by J †Johnson, Staff Writer

Dragula: Season 666
A Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Season 666 Serial Commentary
Episode 1 “Welcome to Hell!”
Now streaming on Shudder

Don’t forget who did this to you.
—Dracmorda

She is sweet and all but where are the dicks?
—Grey Matter

Poise and cuntface… I look for it in all my drag daughters.
—Dracmorda

I’m the shit Dracula.
—Yuri

That bitch would be in the bottom three by herself.
—Asia Consent

I wanna see some dicks.
—Grey Matter

Note: We’ll dive right into our weekly commentary, starting with the first episode of Season 666. For an intro to this serial, slither here.

So good to be home! Some homes, though, are more welcoming than others, and some are our personal hell. The movie theater set shows a lot of promise with its various locations—entry hall, lobby, plush red seats, velvet curtained stage. Later in the episode we’ll go down to the parking structure and follow one of our monsters into the last dressing trailer she’ll ever see. The theater setting also feasibly folds in the workroom and cauldron lounge, which keeps us in the fantasy. Maybe the overall set design is a little musical theater for those of us with a sensitivity to organized high-school drama, but hey baby, we’re in the movies and the monsters are popping off the screen.

The haunted house maze is less welcoming, but no less fun. The Boulets are big on seasonal horror theme park attractions and, as they did in Season 4, they made their own maze for Season 666. This one is extra fierce, lousy with killer clowns, and very hands on. Newly arrived contestants are harried through the gauntlet to both wind them up and loosen their tight outfits and attitudes. It’s a motif of the episode: relax, have fun, and get your shit together! We find out in private deliberation that the Boulets cast the season from their secret wildcard file: artists who had auditioned before and were stashed away for later. Plus Majesty, who competed as James Majesty in Season 2. But now they are transformed! Less names, less drama, unless and until they get bored or defensive! We love to (respectfully) hate on Majesty but have to give it up for a few on-point reads and a sickening geriatric vampire floor show.

The Season 666 energy is chaotic but knowing. There are messy outfits and behavior, regional beef stewing, and plenty of self-awareness and self-aware lack of self-awareness. Scylla finds a scroll that guarantees immunity from elimination and tries to rewrite the rules so she can use it to save someone else, which she has no intention of doing. But, also, she’s not sure she needs immunity, though everyone else is like, good for her, she needs it. Or does she! She’s not sure, but maybe! Though she should get extra credit for eating her own asshole.

Meanwhile, Philly’s own Pi is a pretty mess of candor, bravado, overshare, talent, and insecurity. She knows her role as the annoying, mouthy one so well she tries to disappear in the cauldron, hoping no one notices how hard she’s trying to, like, not be annoying while everyone decides who should face extinction. That goes as well as she should have anticipated, and once she’s called out, she dutifully blabs and gets on everyone’s nerves. We feel you, Pi!

Our other home is the ocean from which we slithered when we barely had legs. And truly we can’t go home again. Because of all the sharks. And fuck that. Your monster commentator has already been eliminated (in a well filmed on-site challenge), but that’s not all, folks! There will also be nightmares about the watery void. And we’ll be back for more! Surely this season we’ll meet a challenge we could survive (shout out to the all-time elimination queen and Titan, Season 2’s Erika Klash).

Finally, let’s pour one out for the first to die. No one wants to be that that bitch, but somebody has to bloody the waters to make our gorge rise. And we do have a soft spot for the anti-supermonster. Severity Stone, welcome to the loser’s club, where this monster prefers to hang out away from all those sharks.

Things to watch for in the coming weeks:

† Chicago Family Drama: Auntie Heroine is Scylla’s drag mother and was none too pleased to see her little monster slither into the theater. Infanticide alert! Windy scene queen Aurora Gozmic is not amused by our precocious mythological creature feature, particularly after Scylla comes for her right away. Scylla makes the most of what promises to be a brief but spicy role, though she mistakes herself for Cerberus with the you’re not a monster routine (ask Abhora how that went in Season 2).

† Smoke & Mirrors: Dragula is a lot of fun to analyze as a production, if you’re into that sort of thing. We have a show about a show that presents itself in weekly “real time” episodes without hiding the fact that by the time we arrive the season is over and what we see is a deliberately crafted dramatic re-presentation. The movie staging conceit amplifies this meta theater of cruelty dissonance and reminds us that horror films feel bracingly immediate even as we know that everyone who dies is already (and never) dead, and we are watching a highly edited story. Dragula is presented as a reality show competition, but the Boulets aren’t shy about showing us all the stitches in their monster. The media critics in the audience have plenty to chew on, and the Boulets leave little plates of gore scraps for us all around the edges of the frame. They have also programmed in visual narrative motifs (e.g., episode intros, kill scenes, mise en scène) that resonate with the structural components of the show and give each season its own flavor.

† The Nerves! Dragula vs. Dragula: We’ve already seen one monster crack under pressure, and things only get more intense each episode as contestants are ritually tormented and offed. Notice who looks shaky in the opening half of each episode, then notice who notices and how they respond. Dragula the TV show presents a competitive environment, but for all the cut-throat posturing, Dragula itself is a community, and these artists are being welcomed into it. The point of all this is to develop monster drag, not tear people down. Competitors will lose sight of this at times, but look around the room for the drama around the drama as people decide how they feel about how other people feel about how they’re feeling, and what to do about it. Asia Consent, Grey Matter, Vivvi the Force, Jaharia, and to a lesser extent Auntie Heroine (who’s a little thrown by family drama) look pretty steady in the first episode, while Majesty, Aurora, Pi, Yuri, Scylla, and Desiree Dik look a bit brittle (Majesty and Aurora) or potentially frazzled (everyone else). Notice who’s getting in their own heads, who gets in there with them, and who offers a helping claw (or fang).