Dragula Season 4 Episode 1 Review (TV Series, 2021)
content warning: blood, gore, foul language, mental wellness/trauma
Editorial note: these Dragula reviews will feature spoilers.
The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula is back for its fourth season. The show has a new home on Shudder, the best streaming service for horror, and the whole production looks expensive. No one is playing around with making this the best version of the show it can be and we all reap the benefits.
As always, the episode opens with a short film featuring the Boulet Brothers. Two witches appear near a village during the harvest. They offer a chance to change someone’s life forever. If you win a game, you will be wealthy beyond anything you ever imagined; if you lose the game, you lose your life and your soul goes to the witches forever. The introduction is shot in the style of Haxan and it looks incredible. In the present, the witches are the Boulet Brothers, selling Halloween masks as pairs to the unsuspecting public. Family after family, couple after couple try on the masks. Then the screams begin.
The winner will headline the Dragula world tour and earn a cash prize of $100000 courtesy of the Boulet Brothers. The losers will be exterminated.
The 10 contestants are introduced walking through an extreme haunted attraction. They make it to a waiting room where they all meet each other for the first time. Then, the first video message appears. In order to officially enter the competition, each contestant must survive the extreme horror maze set up in the building. If they fail, they’re exterminated. This is genuinely an extreme haunt, with scare actors that are allowed to touch you, interactive elements like moving walls and rotating rooms, and even a car prop that races towards them head on. I’m not fit for Dragula for a lot of reasons, but I can guarantee you they would’ve been down to nine contestants the minute the clowns started jumping at me. No thank you.
From the first season, the Extermination Challenge always had multiple goals. One was redemption. You did poorly in the challenge, so the Boulet Brothers want you to fight for a second chance. Two was entertainment. If you have the goods to bring horror, filth, and glamour, you need to be able to perform at a moment’s notice. Just walking through the haunt isn’t enough; you have to live your B-movie fantasy and play it up. Three is staying true to your character. If you’re a monster, you better be scary; if you’re a femme fatale, you better be threatening. Completion was never enough and everything was always judged, entrance included. Putting everyone through a massive group challenge straight away lets the Boulet Brothers see who is ready for the extremes of the contest.
The first floor show is the Horror Icons Reimagined challenge. Each contestant must reimagine a horror icon from books, film, games, tv, or comics. The character must be recognizable, but cosplay is not acceptable. These are new interpretations of major horror characters. This is a fabulous challenge that clearly sets out the expectations. The Cenobite challenge of season two had a similar aesthetic, but definitely fell short with how many contestants were dinged for not being fully original.
The new season features so much more footage of the contestants feeling each other out. It’s great. The reading is meant to be some playful teasing, though some contestants seem to be reacting a bit stronger than required. It goes on just long enough to set up some storylines for the season and then shifts to the contestants showing off their artistry and getting ready.
The guest judges are horror historian and author Tananarive Due and cult filmmaker Darren Stein. They’re the perfect guest judges. Due is an expert on all things horror, so she of all people should be able to pick out these references with ease. Stein is a staple of the show, appearing as a guest judge each season. He gets the program and knows what the Boulet Brothers are looking for.
Hoso Terra Toma is dressed as the Other Mother from Coraline. This interpretation gave me chills. The silhouette is incredible, a series of curved triangles extending every way imaginable to create the claws and legs of the Other Mother’s true form. Their makeup is incredible and they know how to present a character onstage.
Jade Jolie is doing Sarah Sanderson from Hocus Pocus. Her and Hoso both took a children’s property and amped up the horror factor. That’s definitely the smart way to go in this challenge. Children’s horror can only go so far before it has to stop for its target audience. Jade gets to be a grungier, sexier version of Sarah, with a high slit to the dress, torn up fishnet stockings, and vampy makeup. She is confident onstage and she should be. Her Sarah has clearly risen from the grave and will use whatever she has to get what she wants.
Saint is doing Leatherface. It’s a heavily sexualized version of the character, with the skin apron having a giant exposed breast stitched into it. The mask is terrifying because it’s only a half mask and you can see so much of the detail in her face around it. I don’t mind the fully exposed leg under the button down white shirt worn as a dress. Their vision is a sexy slasher icon and it works.
Astrud Aurelia is a Xenomorph and you instantly know what it is. I think it’s a great costume. It’s a deconstructed version of the monster that reminds me of some of the theatrical full-body puppets used in stage shows like War Horse or The Lion King. It is terrifying. Her body language is super exaggerated to balance out her face being covered in the costume. The makeup is great once she removes the mask, exposing platinum teeth and contour that looks like torn apart flesh. The whole presentation works well.
