Made in in 1970 but only released in 1978, for Lord knows what reason. I first became familiar with director Doris Wishman from the book The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry, which starts with John Waters and Roger Ebert describing the original "camp films," which were literally set at camps - with nude people playing volleyball with their backs to the camera, etc, all of this presented as educational for the public; this was the only way to show nudity on film in the 50s/early 60s. Wishman led the way in this genre; you can watch a few of her films on the net, such as Nude On The Moon.
Nude on the Moon seems like Kubrick compared to Let Me Die a Woman; one reviewer described her hard cuts as "provoking dumbfounded amazement" in the viewer. The late 60s must have further warped her brain. The public domain soundtrack never ceases to be hilariously inappropriate at all times. The subject at hand is, you guessed it, gender dysphoria, right down to the neo-vagina; I think everyone filmed is shown in the buff to some degree, except the narrator, Dr. Leo Wollman, MD, who points, fingers, and prods his patients with a metal pointer, all the while delivering the stiffest imaginable reading from the cue cards his eyes follow.
Wollman is an interesting figure, cited as a reference in Harry Benjamin's 1966 book The Transsexual Phenomenon, and listed in the early 2000s as a contributor to the TG magazine Tapestry. Along with Benjamin he was one of a handful of people in the medical establishment TS people could go to for treatment at the time, knowing that they'd be treated with sympathy and understanding. A bit of trivia: In her 2nd autobiography Renee Richards describes Benjamin giving her a hormone injection in the hinder while slapping his hand on her rump at the same time, a technique he brought over from his native Germany; Wollman is shown doing the same thing in this film.
Richards's MD father considered Benjamin a "quack;" I wonder what word he'd use for Wollman, who, when he wasn't practicing as an endocrinologist, pursued things like hypnotic dentistry. Perhaps he put a spell on Wishman; this movie is so off kilter it made me dizzy quite a bit, and I've watched every episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
One saving grace in the film is the vivacious Leslie, who stumbles over her words attempting to describe her past, she has all the enthusiasm and life lacking in the zombie like performances the rest of the film has. And, when you get past the positively surreal bad filmaking, you actually have a fairly comprehensive documentary on what it meant to be a transsexual. It's just a shame that Wishman was behind the camera for a sensitive topic like this; at least Richards had her autobiography out in stores at the same time, and was doing hundreds of interviews as well, while this bit of schlock was relegated to the dingiest of theaters.
Another thing LMDAW is notorious for is a mercifully brief scene showing GRS in progress. Yrrk.
