Drag legend Craig Russell would’ve destroyed Snatch Game, and this groundbreaking comedy proves it
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we revisit the 1977 comedy Outrageous!, one of the first mainstream films to focus on a drag performer.Drag is perhaps one of the oldest performance acts in history.
From gender-bending characters in Shakespearean play to impersonation numbers in vaudeville acts, all the way to Lip Syncs For Your Life on primetime television, it’s been one of the most consistent presences in entertainment.
Although its visibility has obviously become more evident and varied with the years—far more common in alternative and independent circuits—drag has been portrayed on screen in one form or another for almost as long as the medium has existed.Some films like Some Like It Hot (1959), Victor/ Victoria (1982), and Mrs.
Doubtfire (1993) used drag as a pivotal plot point of mistaken or acquired identity, and eventually queens became protagonists themselves, like in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), To Wong Foo (1995), and Kinky Boots (2005).
