By Gawd, they actually did it.
RuPaul’s Drag Race is not known for dipping its toes in the horror realm all that often, and seldom has it been successful outside of season four champion Sharon Needles. From wicked witch runways to old-school movie parodies, the show has only had a handful of sleeps with danger, but finally, after nine seasons of All Stars, sixteen seasons of the flagship US show, and franchises in over fifteen countries, we finally have a winner, baby.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Going Dark
During this latest run of All Stars, in which the eight returnees played for charity rather than themselves, episode nine featured a musical challenge which sent up, among several other classics, Rosemary’s Baby, as the queens took on “Rosemarie’s Baby Shower: The RuSical.” As Gottmik points out, horror films are key to the queer community, particularly given how one can see themselves in the monsters and murderers portrayed on the screen, shunned by society for, sometimes, all the wrong reasons.
As this is All Stars, there’s not a bad performance in the bunch, but Jorgeous as Morgan (a send-up of M3GAN) and Shannel as Satanic sister landlady Sydney win the day, as well as Beautiful Benefactress badges, the token for this economy. Nina West as Tangina stand-in Dr. Poltergeist and Roxxxy Andrews as Hennywise (… do I have to tell you the inspiration?) are standouts as well, even without lighting up the season’s scoreboard. Angeria Paris VanMicheals plays Sydney’s sister Ruth, Gottmik freaks her freak on as Blair (not Linda), Vanessa Vanjie Mateo as Rosemarie’s baby, and Plastique Tiara as the mother Rosemarie herself round out the cast of one of the stronger RuSicals in recent memory.
And then there’s Vanjie’s full 180-degree turn on her foot… Jesus wept. And that’s just in the rehearsal stage.
The runway theme following the musical is “Bring Back My Pearls,” and given that this episode came out in line with MaXXXine’s theatrical release, I have to say that RuPaul, ever the entrepreneur, missed a hell of a marketing opportunity. We may be All Stars, but we can’t win them all, I suppose.
Catch the full Ru-sical in the clip below, and stream RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars on Paramount+: