by J †Johnson, Staff Writer

Dragula: Season 666
A Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Season 666 Serial Commentary
Episode 8 “Frankenhooker”
Now streaming on Shudder

Oh, it’s you again. Back for more, are you?
—Dracmorda

Cynthia!
—Cynthia Doll

Do you even watch the show?
—Asia Consent

The coke it keeps me slim, the alcohol gives me personality.
—Pi as Disasterina

Fuck the big picture, Clint!
—Asia Consent as Maddelynn Hatter

I’m keeping you.
—Auntie Heroine

Auntie’s taking it pretty well.
—Pi

We have each other, but then we also fight each other.
—Auntie Heroine

I don’t know who to curse.
—Asia Consent

It didn’t really give hooker.
—Swanthula

How is a butthole any different from dicks?
—Grey Matter

She’s definitely pregnant.
—Diana “Darcy the Mail Girl” Prince

My brain is frozen solid.
—Pi

Take it, give it to the queer universe.
—Dracmorda

Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl judging an ’80s sleaze challenge is the stuff drive-in dreams are made of. And while we would have appreciated more Frankenhooker talk, the Boulets’ approach works for Dragula’s mission. It’s not so much that the movie itself encapsulates the spirit of Dragula—the offering to both the community of contestants, judges and crew, as well as the larger community of artists and audience (including the Mutant Fam who tune in for Joe Bob’s digressive B-movie commentary, even if he’s on point here) is what makes Frankenhooker meaningful in the context of Dragula.

Now that we’ve established our perspective, we’ve been eagerly listening to the Boulets’ Creatures of the Night postmortem podcasts, along with our other Dragula shows, as soon as they are available, rather than waiting until we draft our commentary. So, let’s further bring that in. We were curious to hear what the Boulets would have to say about the film, after pointedly calling it problematic on the episode. And, of course, there is nuance to what they say about it on the show, in the explicit trust they have to reference the complex political and cultural dynamics of exploitation cinema. They know their community and audience can not only handle it, but critically and (de)constructively deal with it. On their podcast, they say the challenge isn’t about the movie, but the concept embedded in the name. If the film is half-good and also half-baked and fully flawed, that doesn’t mean we need to delete it from the culture. We can still be intrigued by the idea of a modern interpretation of Frankenstein remixed in an ’80s trash compactor. And we can recognize that making the monster a prostitute is not just wrong or hot, it’s camp. It’s also ripe for queer adaptation. Dracmorda said this much more succinctly, as is her style. And she’s inviting just this sort of unpacking, even as the Boulets’ are also inviting their monsters to drag Frankenhooker to filth. And what a joyride it is!

This episode is a celebration of Dragula right down to the fright feat. If last week was for the nerds, this week is also for the nerds, and we’re taking notice of who among the cast knows their Dragula trivia. Yuri hasn’t met Bitter Betty! Auntie didn’t hear that HoSo (Terra Toma) was talking! Yuri does know Erika Klash twirled so we can swirl! Pi can do a passable Disasterina impression! Asia is punished for repeating Cynthia Doll’s geometry fail, in a classic right answer marked wrong! Dear reader, it’s OK if you don’t get the references, and you can learn from the mini-challenge without getting shocked—plus you have many pleasures ahead of you if you haven’t watched the other 7 seasons (including Resurrection and Titans). The in-jokes and references are part of how the show defines an inside and outside and invites people into the community—all you have to do is care to belong. But don’t you think if you were cast on the show you’d, like, bone up on Dragula if you weren’t already into it? It’s not just a matter of showing your bona fides, but of participating in the discourse. So, it’s hilarious and a little bit scandalous that one of this season’s clear frontrunners, Auntie Heroine, is apparently so unfamiliar with the show’s history. Meanwhile, it’s a good reminder that Asia is a huge nerd like us (but with a better terrible ass tattoo).

Auntie, though, will of course have her moments. And Asia will take us deeper into the practice of allyship. Talk all you want about the competitive advantage of collusion under the name of alliance. Asia struggles to decide who to betray with the curse she so proudly won—recall that last time she wielded a curse, she put some sugar on it by flirting with Grey as she cast it—and her decision to borrow Pi’s move and curse herself says a lot more about friendship and mutual respect than a season’s worth of alliance chatter. (And look, we aren’t saying that good friends martyr themselves—we’re saying that when a community faces a challenge, they don’t come for each other, they seek a creative solution.)

