Ranking

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

Your eyes do not deceive you – I’m back, back, back, back again with more drag power rankings for you!

What rankings? Well, even though RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3 does not debut until January, it’s no longer the only drag show you can stream to the comfort of your own couch.

Hennies, please let me introduce you to Season 2 of Dragula – the search for the next drag super monster! This new season is free to watch on World of Wonder’s YouTube channel!

I’ve loved horror even longer than I’ve loved drag, ever since the first chapter book I ever read was a children’s version of Dracula. Unfortunately, the modern horror landscape tends to be focused on gore and jump scares, and not a lot of the macabre suspense I dug as a kid.

Dragula brings that creepiness and sense of macabre – along with the heaping of camp that comes with a great drag performance.

Rather than preparing for an outlandish challenge in each episode, contestants prep a horrific look that adheres to a specific scary theme – like zombies or sea monsters. Then, rather than present the look on the runway, the queens bring their them to life on a genuinely scary floor show that’s sometimes in a challenging environment, like the middle of the desert!

Finally, and I do mean finally, there are no lip syncs for your life here. Queens are eliminated via Extermination! This season, they first face their fears in a frightening challenge against other low-ranking queens. Then, the bottom queen (or queens!) films her own creepy, campy death scene at the hands of hosts The Boulet Brothers!

The queens of Season 1 turned out some amazing looks despite the show’s low budget. This first Season 2 episode is worlds different – it’s shot in much higher quality, and the queens all bring highly-detailed horror looks filled with prosthetic make-up and practical effects.

Enough explanation – let’s get to the show and the rankings! This week each queen was tasked with turning out a horrific, Hellraiser-inspired Cenobite – you probably know the most-famous one as “Pinhead.” Cenobites are sadomasochistic extra-dimensional beings who take the shape of humanoids whose bodies are consumed in an endless state of half-torture, half elaborate art.

[Read more…] about The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Power Rankings – Season 2, Episode 1