“I had blood all over me and my wig, I had fish guts all over me, the crowd was covered in food, it was just such a night, there were trampolines involved…”

On the phone from Los Angeles, Swanthula Boulet remembers the final night of a party called Dragula, which she founded with longtime partner Dracmorda Boulet in 2013. Known as the Boulet Brothers, the pair started Dragula as a “horror punk rock drag party” that bowed at the altar of filth, leather, and glamour-tinged drag — always with a midnight drag competition, but also the occasional food fight, bout of mud wrestling, or blood-doused performance. It exploded in popularity first in Los Angeles and then around the world, but the goal was never just a party. Ultimately, the two envisioned Dragula as a television show, a reality drag competition that would be an outlet for any drag performer who ever felt like a freak, weirdo, loser, outcast: the search for the world’s next drag supermonster.

On that final night of their Dragula party, the Boulets played a teaser trailer for the first season of their forthcoming Dragula show; they had little idea where it would all lead. Three years later, Dragula is entering its third season. The first season aired on Jonny McGovern’s HeyQween YouTube channel, but it’s now shown in 63 countries: it streams on Amazon Prime courtesy Canada’s OutTV, as well as other networks like SBS Viceland in Australia and TVNZ in New Zealand.

“You could just see the way [the party] resonated and the concept touched people,” Dracmorda says. “We were like...we need to take this message and this queer monster visibility and make it bigger.” But the Boulets were worried the concept behind Dragula would be just too weird to pitch as a show.

“No, picture it — it’s not just drag queens, they’re monster drag queens,” Swanthula says, as if pitching to a television executive. “And we’re gonna make them do Fear Factor,” Dracmorda continues.

So instead, they put their savings behind producing the first season of Dragula themselves, and their gamble paid off.

With a heady mix of drag, filth, horror, and glamour, its icons are people or characters like Vampira instead of Diana Ross; Divine instead of Cher; Pete Burns instead of Madonna. The end result is a cornucopia of “alternative” drag, with performers concocting looks based on science fiction, classic horror films, punk rock, 80s wrestling, post-apocalyptic fantasy, the Old West, and other cult fandoms often absent in what has become known as mainstream drag. The new season also features “Post Binary Drag Socialist” Hollow Eve and drag king Landon Cider, which makes it the first televised drag competition show to do so.

”Personally, I don’t want to see a basic bitch lip sync ever in my life,” Dracmorda says. “You have to give us something, you have to perform, and just mouthing words and moving around… I hate to break it to you, but anybody can do that, and it’s just not very interesting.”

Predictably, Dragula goes beyond glamorous apparel (though that certainly does appear). It also includes special effects makeup and wickedly intricate costume construction: at one point, Season 2’s Victoria Elizabeth Black transformed herself into a pregnant alien with a glowing stomach coated in a primordial ooze; in the debut season, Melissa Befierce became a bloody, possessed, defiled nun with a rosary swinging from her backside. It’s easy to gasp in sheer awe of contestants’ creativity and ingenuity. A drag performer can only beat their face and glue a lace front to be so pretty, but the depths of disgusting to plunge are endless, and one realizes just how endless they are on Dragula.