Filth, horror, glamour.
You’ve heard the phrase a million times already as a fan of the Boulet Brother’s one-of-a-kind television programming. And while there are many glamorous and horrifying elements in The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula challenges, there’s also a cutthroat set of challenges designed for those who fall short in the categories of their performance and looks.
The exterminations can range from cringe-worthy to downright sickening, and many of them will stick with us for longer than we’d like. So why don’t we make the most of it, and look back on which ones we found the filthiest?
The Top 5 Filthiest Challenges on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula
Honorable Mention: Drink Up, Landon!
While this was not a proper extermination challenge as many others were, it is still a challenge that undoubtedly gave viewers their fair share of gags. And not in the fun drag way, like literally had us gagging.
Landon Cider showed the spirit of the world’s next drag supermonster when the show’s first drag king was forced to “drink” a chalice filled with spiders. It was a perfectly nauseating way to kick off the spectacle of the third season, but it also gave way to one of the season’s funniest quotes: “Aw, poor babies! You had to eat dead food? TRY EATING SPIDERS ON YOUR FIRST DAY!”
5. Buried Alive…With Friends (Season 1, Episode 1)
The challenge so nice; they had to go through it twice. This legacy challenge reared its ugly head once more in the Season 4 opener. Still, it only feels appropriate to put the original from the pilot episode “Wickedest Witch” in the fifth-place spot for what it started.
You can’t deny exactly how much claustrophobia this must unlock in people’s brains when they see it, especially with the unsettling green hue of the night vision cam filming Meatball, Loris, and Pinche as they go through it.
4. Organ Meat Surprise (Season 3, Episode 2…& Season 1, Episode 3)
Like our fifth-place spot, they’re close enough that I’ll have to pair them. It’s up to you to determine the percentages of what freaks you out more: is it the blood and guts of a cow, or the raw brain of a pig? Regardless of which you choose, it’s 100% disgusting.
Most people are averse to eating sweetbreads and organ meats when cooked, let alone raw and slopped onto a plate for you to eat with your bare hands. If this challenge, and the fear of a possible prion disease from participating in it, didn’t get to you like that, I would recommend:
- Watch Raw (2016); I feel like it’s right up your alley!
- Seek immediate professional psychiatric help.
3. On Pins & Needles (Season 2, Episode 1)
While it was a valiant show of indifference to getting stabbed multiple times, Monikkie Shame’s deadpan reaction to being forced to take gauging needles didn’t exactly sway all of us watching from home over.
To all but the most enthusiastic of recreational body modders, the sensation of a needle during blood testing or flu season is enough to ruin our mood. So being repeatedly skewered with sharpened rods of thick metal was bound to get a serious reaction from most people. It was on-brand for a Cenobite challenge, and more importantly, it was a challenge that really felt up in the air as all three of our contestants held on throughout.
2. A Swim & A Sip (Season 4, Episode 2)
As frenetic and borderline irritating the editing is for this challenge, it’s clear from how its cut that whatever the original footage was, it was probably too intense to show us; and that’s saying something, considering what we do get to see is a whole bunch of leeches feasting on our bottom two contestants.
Even as a big Bitter Betty fan, watching a gang of slimy invertebrates eating at her & Astrud Aurelia was hard, and I just wished the challenge would be over sooner.
1. (A Mental) Latex Allergy (Season 4, Episode 7)
A lot of the challenges have made me lean back in my chair. Most of them made me pull a face. But I only ever had one send a true shiver down my spine. And that one is the latex vacuum seal challenge. There was something so uniquely frightening about this “Exorsisters” challenge, and I think most of it comes from the presentation.
It instantly reminded me of Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor with its visuals and lighting. As brief as it all comes and goes, the formatting of this as a short film amplifies the show’s horror bend. This challenge relies a lot on the psychological horror of its imagery, and the thought of a second skin snuffing out your normal one is just the stuff of nightmares.
With Season 5 on the horizon, I hope we can come back to this with an all-new list and a bevy of new scream-inducing challenges to survey and rank. Until then, you can tell us about your picks for the Extermination Challenge you found the most daunting in the comment section below.
Seasons 2-4 of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula is available to stream on Shudder.