drag

It’s week six of Dragula, the search for a Drag Super-Monster who is equally gifted in the areas of glamour, horror, and filth.

This week’s episode saw the queens challenged to go goth with a gothic bride look and lip sync from quintessential goth-rock band Switchblade Symphony.

It’s the second week in a row the ladies could turn out a traditionally “pretty” look that still had a horrific element to it, but had to be able to back it up with serious performance chops.

That played out almost exactly as it did last week, but in a slightly smaller field the minor, unforced errors from a few  queens were judged even more severely than they were last week in the cabin in the woods.

Now we’ve got four queens left, and two of them feel like an utter lock for the finals – but the other two will have to fight tooth and claw next week for that final spot.

Enough talk – watch Dragula’s sixthh episode, and then see if you agree with how I’ve ranked the queens below.

[Read more…] about The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Power Rankings – Season 2, Episode 6

It’s week four of Dragula, the search for a Drag Super-Monster who is equally gifted in the areas of glamour, horror, and filth.

This week’s episode totally took my breath away. The cast’s interpretation of alien life – complete with a live birth – is hilarious, stunning, and scary all at once.

It also stretches the boundaries our belief when it comes to reality editing. Clearly these looks were put together with a lot of resources on hand and more than one day of notice. The implication seems to be that everyone finds out what the theme was before they are dismissed from the previous week of shooting.

(If that’s the case, I’m not sure why the Boulets can’t just say, “As we told you last week…” when they explain the challenge.)

If it’s hard to suspend disbelief about the editing of the show, it’s not at all hard to imagine that the remaining seven contestants are really female alien life who really reproduce live on camera. Even the weakest performances goes above and beyond what I expected to see. The floor show is absolutely transfixing.

Enough talk – watch Dragula’s fourth episode, and then see if you agree with how I’ve ranked the queens below.

[Read more…] about The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Power Rankings – Season 2, Episode 4

It’s week three of Dragula, the search for a Drag Super-Monster who is equally gifted in the areas of glamour, horror, and filth.

This episode is a little creaky, showing off not only the show’s lower-than-TV budget but also their somewhat remedial editing decisions.

We see a runway and performance obviously out of the order in which they were shot. And, the rock performances are both unedited full versions of a single song – so we have to listen to the whole thing twice! – rather than a slimmed down edit or a cross-cut version showing the two teams facing off.

Reader beware: I’m not only coming at critiquing this episode from my drag fandom, but as a semi-professional rocker who has played a lot of stage shows. Granted, none of them have been as a shock rock band, but I might be a little extra brutal on some areas of this challenge compared to one that’s more horror-based.

Enough talk – watch Dragula’s third episode, and then see if you agree with how I’ve ranked the queens below.

[Read more…] about The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Power Rankings – Season 2, Episode 3

It’s week two of Dragula, the search for a Drag Super-Monster who is equally gifted in the areas of glamour, horror, and filth.

If you were looking for an episode to sell you on Dragula, this is the one to watch. Last week’s episode emphasized bombastic special effect make-up in a way the first season never did, and this week continues that oneupmanship.

This week’s challenge? A high concept floor show of day-walking undead women in a small western town. It’s visually impressive and frequently unsettling. Plus, it again ends with an unexpected twist – the queens having a (paintball) shootout for their lives.

It also gives us a chance to get to know the nine remaining queens a bit better. I’ll admit, none of the girls feels as totally on-the-fringes and filthy as last year’s cast, aside from perhaps Monikkie. It’s a slightly more mainstream, more lovely crowd of competitors. Yet, they absolutely do not feel like glamour queens who just happen to have a penchant for the odd. They feel like something totally other – an aspect of drag we’re simply not seeing celebrated in media at this point. They’re just not as scrappy as last year’s cast – perhaps owing to the increased visibility of the show and this year’s casting process.

Enough talk – watch Dragula’s second episode, and then see if you agree with how I’ve ranked the queens below.

[Read more…] about The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Power Rankings – Season 2, Episode 2