Doris Wishman, who makes Ed Wood look like Steven Spielberg, directs this pseudo-documentary about sex change operations. The film switches back and forth between Dr. Leo Wollman, who guides transgendered people to surgery; Leslie, a male-to-female postoperative who musters all of her seventh grade education to hope none of the children she adopts in the future turn out to be homosexual; and a bunch of softcore scenes involving transexual persons recreating different experiences from Wollman's patients' pasts.
Wishman's film is a technical nightmare. Footage shot from 1971 through 1977 is used, causing jarring discrepancies in Wollman's appearance. The camera often drifts from its subject (a Doris Wishman specialty), and the editing is atrocious. When Wollman isn't onscreen obviously reading off cue cards, he is heard on voiceover, obviously reading a script. The "cast" of transgender subjects do not screen well. Reenactments of "problem patients" use both real and fake transexuals. Porn star Harry Reems is here as a Moroccan cab driver- you don't want to know. One depressing sequence has real transsexual Debbie, thirty-eight years old but looking fifty, talking about her proud and understanding teenage daughter, her appearance on a David Susskind show, and her stint in the U. S. Navy when she was a man. Debbie is then poked and prodded by Dr. Wollman before he inserts a large metal device into her still-developing female cavity. Don't pluck your eyes out yet, or you will miss Debbie awkwardly cavorting on a bed with an unnamed actor, generating the unsexiest sex scene in film history. "Let Me Die a Woman" is a nightmare of a film. Doris Wishman was a sweet old lady who used to make exploitation films. Too bad all those films stunk.