Glen Or Glenda: Pull The CGI String
[NOTE: Video no longer online]
How come nobody ever really wants to remake bad movies? Keeping the low-budget vibe of Edward D. Wood Jr. intact, comes this minimalist CGI remaking of Wood’s transvestite classic, Glen Or Glenda. As of this writing, only the first two scenes have been remade, which are both embedded above. (Video should just play through continuously.) Only true Wood fans may find this to be a hoot — which it is! — but hopefully others can see the charm, too.
In the first scene, Bela Lugosi is recast here as a bald, mustachioed man standing fully clothed in a steam room. The opening monologue to the film is one of the craziest, non-sequitur ridden, misguided monologues in film history, the result of Wood convincing Lugosi to be in the film under less than straightforward pretenses. Here, though, the monologue is delivered in such a flat tone it’s almost crazier sounding than when Lugosi delivers it, especially the emotionless intoning of the classic line “Pull the string.”
In the second scene, I very much like that Wood’s VO narration here is being delivered by a woman, which I don’t know if Wood wanted to be considered a woman when he was wearing women’s clothing, as transvestites are wont to do, but I like that the audience now must think of Wood in a female guise, even though the CGI character is male.
As I said above, as of this writing, there are only two scenes for this Glen Or Glenda Redux project completed, but if there’s more, I’ll just keep adding them to the playlist.