Killer in Drag Paperback | Pages: 164 pages

Mention Based On Books Killer in Drag

Title	:	Killer in Drag
Author	:	Ed Wood
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 164 pages
Published	:	June 2nd 1999 by Four Walls Eight Windows (NY) (first published 1963)
Categories	:	Fiction. LGBT. Pulp. Gay. Gay Fiction. Mystery. Crime

Description During Books Killer in Drag

[2016 repost: I wrote this bizarre review in 2011, leading it off with two paragraphs that have nothing to do with the book. I was hell-bent, it seemed, to force this personal story into the review whether it fit or not. Oh well, that's OK. It's an Ed Wood book, and I think he would have understood...we all can go off the rails.]

When I was in kindergarten lo those many years ago I exhibited atrocious behavior at the Halloween party. I didn't like the hobo costume my parents had selected for me, and in rebellion I cried through the whole choral program rather than sing along with the rest of the kids. By the time the Christmas Party rolled around I had cleaned up my act, was entirely the little gentleman, and was thereupon awarded a Firestone Christmas songs LP (that's a vinyl record album to you youngsters) as "best behaved boy at the Christmas Party."

In the demented way my brain works--full of forced connections as it is--I began to think that Ed Wood had--with the writing of this pulp sleaze crime novel, Killer in Drag in 1963--improved his act greatly since penning and directing two of the worst films ever made, Glen or Glenda in 1953, and Plan 9 From Outer Space in 1959. If Plan 9... was like me at the Halloween Party, then Killer in Drag was ...well, you get the drift of my horrible forced metaphor. (I won't even go into the psychological implications of being forced to wear a costume that was "not me.")

Killer in Drag will never make it to any edition of the Modern Library top 100 list, make no mistake. It's poorly written in spots, and yet at no point would I confuse the prose in this book with anything in the stilted and embarrassing Plan 9.... It might even be argued that Wood is the Hemingway of sleaze. The first sentence of chapter 3 says simply: "It was cold." Fuckin' A. Yes, the book is rife with cliched dialogue and situations pilfered from numerous other crime novels, but what makes the book endearing and fun is the sub-cultural color and cast of underclass characters that Wood creates in telling his fast-moving, twisty tale.

The story's protagonist, Glen/Glenda, is based upon Ed Wood himself, and was the subject of his 1953 film Glen or Glenda, which is a piece of cinematic history that must be seen to be believed. Wood was a heterosexual cross-dresser who wore women's underwear under his male business clothes (and supposedly wore panties and bra under his marine uniform when storming the beaches of Guadalcanal), and he channels his fetish rather marvelously into the predilections of his novel's hero/heroine. Glen/Glenda is a mob assassin who gets warm feelings in the groin whenever donning his/her soft tight angora sweaters. By day our hero is Glen, a man, and by night is Glenda, a hired killer. Glenda's night world is one of violence and sexual fetishism, in which she is the object of lust from every manner of man, from the beat cop to the sexually frustrated barkeep.

Glenda has built up a nice stockpile of cash via her trade and is contemplating evading the tentacles of her mob clients and disappearing with it to a new life. But on the night she embarks on a routine killing of a Jewish storekeeper who won't pay his protection money something goes terribly wrong. During the course of Glen/Glenda's subsequent journey to evade both the feds and the mob, she encounters a rapist farmer, brutal podunk cops on the take, a pedophile carny who likes pre-teen boys and toenail chewing (other peoples'), a crooked carnival owner, a he-she carny, and a hooker with a heart of gold. Being a very convincing cross-dresser and makeup expert, Glen/Glenn finds the ability to make the old gender switcheroo to be very handy in a pinch.

The book is most lovingly written when Wood gushes over Glenda's wardrobe, what it looks like and how it feels to the wearer. Along with being a fetishized fashion parade, the book is an interesting examination of a person with two distinct identities, a person who considers his male and female sides as "partners" in crime.

After much mayhem, one worries if Wood's ending will be able to tie things together, and it does, beautifully. The ending, like the book itself, is pretty kick-ass, in fact.

Is it an abuse of Goodreads' rating system to give five stars to what is, at best, really just a three-star book? Probably, but who the fuck cares? This book was as fun as can be; pulp sleaze at its best. It makes me most anxious to read Wood's 1967 followup, the allegedly sleazier, Death of a Transvestite.

------
(Kr@Ky 2011, with amendments in 2016)

Details Books Concering Killer in Drag

Original Title:	Black Lace Drag
ISBN:	1568581203 (ISBN13: 9781568581200)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Glen Marker, Glenda Satin, Dalton Van Carter, Glen/Glenda

Rating Based On Books Killer in Drag

Ratings: 3.52 From 98 Users | 15 Reviews

Column Based On Books Killer in Drag

A truly bizarre sequel to Woods classic Glen or Glenda, only this time Glendas a contract killer on the run. The prose is pure pulp with all those great Wood touches (yes, theres angora and awkward dialog). This book feels like it was made up as Wood wrote it, but that gives it a kind of crazy energy that works. This is only my second exposure to Woods writing, but Im getting the feeling that he was a much more talented writer than film maker, and Im saying this as someone who loves his films.

Ed Wood is probably my favourite director; so when I found this book at a local library, I was intrigued, and also somewhat surprised that a relatively mainstream institution would carry such a non-mainstream book. Although certainly not a book that most people would enjoy, the sheer trashiness of it gives it a certain appeal to people who are interested in vintage pulp fiction. The writing is about what you would expect from the author's other work, so don't expect brilliant prose, but it's



review of Ed Wood, Jr.'s Killer in Drag by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 24, 2019 I've never really shared the tendency of people to love Ed Wood as 'the worst filmmaker in the world'. I've never found Plan 9 from Outer Space enjoyable even as camp. I liked Glen or Glenda partially because it's such an odd mixture of materials but the soundtrack, at least in the version I witnessed, is garbled to the point of being unintelligible in parts. I've witnessed Jail Bait but I don't even

[2016 repost: I wrote this bizarre review in 2011, leading it off with two paragraphs that have nothing to do with the book. I was hell-bent, it seemed, to force this personal story into the review whether it fit or not. Oh well, that's OK. It's an Ed Wood book, and I think he would have understood...we all can go off the rails.]When I was in kindergarten lo those many years ago I exhibited atrocious behavior at the Halloween party. I didn't like the hobo costume my parents had selected for me,

Reading Ed Wood is liberating on a number of levels, much like watching his films. Ed is nothing if not sincere, and he writes from life. His life, not yours or mine. It never seems to occur to him that his life is anything but acceptable and interesting, and if you don't agree, you probably won't "get" why people read him. Of course, he also deals with things like alien invasions and professional killers that he has no real-life experience of, and in the area of fantasy, he's purely a hack. But

Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 December 10, 1978) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor (often performing many of these functions simultaneously). In the 1950s, Wood made a run of independently produced, extremely low-budget horror, science fiction, and cowboy films, now celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects,