Dragula Season 4 Episode 6 Review (TV Series, 2021)
content warning: flashing lights, mental wellness, grieving, blood
Editorial note: these Dragula reviews will feature spoilers.
This episode opens with a commercial for the Boulet Beauty Bizarre & Monster Makeover Salon. Every season has one of these commercial or informercial sketches and it’s meant to be camp. A trio of monsters are getting makeovers while the Boulet Brothers espouse their philosophy on bringing out the inner ugly in you. The makeup designs are great and watching a curling iron wrap around a tentacle for just the right curve hits different.
Back in the Boudoir, the contestants talk about the Cauldron and the key from last week. Jade feels bad for everything that happened last week and discusses her own diagnoses with mental illness. No one is happy with how they behaved but, as they’ve consistently shown on this show, they are willing to talk to each other and try to make amends. This has especially been lost this season as some of the more experienced contestants on the show were performing for the camera and still reading a bit when they broke down the past episodes. La Zavaleta comes to apologize to Jade and Sigourney and everyone talks about where they’re coming from in the contest.
This week’s challenge is the Hairy Monster challenge. The contestants have to create an original hairy monster and model it onstage. Any style—from camp to horror—is allowed as long as it fits the theme. Arda Wigs is sponsoring the challenge, providing wigs to use in the costumes and a $1000 prize for the winner.
Arda Wigs is my favorite wig company. Plenty of companies have high quality synthetic wigs; Arda is one of the only affordable wig companies that actually makes wigs big enough for my head. If I need a wig for a costume, I order from them and know it’s going to fit. Their short wigs are really good quality with a lot of hair. I use them for my Fry from Futurama cosplay and anytime I do a cartoon or anime character and don’t feel like styling and coloring my hair for the costume.
The contestants play around with a massive stash of Arda wigs in the Boudoir. They try out various wigs and improv some characters. Sigourney sets up a recurring bit of trying to make Dahli actually wear a wig this season. This is the kind of silly, fun energy that hasn’t really been at the forefront of Season 4.
Saint gets their turn to open up about the show. They entered so confident after winning Resurrection and feel the pressure. Saint worked hard to come back, put their best drag forward, and they feel like it’s not good enough. They also reveal the added pressure they feel as the only black contestant left in the contest. Dahli meets with them to talk through these concerns and help them put the Boulet Brothers’ critiques into perspective. Saint is focused on the small negative—being asked to bring a little more as a performer to the stage—and Dahli is offering advice from their own experience with those critiques on Season 2.
The guest judges this week are Bonnie Aarons and Landon Cider. Bonnie Aarons is a horror actor best known for her portrayal of The Nun in The Conjuring universe. Her critiques on the show last time really honed in on specific advice she had for each contestant to best bring their characters to life on the mainstage. Landon Cider is the Season 3 champion of Dragula and even before that was one of the best known drag kings working in the industry. The Boulet Brothers always invite the winner back to critique on an episode and now is the perfect time to bring in Landon. His wolfman last year is one of the best performances to ever appear on the show and is just one example of his expertise in styling hair in every way imaginable for drag performances.
Saint is a satyr, in that otherworldly, ethereal style that they dominated Resurrection with. The design of the hairy legs leading into the hooves looks real. There’s a great contrast between a really beautiful makeup job on the face and these extravagant braids covered in gold accents and the beastly form below the waist.
Dahli’s troll is a total transformation. Put the look aside for a moment. Dahli has never come this hard on the stage before. This is an entirely different character and that’s going to help them stand out regardless of the quality of the look. The troll costume is incredible and the prosthetic nose and teeth make Dahli’s inhuman makeup look more monstrous than ever before.
Sigourney Beaver starts with another coverup, a satin turquoise robe with gold trim. I actually really like how the outer layer looks this time, but she goes to her reveal much sooner than she has in the past. Her blonde bombshell werewolf looks really good and she performs the character well. She’s made better use of her reveals in the past, but this still works well onstage.
Hoso Terra Toma’s mothman creates a great silhouette onstage. They have a strong understanding of proportion in creating their more inhuman designs. It’s really smart to do a creature concept we don’t necessarily expect to be super hairy in this challenge and the design really works.
Jade Jolie’s costume looks great onstage. It’s this Mrs. Claus meets Krampus creature and it works. I’m not going to go into the performance too much. Jade revealed earlier in the episode that her pet had to be put to sleep while filming this episode and she’s struggling to hold it together. I commend her for doing the best she can under those circumstances.
La Zavaleta said their look was inspired by The Cat in the Hat, a character that scared her in her childhood. For me, it looks like a fur-suit inspired spin on a costume from Cats. Either way, it’s quite disturbing and she knows how to put on a show.
For me, Dahli clearly won the challenge with their presentation. Their energy onstage was so different that I honestly thought it had to be another contestant at first. I really liked Jade and Saint’s looks, as well. Jade’s character design was awesome and Saint’s more glamourous approach really stood out.
The Boulet Brothers have their private conversation before judging. They love Sigourney, but need her to show any filth and a bit more horror to win. Hoso’s costume is incredible, but apparently, she needs a lot of help from production to get ready on the challenges. The term “needy” is thrown around and that is not a critique you want in any performance environment. Saint did great, but she needs to stay focused on the contest. The Boulet Brothers acknowledge that Jade is going through it right now, but know that they can’t take it easy on her if this contest is going to be fair.
The top contestants this week are Dahli, Hoso, and Saint. Dahli is praised for their performance, but knocked for their ugly shoes. The judges love Hoso’s character, but bring up Hoso having to get help from the production crew. Saint is praised for all the detail in their costume and creature design and for not wearing the same plain black pumps again. Saint is also told to make their performance bigger still, with specific examples of where the performance could be amped up.
The bottom contestants are La Zavaleta, Sigourney, and Jade. La Zavaleta’s look confused the judges, but they liked her performance. Sigourney is praised for her performance skills, but critiqued for not bringing something new this week and not going far enough with her monster. Jade is praised for her costume design, but the judges felt the character missed the mark for the category and could’ve been performed better.
Hoso is declared the winner of the challenge. They did a great job. Seeing all the contestants lined up onstage made it clear how much their design stood out as a monster compared to the rest.
Sigourney Beaver and Jade Jolie are up for Extermination. They are going to be locked up in a lab with roaches. More roaches are released over time. Whoever lasts the longest survives the Extermination. The Boulet Brothers even specify that the contest has been lacking in filth and this should start to fix that. Good.
Ultimately, Jade Jolie goes home this week. If you’ve been following my reviews, you know I’ve been a huge fan of what Jade brought to the contest. She is a talented drag artist who consistently gave her all onstage. I think this season would’ve gone very differently if she had been critiqued earlier on the mainstage. She took the notes very well two weeks ago for what she needed to bring to the contest. I was a fan of Jade on her season of Drag Race and I’m even more of a fan after her run on Dragula.
New episodes of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula premiere Tuesdays on Shudder.
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