. A parallel thread follows Alan, who goes under the surgeon's knife to become Anne. Between scenes, Bela Lugosi sits in a chair as a strange scientist and ominously warns, "Beware of the big green dragon." Coherence is not on the menu.

Wood played Glen himself and poured his own real love of angora into the part, which makes the film, for all its clumsiness, oddly personal and sincere. Disjointed editing, random stock footage, pompous narration — this is the founding text of "so bad it's good," and you can't grasp the Ed Wood phenomenon without it. Stream Glen or Glenda (1953) online on iFILM.