Death Drop Gorgeous

RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 6 All-Stars has wrapped up, and our sincere condragulations to Miz Kylie Sonique Love for her win (and a shout-out to Ginger Minj, whom we also adore). Gaps are rare between seasons of Drag Race; RuPaul is both prolific and tireless. Luckily, the second season of Canada’s spinoff is just around the corner, with an anniversary episode of season 1 streaming on Crave right now to fill the void. But if that’s not enough for you (and truly, is there ever enough drag?), you might takea look at Death Drop Gorgeous, a horror-comedy about drag queens! Can you even resist?

Note: in Drag Race, a dance move where the dancer suddenly and dramatically throws themselves backwards onto the ground, one leg extended, is referred to as a Death Drop (and sometimes a shablam); in fact, it’s actually called a dip, and is one of the essential moves in voguing, but for the purposes of popular culture, and this film, this is a death drop, courtesy of Laganja Estranja.

Death Drop Gorgeous, written and directed by Michael J. Ahern, Christopher Dalpe, and Brandon Perras, weaves together camp, gore, and enough gay references that it’s sure to hilt queer cult classic status.

A serial killer is on the loose in Providence, targeting gay men and draining their bodies of blood before leaving their beautiful, slaughtered corpses to be found by an increasingly panicked community. Dwayne (Wayne Gonsalves), cute but disgruntled, watches from behind the bar at the Aut Haus. His own roommate Brian, frequent patron and audience member, and a host of drag queens including Fitness Janet, Gloria Hole, Tragedi, Audrey Heartburn, and Lindsay Fuckingham, are either targets or suspects, and a fun drinking game can be had trying to guess which is which.

As we know from Drag Race acting challenges, though drag queens are no doubt talented performers, they are not necessarily natural or easy actors. It’s a mixed bag here, though Gonsalves and Matthew Pidge are particular stand-outs, maybe even good enough to appear in movies that aren’t incredibly niche, self-made, and crowd-sourced.

If you have fondness in your heart for drag, I’m sure it will extend to this film, where the fun is not just in guessing who’s draining the blood, but why.

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