Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 272: The world's on fire so we might as well watch "Glen and Glenda' (1994)

What a difference a conjunction makes! This is not Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda.

"The eastern world, it is exploding." So what else is new? The eastern world was exploding before I got here, and it'll be exploding long after I'm gone. Look, folks, we may be hurtling toward World War III any day now. Or we may not. I just know that I get a sinking feeling whenever I make the mistake of checking the news. If Armageddon is just around the corner, we'd better have some fun now, huh?

Case in point: recently, reader Edward Fisher contacted me to ask if I were ever going to review the 1994 adult film Glen and Glenda, a direct parody of Ed Wood's debut feature Glen or Glenda (1953). He wrote: "It's an adult film that uses Ed's script almost word for word. Other than the sex scenes it's basically a remake." Normally, I might turn up my nose at something like this. A mid-1990s shot-on-video cheapie probably made in an afternoon or two by people I've never heard of? Not too appetizing. But I'm in a Tyler Durden-ish "let's burn it all down and start over from scratch" kind of mood lately. So what the heck? Let's watch this thing.

Edward kindly offered to lend me his DVD, but the movie itself was pretty easily located online. No, I'm not going to link to it. Do you know how much I already had to censor that header image up there to make it "acceptable" on this platform? Well, it was a bunch. We are living in the golden age of cyber-prudes. I can't take chances. You know how search engines work. Find it yourself. But be forewarned! The Chucky franchise has characters called Glen and Glenda, too, so you'll have to scroll through a lot of "killer doll" stuff before you get to the movie.

The film's VHS release.

What made me want to review this movie in the first place was a credit at the very beginning: "Caballero Video Company Presents." In case that name doesn't ring any bells, well, congratulations on having lived a productive and decent life. (I may ask, what the hell are you doing here?) But the seasoned veterans will know why that name was instantly familiar to me.

Caballero Home Video is one of the longest-lasting and most-productive adult entertainment studios, dating back to 1974 and surviving into the 2020s. It was founded by Noel Bloom, Sr. (1942- ), the son of legendary adult publisher Bernie Bloom. Ed Wood worked for both of the Blooms for years. They were, by far, his most consistent employers in the last decade of his life. Whether Noel is the one who personally commissioned Glen and Glenda, I cannot say. But it would be a weird coincidence if this film were made without his knowledge.

Glen and Glenda was directed by Frank Marino and written by Eldo Farms, the former more prolific than the latter. It stars Steven St. Croix, Kaitlyn Ashley, Peter North, and several others. If you are steeped in the world of straight-to-video 1990s porn, those names may mean a great deal to you and may even make you hyped to see the movie. I must confess, they do almost nothing for me. I apologize, Mr. St. Croix and Ms. Ashley. I'm sure you ushered many viewers through lonely nights during the Bill Clinton years. Another cast member calls himself "T.T. Boy," a pseudonym that makes me somewhat nervous.

I know many of you are here for the trivia and behind-the-scenes lore, but my purpose this week is merely to introduce you to this film and give you my general impressions of it. Like I said, this is not an era of adult entertainment with which I am terribly familiar. Production-wise, I found it significant that Glen and Glenda was made in sunny San Francisco. If you listened to the lost Greg Javer/Keith Crocker commentary tracks I posted a few weeks ago, you know that the Bloom-owned Swedish Erotica franchise moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco in the '70s. I guess Noel stayed in Frisco after that. Keith, if you want to correct me about any of this, feel free. 

Like Rod Wood (1995) and Plan 69 from Outer Space (1993), Glen and Glenda seems to have been made to capitalize on the hype surrounding Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Ed Wood (1994). In fact, Plan 69 and Glenda were both directed by Frank Marino, and both were produced by Caballero Home Video. Since there exists a fan-made PG-rated edit of Plan 69, I may have to review that, too. My work is never done. Odd that there should be so many posthumous porn parodies of Ed Wood, since Eddie made so much pornography in the '60s and '70s. Perhaps, if he'd lived into the 1990s, he could have directed some of these himself. 