Sigourney Beaver is doing Bride of Frankenstein. It’s a vampy, drag version of the character. The leopard print gown features exaggerated shoulders and hips. The makeup is excellent. She looks undead, which the character is. I will say it took me a little longer than the rest to recognize the character because of the dress shape. Once I got it, I liked it. The reveal under the gown made more sense to me with the overall look and was a nice surprise. Sigourney has a unique approach to this competition with her aesthetic and I’m excited to see what she can do with it in each challenge. She is high drag with a dark edge.
Merrie Cherry goes for a latex club kid take on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters. I think it’s a fabulous costume and a great interpretation of the challenge. Merrie is the only performer this season I’ve seen live and she’s wonderful onstage. This look is very chic, shiny, and silly all at once. It’s a great interpretation of this character, but I did immediately question if it would be horror enough for what the Boulet Brothers wanted to see in this challenge.
La Zavaleta is nightmare fuel as The Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth. The costume is a full length body suit that looks like it’s made of stretched out skin. There’s a slimy element that really shows up when they raise their hands to reveal the eyeballs in the palms. It’s a solid interpretation of the character that looks very grand in the Floor Show.
Formelda Hyde is doing Billy the Puppet from Saw. I’m a sucker for the Saw franchise so I’m on board right away. Formelda Hyde has this masked horror nurse theme throughout their drag and they apply it to this character. The bright white syringes sticking out of the black costume keep your eye moving to all the details. The mask is incredible. I will say the lighting in the distance shots made it hard to make out all the details at first. The design looks even better up close, which isn’t always the case in horror challenges on this show.
Koko Caine looks incredible in the Floor Show. Her Morticia Addams is great. This is a menacing and sexy take on the character, with plenty of exposed skin throughout the dress and full black sclera lenses to hide the eyes. Koko really grabbed my attention in all the promo material. I like her approach to horror drag. They know how to put on a show.
Bitter Betty is doing Elvira in full monster form. There was no mistaking the character here. She had the deep plunging neckline and super high slit on a form fitting black gown, dagger at the waist included. The makeup and hair are a good spin on the character. This is a polished look that comes from years of experience working professionally in drag. The metallic purple netting inside the exaggerated batwing sleeves adds a nice sparkle onstage that breaks up the all-black outfit really well.
For me, my favorite looks in the Floor Show are Hoso Terra Toma’s Other Mother, Astrud Aurelia’s Xenomorph, Koko Caine’s Morticia, and Jade Jolie’s Sarah Sanderson. I think they hit the reinvention aspect the best.
The judges put Hoso Terra Toma, Koko Caine, Astrud Aurelia, and Sigourney Beaver as the top contestants. Hoso was praised for creating her own spin that was instantly recognizable. Koko Caine was recognized for bringing their vision of the character to life and really selling it in the performance. Astrud was celebrated for the construction of the costume and the performance. Sigourney Beaver was heralded as a true performer, with the judges loving how the reveal actually told the story and enhanced the performance. Astrud is declared the winner, receiving a $1000 prize for FierceQueen.com, a site selling heels, boots, and accessories.
The bottom three are La Zavaleta, Bitter Betty, and Formelda Hyde. La Zavaleta had a prop malfunction that the Floor Show edited around. Bitter Betty was praised for her costuming and performance, but dinged for being too similar to Elvira. Formelda Hyde confused the judges with their interpretation of Billy the Puppet and was critiqued for the details being a bit too small to read from the stage. Bitter Betty is declared safe, leaving La Zavaleta and Formelda Hyde to face the Extermination Challenge.
This week’s challenge is a recreation of the original Extermination Challenge from season one. Both contestants are buried underground. As time goes on, more and more critters are dropped into the grave to join them. They are judged on how long they last in the challenge, but being entertaining was enough to save a contestant the first time around in this Extermination.
In a welcome new change, the contestants facing Extermination are both included in the murder sequence. La Zavaleta and Formelda Hyde crawl out of the grave and are greeted by all the poor people possessed by the Boulet Brothers masks from the opening sequence. It’s a thrilling new spin on the format that had to shift when the show switched to sequestering the contestants for the full shoot.
Sadly, Formelda Hyde is the first drag monster to meet their end, but what a way to go. The first extermination in the new format is going to be memorable and it just looked great. I can’t really disagree with the decision, either. Both contestants performed about the same in the Extermination Challenge—a lot of cursing and screaming, not much entertainment value—and La Zavaleta showed a lot more personality throughout the episode. It’s going to be hard to see any of these contestants go. The Boulet Brothers cast their show with potential winners, not filler contestants, and it comes down to adapting to each week’s challenge and doing better every time.
The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Season 4 premieres new episodes every Tuesday on Shudder.