When I heard that D’Arcy Drollinger had followed up his instant classic, Shit & Champagne, with Lady Champagne, I didn’t just jump at the chance to watch it, I hacked my way through dense jungles, leapt over deep crevasses, and walked barefoot across hot coals. It’s the least one should be required to do to experience the further adventures of Champagne Horowitz Jones Dickerson White (“…so she’s been married a couple of times! It’s none of your fucking business!”). In this current shit show I like to call…checks notes…our entire world, nothing has brought me as much joy as the return of this Mel Brooks meets Russ Meyer meets John Waters camp, grindhouse fantasia.
For the uninitiated, Drollinger, the first ever appointed San Francisco Drag Laureate in 2023, has delighted audiences for years with his alter ego, Champagne White, along with many other stage roles. Working as a stripper at the Shaboom Boom Room in 1978, Champagne remains the tough-talking, no nonsense gal with lust in her heart, a head for business, and a bod for all seven of the deadly sins. Witness the delight she takes in her own curvaceous dance routines, complete with the puckered lips, nip flicks, and “oohs” and “aahs” of her spiritual ancestor, the late, great Divine. When she’s not all about self love, she often adopts the demeanor of someone who has smelled something bad. Dawn Davenport would be proud.
As with its predecessor, the story engine doesn’t matter that much with its intentionally and overly convoluted plot. Suffice it to say, a falsely accused Champagne ends up in Lady Prison(!) for murder and spends the rest of the movie trying to clear her name. The real villain, Pixie Pardonne Moi, played by the brilliant Matthew Martin, who so memorably terrorized everyone in the first film, steals every scene with her 1940’s-style homage to every strong screen diva of the time. With nods to Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Ava Gardner, Martin has entered the pantheon of drag superstars like Charles Busch, who knows a thing or two about parodying Mid-Atlantic accents.
Pixie, a fragrance tycoon, has an evil master plan for world domination by harvesting the lady prisoners’ G-spots, and…oh, does it really matter? The perfectly calibrated perfume ad parodies definitely matter in their expert way of…ahem…hitting the spot, but it’s all window dressing for bitch slaps, endless disguises, daring escapes, and a crazy, low budget homage to Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, here renamed The Temple Of Poon!
Many of the standouts from the first film return, including James Arthur M. as Sergio, Champagne’s wardrobe mistress who has hilariously never met a reaction he couldn’t overdo. Steven LeMay’s Mandy understands the delight in excessive melodrama, while Seton Brown’s Detective Jack Hammer expertly navigates the last, dying breaths of the patriarchy in this Girl Powered world. Nancy French gets giggles as Debbie, the world’s most checked out and, let’s face it, kinda gross stripper. If you need someone to warm up a crowd before going on, please don’t ask Debbie! Drag royalty Alaska and Varla Jean Merman bring their expert timing, while Jackie Beat has the sharp precision and sudden outbursts of a thousand hardened diner waitresses down pat. Just watch her spin gold out of a seemingly nondescript line like “Order up!” and you’ll know you’re in great comedic hands.
You can tell that Drollinger and company feel camp in their bones, mining every second for unexpected reactions and a commitment to ridiculous zaniness. Drollinger has purposely applied a cheap aesthetic with lousy green screens and clunky edits. Logic plays no part in a world where the buttons on a blouse can act as defense weapons. Reason doesn’t matter whenever our not-so-well disguised main character continually breaks the fourth wall and gleefully addresses us with, “Hi, it’s me, Champagne!”
Sure, Heated Rivalry has made us all want to go to the cottage, and watching Pedro Pascal go all gay in Todd Haynes’ new flick seems a long way off, so a return to this sorely missed level of gay camp brings me more pleasure than any Awards Bait entry can ever accomplish. So pop a cork and let Lady Champagne fizz all over you!
By Glenn Gaylord, Senior Film Critic
Lady Champagne world premiered at the 40th BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and will continue making festival appearances. For future screening and release updates follow @darcydrollinger & @13thgenfilm on Instagram.
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