I'm not sure how well or how poorly Glen and Glenda was received in 1994. It was not nominated in any categories at the 12th  Annual AVN Awards (aka the porn Oscars), even though actors Steven St. Croix and Kaitlyn Ashley both won trophies for other films that year. St. Croix even hosted the awards ceremony. Nevertheless, Caballero did not forget about this movie, rereleasing it on DVD in 2010. And someone bothered to upload it to the internet circa 2020. Let's say it had as much of a life as it was ever destined to have.

The film begins with a bearded, trench coat-wearing police inspector (possibly played by the director) examining the corpse of Patrick/Patricia, a cross-dresser, in an alley. An attendant in a white uniform hands him the suicide note, which we then hear as narration. It is, word-for-word, the same suicide note from Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda. ("The records will tell the story...") So the parody is hewing extremely close to its source material. Eddie wasn't given a screenwriting credit, but these are his words.

After the title sequence, during which we see the San Francisco skyline and watch its iconic trolleys, the inspector then goes to a "hospital" (actually just a large, white house) and meets with a doctor (Henri Pachard) about the case. Their conversation, again, is almost identical to the one that Lyle Talbot and Timothy Farrell have in Ed Wood's film. The only major difference is that the doctor promises to tell the inspector about just one case instead of two. But he does say the "depths of a man's mind" part directly to the camera.

This sets up a brief parody or restaging of the famous "window shopping" scene from Ed Wood's film. Our stubbly hero, Glen (St. Croix), looks in a store window while dressed in full drag, complete with a cheap blonde wig, in broad daylight. But then, after just a few seconds of this, we cut to Glen (still in drag) lounging on a beige sectional sofa with three other, similar-looking cross-dressers. Then, while wearing only tighty-whities, he admires his tanned and muscular physique in a mirror. Finally, we see Glen wearing men's clothes in a kitchen, having a conversation with his denim-clad, brunette fiancée Barbara (Brigitte Aime). 

Glen in drag.

All this time, the doctor has been grimly narrating, his words coming almost intact from Ed Wood's script:

Nature makes mistakes. It's proven everyday. This is Glen. Glen is a transvestite, a man who's more comfortable wearing girls' clothes. Transvestite is the term given by medical science to those people who wear the clothing of the opposite sex. Many a transvestite actually wishes to be the opposite sex. Give this man satin undies, a dress, and he's the happiest individual in the world. He can work better, think better, he can play better, and he can be more of a credit to his community and his government because he's happy. These things are his comfort.  

Glen and all the other hundreds of thousands of other Glens across the nation face quite a problem. Glen is engaged to be married to Barbara. The problem? Glenda. Glen's other self. The girl that he himself is. His other, individual personality. Glen's problem is a deep one, but he must tell Barbara soon. She's begun to notice things. His eyes when he looks into a ladies' store window. So many of the little things that are hard to hide. 

A similar vibe.

By this point, we have also glimpsed blonde actress Kaitlyn Ashley as Glenda, admiring herself nude in a mirror and masturbating. My theory is that, when the character is played by Steven St. Croix in drag, that's how the world sees him. When the character is played by Kaitlyn Ashley, that's how Glen sees himself. In any event, this is remarkably similar to Diana Wood's Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel in which the cross-dressing characters are depicted as fully, physically female. To emphasize this theme, we get a few shots of St. Croix in men's clothes, walking past the same store window from before.

We now return to Barbara's kitchen. She and Glen discuss the same topics that the previous Glen and Barbara talked about in 1953: the lengths of Glen's fingernails, the conclusion of Barbara's studies, and the couple's marriage plans. But then, Barbara invites Glen to have "dessert," They take it to the bedroom, strip out of their stonewashed ensembles, and start having sex. But even here, director Frank Marino does something interesting. Glen looks at the bedroom mirror and (after an editing transition) sees himself as Glenda. So now it's Barbara and Glenda having sex. For the rest of the sequence, we keep jumping back and forth between Glen and Glenda.

(Random weird detail: There's a fake horse head mounted on the wall behind the lovers. Could this be a Caballero Home Video in-joke, like the Pixar lamp? After all, the word "caballero," like "cavalier," literally comes from the Latin for "horse.")

