Drag queens are an undersung staple of the film world, from To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, to The Birdcage and Kinky Boots. But beyond the occasional cameo, those movies aren't led by actual queens. Meanwhile, there's a whole ecosystem of rough-hewn, gnarly films sustained by drag performers that seldom get the same attention. Without the resources or platform of a studio release, films like Die, Mommie, Die! and Hurricane Bianca capture an irrepressible spirit. In their DIY aesthetics, unfiltered scripts, and immediacy, these films come from an unabashedly queer approach to art-making: debauched, whimsical, and entirely of itself.
In honor of the release of RuPaul’s Stop! That! Train!, which stars modern drag icons like Ginger Minj, Jujubee, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Latrice Royale, Marty Lauter, and Symone, here are some of the fiercest, most sickening drag movies you haven’t seen (but should):
Die, Mommie, Die! (2003, Mark Rucker)
Drag legend Charles Busch already had dozens of plays and the cult classic Psycho Beach Party under his belt by the time he made Die, Mommie, Die!, an affectionate pastiche of midcentury Hollywood melodramas like Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Mildred Pierce. Busch helped innovate a style of drag that not only sends up leading ladies of the studio era, but plucks their affectations—Crawford’s iciness, Dietrich’s eroticism, Garbo’s cosmopolitanism—and recasts them as power, dropping them into an uncanny present.
What Really Happened to Baby Jane (1963, GGRC)
Only a few months after the release of Robert Aldrich’s Gothic camp classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the scrappy members of the Gay Girls Riding Club cobbled together their own take on the material, an impressive and fairly faithful adaptation. Minus a big budget, Bette and Joan, and sound, What Really Happened to Baby Jane? lays bare the comic absurdity of Aldrich’s original film. The GGRC, with little more than a camera and friends committed to the bit, made loving tributes and satires of their favorite movies, including an All About Eve parody called All About Alice, and cultivated a community of fans in and around the Los Angeles gay bar scene.
Girls Will Be Girls (2003, Richard Day)
Drag performers’ interest in movies about fame, celebrity, and Hollywood reflects both a sincere love of films like Sunset Boulevard and Valley of the Dolls and drag's instinct for exposing the artificiality of persona-crafting. In Girls Will Be Girls, the battle for stardom plays out in frozen dinner commercials, bitchy remarks shot off like shotgun shells by drag icons Evie Harris, Varla Jean Merman, and Coco Peru. Writer/director Richard Day’s script is clever, and the trio of queens’ chemistry makes their shared history on the drag scene clear.
Hurricane Bianca (2016, Matt Kugelman)
Before Roy Haylock went on to win the sixth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, he met filmmaker Matt Kugelman, and the two began crowdfunding a movie about a teacher who gets outed and fired by their school, only to return in drag, with a vengeance. Bianca Del Rio’s trademark shadiness and acidic, scorched-earth humor are on display; the queen’s sharp tongue proves an amusingly bracing educational style. The film also features Alan Cumming and Rachel Dratch in supporting roles, with cameos from fellow Drag Race alumna Willam and Shangela, Alyssa Edwards, Joslyn Fox, and, naturally, RuPaul himself.
Malice in Wonderland: The Dolls Movie (2010, Russell Maynor)
An unholy cocktail of Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz, and Mommie Dearest, this derangement of a film is a terrific example of a certain kind of drag ethos: too much, totally bizarre, thrillingly unhinged, all in the name of subversion and a middle finger to good taste. Led by the Albuquerque drag troupe The Dolls, Malice in Wonderland finds young Alice saddled with Joan Crawford as a monstrous new nanny. Many pills and potions later, Alice encounters the White Rabbit rapping “White Chocolate,” eroticized munchkins and identical twins, and, naturally, wire hangers. The juxtaposition of the low-grade green-screen work, the vibrant picturebook backdrops, and The Dolls’ filthy humor provides a dizzyingly strange and amusing trip down the rabbit hole.
Starrbooty (2007, Mike Ruiz)
By the late 1980s, the blaxploitation genre, which had seen the rise of Pam Grier in films like Coffy (1973) and Cleopatra Jones (1973) and had helped Isaac Hayes win an Academy Award for Shaft (1971), had largely petered out. RuPaul Charles, then a queen not yet crowned, made a cheapo trilogy in homage, titled RuPaul Is: Starbooty! Those films are lost to time, but RuPaul revived his karate-fighting, gun-toting persona in 2007 with Starrbooty, filmed on the streets of New York and featuring Candis Cayne, club kid Lahoma Van Zandt, and drag icon Lady Bunny.
Slay (2024, Jem Garrard)
In the vampire comedy Slay, Trinity the Tuck, Heidi N Closet, Crystal Method, and Cara Melle go head-to-head with hot bloodsuckers terrorizing a local biker bar, The Bold Buck. This delightful drag makeover of From Dusk Till Dawn, written and directed by Jem Garrard, lets the queens revel in comic action-horror while conveying the strange experience of being an artist on the road, never certain of the destination but hoping to make a buck anyway.
Death Drop Gorgeous (2020, Michael J. Ahern, Christopher Dalpe, and Brandon Perras-Sanchez)
In lurid pink and purple, Death Drop Gorgeous gives drag queens their own Mario Bava nightmare. Here, the killer sports a black latex glove with razor-sharp claws, a black body suit, and a round silver face plate, knocking off young queers in Providence one by one. As aging drag queen and bartender Gloria Hole (Michael McAdam) grinds through endless nights and unbearable patrons, the killer sends shockwaves through the community—raising the darker fear that Gloria might be behind the murders herself. Death Drop Gorgeous also sneaks in keen observations about perceived expiration dates in nightlife.
Lypsinka: Toxic Femininity (2024, Chloë Sevigny)
Directed by Chloë Sevigny in mimicked VHS aesthetics, this short follows John Epperson, who has been performing as his alter ego Lypsinka since the 1980s. A regular at Lower Manhattan's Pyramid Club who appeared on Joan Rivers, Epperson’s Lypsinka merged camp excess with uncanny precision of timing and gesture. Sevigny’s film is an undersung study of female celebrity and diva worship across the decades.