In the lab, when Auntie says, “No matter what we’re going through, we’re still family, we’re still a community—you are my person,” Asia isn’t the only one crying transformative tears, and the edit on that moment is a gift of dignity and restraint. It’s a quiet, powerful memory in the making, and this whole extended exchange among pretty much everyone on the cast is what makes Dragula the remarkable thing that it is. We see it played out in the show, but we know it’s more than a show. It’s giving us life.

OK, so Auntie’s other moment is when Pi approaches them to wriggle out of their little one-sided agreement. Auntie chews Pi up and, while Pi looks kinda nauseous, that doesn’t mean they aren’t also enjoying the close scrutiny of Mother Auntie. And then Auntie spits them out: “The alliance is off, don’t worry about it.” A line that makes the whole tired business worthwhile even before we fully get the counterpoint of authentic camaraderie between Auntie and Asia. And here production has a few more gifts for us, including the other shoe dropping on Pi’s Innocent Delusion routine: “Auntie’s taking it pretty well,” Pi says with a straight face in the booth. Cut to Auntie’s Well I Never blah-blah montage (shades of the classic treatment of Astrud Aurelia’s Endless D&D 101 montage from Season 4). It’s all coming together, and Pi’s head is spinning after the Auntie Freeze Out (shouts to Auntie Matter for This Week in Wordplay). Get used to it, sweet Pi—bye bye, you hunk of burning love.

Things to watch for:

† Word on the street (via Creatures of the Night) is we’re skipping The Last Supper: just another tradition those Season 5 communards fucked up for the rest of us. (Speaking of mutiny, we have one on our hands this season as well, as the contestants refuse to fuck each other over, and this is probably the real reason The Last Supper is cancelled.) While we love the ep where all of the slain monsters are temporarily revived to air grievances and give their finale picks along the dinner table, as with the Monsters of Rock challenge, we’re happy to give it a rest and see what takes its place.

Plus, we’re here for the solidarity even as we root for chaos. Anyway, we’ve been promised an additional challenge and another elimination. This season will conclude with a top 3 glamour/filth/horror floorshow throwdown. Now that everyone has shown us at least one off-week and one triumphant week, we’re supposed to be convinced that anyone could go. And we sure could swallow that narrative. Or we could watch Yuri very closely next week as they are shadowed by the reaper.

The Boulets have certainly succeeded in making a consistently underperforming, but always delightful, contestant a key to the penultimate week. It’s easy, as well, to imagine Auntie will be vulnerable after their defrosting, but we also remember how determined they returned from their last close call. Asia’s been a favorite all season, even amidst some unremarkable midseason looks. What’s she saving for the final push? And then there’s Grey, another monster who established themselves early in the competition but has had their weak moments. Look for Asia and Grey to surge, and the Boulets to cast a cloudy eye on Auntie for showing their relative ignorance of Dragula history. Remember that in choosing the next Drag Supermonster, the Boulets are elevating another spokesmodel for everything Dragula represents. There’s no doubt Auntie could fill that role, but did they inadvertently disrespect the brand at a particularly inopportune moment? Keep in mind as well that we can speculate all week about who goes home, and though it’s already happened in so-called real time, in the queer timeline it really is anyone’s bloody crown to win or lose.

† As we wash our mouth out with blood after saying the other b-word, we’ll spit a little Dragula conspiracy theory, about which we are undecided. Look closely at the extermination challenges in the bisexual lighting of the overall presentation. All the theater’s a stage, you know? The Freezer of Foreboding looked cold enough, but maybe not the advertised -94 degrees—though the icy condensation effects were a nice touch, as were all that writhing and screaming! The science of the whole scene did seem a little sus, but so’s making a Frankenhooker out of spare parts, and we saw plenty of that this week. We keep having flashbacks, though, to that ocean full of sharks, and the improbable dangling among them of some subsequently (and dearly) departed drag monsters. It’s all so fantastic, don’t you think?

† How will the Season 666 silver screen theme wrap up? We can’t stop seeing the tiny stools in the dying room of Boulet Mansion at the top of each episode, thanks to Jay Kay pointing it out weeks ago, when Jay Kay was still posting recap videos (clears throat and taps hoof), but there are plenty of other running gags this season. As we mope into the last couple weeks (secretly excited even as we are bummed the season is coming to a conclusion), it’s a good time to count loose threads and incomplete throughlines. Points of potential continuity are strongest at the staged bookmarks of each episode: the Mansion intro and the extermination. Swanthula has done the killing this season, but the Boulets have promised Dracmorda will get in on the action, so look for big screen references during her kill next week. Episode 8’s intro segment brought home the theme of audience participation, where we are directly addressed as Dragula monsters. Might they make something more of that in the last two weeks with additional metaleptic play?