After the lovemaking has concluded, a lingerie-wearing Barbara fixes some breakfast, and we get a brief spoof of the infamous 1987 PSA that compared a drug user's brain to an egg frying in a skillet. But Glen is busy sniffing his girlfriend's clothes and imagining himself as Glenda in the mirror. I'm not sure how familiar the filmmakers were with Ed Wood's written work, but this is exactly the kind of scene that Eddie liked to include in his stories and novels.

Meanwhile, Barbara gets a phone call from her ex-boyfriend Bill (Marc Wallice) and invites him over. No points for guessing that this sets up a later scene. A hungover Glen finally stumbles into the kitchen, and he and Barbara talk about a man who underwent a sex change operation. Apparently, it's front page news in the Los Angeles Times, as evidenced by a prop newspaper that Barbara hands Glen. The very existence of this prop (more realistic than its 1953 counterpart, I might add) shows that the filmmakers were clearly having fun with the premise.  

"Police ask community for a hand," you say?

And here, 35 minutes into the film, is where Glen and Glenda finally diverges from Glen or Glenda. Steven St. Croix becomes strangely agitated by the newspaper story and steps out for "fresh air." This is an excuse for him to indulge in his secretive hobby. Then, the aforementioned Bill, his sandy hair pulled back in a ponytail, arrives. He and Barbara talk about Glen's dual personality and their own past relationship. This leads to the inevitable sex scene. I was amused that, throughout this entire sequence, you can see a box of Krispy saltine crackers (with "unsalted tops") on the kitchen counter. So even professional fornicators enjoy a good saltine now and again.

As Timothy Farrell once told us, "Life, even though its changes are slow, moves on." In the 32 years since Glen and Glenda came out, for example, Krispy crackers have moved from Sunshine to Kellogg. There are many other details that denote this movie as a product of the mid-1990s, namely the hairstyles and clothing, but even the bodies themselves have changed. For one thing, tattoos are only fleetingly seen in this movie when they'd be omnipresent in such a production today. Pubic hair is more plentiful. And perhaps a true porn aficionado would be able to carbon date a movie based strictly on the appearance of the breast implants jutting out from the actresses' chests. These '90s fake boobs have a very specific look to them.

Johnny's house.

The Barbara/Bill scene fades to black, and (to my delight) we fade in on a stock shot of a large house on a stormy night, followed by a flash of lightning. So director Frank Marino clearly knows his Ed Wood. Inside, three of Glen's cross-dressing pals, including Johnny (Peter North), are relaxing on the sofa while watching TV, drinking beer, and smoking cigars. Glen enters in drag, but he's not in a good mood. He slumps down on the furniture and confesses to his pals that he still hasn't told Barbara about his penchant for women's clothes. This is highly reminiscent of the 1953 scene between Ed Wood and Charley Crafts, except that this new version of Glen has three confidantes instead of one.

The camera slowly zooms in on Steven St. Croix as the actor gazes off into the distance, his mind very much in a muddle. This leads to a fantasy sequence in which Glen imagines himself as Glenda (Kaitlyn Ashley again), sexually servicing his languid pals, who look like zonked-out patrons in an opium den. The filmmakers have intercut some stock shots of lightning throughout this sequence, maintaining the Woodian aesthetic. I'd also like to mention the film's uncredited score. For the most part, it's just background-y synth pop, but the composer has also made good use of a high, whistling sound that mimics the theremin.

I should clarify that, during this entire sequence, Glenda appears as female while the other three participants appear as men in women's clothing, including makeup and jewelry. To say the least, it's an interesting sexual dynamic, and one that would have intrigued and excited the real Edward D. Wood, Jr. But this is all just a dream that our main character is having. Once Glen snaps back to reality, he resolves to tell Barbara the truth, and his three pals cheer him as he goes. But in the film's final seconds, one of the remaining buddies laments, "Oh, I got ashes on my skirt! Oh, jeez!" His buddy chides him: "Did you burn your pussy?" Another unexpected hazard of the lifestyle. The end.

All in all, Glen and Glenda was a very interesting artifact from the '90s, and I'm grateful to Edward Fisher for recommending it to me. I've said before that all movies are documentaries, whether they intend to be or not. They document the times in which they were made and the lives of the people who made them. This modest pornographic feature film certainly does that. While it's not mandatory viewing for all Woodologists, adventurous fans should give it at least a cursory watch.