Queens of the Dead
It is a battleground on which the weak will be trampled underfoot and cast from the light they crave, the performance stage at the Brooklyn drag club run by promoter Dre and DJ Kelsey, tonight a critical night to draw the fickle crowds as the legendary Yasmine headlines and the backing dancers fighting among themselves and with past-her-prime-but-hanging-on fixture Ginsey Tonic about blocking each others moves.
Disaster following disaster, the plumbing is blocked by a dead rat, Kelsey’s wife Lizzy calling a favour from plumber Barry, an interloper from the straight world, Yasmine has backed out after all that was done to promote the show, the only available backup Sam who cost Dre after a similar walkout, now a nurse alongside Lizzy and faced with an influx of patients all suffering similar symptoms, confusion, violence, strange impulses and bitey hunger…
The resurrected zombie apocalypse having raged across cinema early this century in all its many variations, a subsequent trend saw all things drag related leaping into production, so it is perhaps inevitable that the drag queen zombie comedy horror would be an eventual evolutionary cross-infection, directed by Tina Romero, daughter of the great George, who all things considered should be able to do better than Queens of the Dead.
With a cameo by Tom Savini as the easily distracted mayor and Margaret Cho as “Pops,” Quantumania’s Katy O’Brian is Dre and Wednesday’s Riki Lindhome is Lizzy alongside Nina West, Jaquel Spivey, Quincy Dunn-Baker, Dominique Jackson and Cheyenne Jackson as Ginsey, Sam, Barry, Yasmine as barman Jimmy but as so many twinks and jocks state on their profiles, the phrase “no fats” should be applied here, as trimming the excess is exactly what is needed.
Drag being the operative word, crawling to an unjustifiable hour and three quarters Queens of the Dead needs to be tuned and toned rather than fleshed out, opening on delicious sacrilege bordering on blissful blasphemy but the few brilliant moments and one-liners floundering in a mire or mediocrity, as predictable a pattern as the walking dead themselves, the Tik Tok club kid herd tied to routine as they shuffle their feet to the sound of the beat.
A superficial abrasion next to the deeper wounds of Death Drop Gorgeous which dissected a damaged community which feasts on its brightest even as it idolises them, Queens of the Dead feels like an underwritten Drag Race challenge with everybody crying for attention and representation but nobody in charge, the wigs towering and the costumes dazzling but the moves and the lyrics lip-synched many times before with no new remix to revive the fallen.
Queens of the Dead will be streaming on Shudder from Friday 7th August
