Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The (30th Anniversary Limited Edition) (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Mar 13, 2025
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Stephan Elliott

Release Date(s)

1994 (December 4, 2024)

Studio(s)

Latent Image Productions/PolyGram/Specific Films (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)

Film/Program Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Audio Grade: A-
Extras Grade: A
Overall Grade: A

https://viavision.com.au/

Review

At the beginning of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, drag performer Tick (Hugo Weaving) is in character as Mitzi Del Bra, lip-syncing to Charlene’s I’ve Never Been to Me before an underappreciative Sydney audience. The smattering of applause is broken up by a drunken patron throwing a beer can at his head and knocking him to the ground. Tick’s friend Adam (Guy Pearce), in character as Felicia Jollygoodfellow, leaps in to protect him and successfully distracts the unruliest members of the audience. By the end of the film, Mitzi and Felicia are back home in Sydney performing ABBA’s Mamma Mia together before a wildly enthusiastic audience, with no one throwing anything at them other than sheer good will. Their journey between those two points will cover 3,500 miles (5,500 kilometers for the fine folks down under) and force them to run the gamut of possible reactions to their chosen profession, from gross slurs to warm acceptance and a whole gamut between those two extremes. Like much else in life, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is all about that journey, not so much the final destination—especially since that destination isn’t really a fixed point, but we’ll return to that thought in a moment.

Writer/director Stephan Elliott was very familiar with the drag scene on Oxford Street in Sydney, and after his debut feature Frauds crashed and burned at the Australian box office in 1993, he was looking for a change of scenery. So, he hatched the story of a group of drag queens who are also looking for a change of scenery, and based them on a few of the real drag queens that he already knew. Australia (and the U.K. as well) have long been relatively open to the idea of crossdressing as popular entertainment, much more so than in the United States, but openly gay lifestyles were still frowned upon for most of the nation’s history. Thanks to the popularity of the clubs in Sydney, that had started to change by the time Elliott made Priscilla in 1994 and there was a growing LGBTQIA+ community in Sydney, but that still wasn’t necessarily true of the country as a whole. That provided Elliott the opportunity to craft a “fish out of water” story for Priscilla that inverted the one in Crocodile Dundee: these particular fish end up feeling out of water in their home country.

After the beer can assault, Tick is feeling a little depressed, but opportunity knocks when his estranged wife Marion (Sarah Chadwick) calls him to ask him to come to Alice Springs in order to put on a performance at the resort where she works. That is just the change of scenery Tick is looking for, and he asks his best friend, trans performer Bernadette Bassenger (Terrance Stamp), if she’ll join him in making the journey. Bernadette is less than pleased to discover that Adam will be making the trip with them, but she grudgingly assents, and the three of them set off for Alice Springs in a bus that Adam christens Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Yet neither Bernadette nor Adam is aware of the fact that Tick even has a wife, let alone that his wife has been raising their son Benjamin (Mark Holmes) in his absence. That’s just one of many secrets that they’ll discover about each other, and thanks to mechanical troubles, they also pick up a friend or two like Bob (Bill Hunter) along the way. By the time they reach Alice Springs, none of their lives will be the same.

While Mitzi, Bernadette, and Felicia do find acceptance in the rural Outback in some surprising places, like when they’re rescued by some Aboriginal people and join them for a bit of a hoedown, they also face open contempt, and it’s not long before they discover that someone has spray-painted a nasty slur along Priscilla’s side. Every time that they find acceptance, they get a reality check like that. Yet they’re defiant in the face of adversity, and it helps them to more openly embrace who they are. The prejudice may be hurtful, but like Goria Gaynor, they will survive. So, they repaint Priscilla bright pink in order to cover up the slur, and in so doing, they truly make her their own—it’s no accident that the film is titled The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, because Priscilla is essentially a metonymic figure that represents the group as a whole. As goes Priscilla, so goes Mitzi, Bernadette, and Felica.

The reclamation of Priscilla is also a metonymy for the reclamation of drag culture as a whole in The Adventures of Priscilla. Despite the long tradition of drag in Australia, it generally functioned as a spectacle for heterosexual audiences, with the drag performers serving as objects of amusement—in popular culture, they were often the butt of the jokes. Yet that was starting to change by 1994, and in many ways, Priscilla was another step in letting drag performers reclaim that spectacle for their own. Significantly, Mitzi, Bernadette, and especially Felicia do needle each other incessantly, and while they’re occasionally the butt of slurs and other homophobic reactions, they’re never the butt of the film’s jokes—showing them eating Fruit Loops for breakfast is about as close as it gets.

In fact, The Adventures of Priscilla almost over-corrects in that regard by some cringeworthy representations of other individuals who do become the butt of the joke, like Bob’s wife Cynthia (Julia Cortez). Still, The Adventures of Priscilla scores in the way that it represents some of the other characters like Tick’s wife Marion—significantly, they’re not estranged because of Tick’s lifestyle as Mitzi, which Marion enthusiastically accepts, and his son Benjamin is equally accepting of who his father is. Cynthia may have been best left on the cutting room floor, but Bob, Sarah, and Benjamin more than make up for that misstep. Every journey has its up and downs, and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is no exception. As Priscilla and the gang begin their trip to Alice Springs, they pass a yellow traffic sign warning them about a kangaroo crossing. By the time that most of them return to Sydney, that sign has been replaced by a high heel, meaning that the wildlife in Australia has just gotten a little bit wilder. Yet there’s still an element of danger involved, which brings us back to the idea that Priscilla’s destination isn’t really a fixed point.

On a long enough timeline, progress happens, even if some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming along with it. Yet when you examine just a segment of that timeline, things aren’t always quite so clear. It’s not so much that history is circular (even if it might feel that way occasionally), but rather that progress moves in fits and starts, and sometimes those two small steps forward are followed by a giant leap backward. More than three decades after The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was originally released, we’re currently in a regressive phase of that timeline. There have been many gains since that time, like Drag Queen Storytimes becoming commonplace at public libraries across the country. Yet now, there’s a significant movement across the United States to deprive the LGBTQIA+ community of its rights, with trans people in particular as the target of restrictive legislation.

Laws have been passed that even target drag performers, in open defiance of First Amendment protections. In the ultimate irony, those who loudly decry “cancel culture” are actively trying to cancel culture itself, with drag being one of the oldest forms of entertainment in human history (seriously, look up Elizabethan theatre or even Greek drama, just to name two examples). Yet The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert stands as a reminder that we can do better. It’s still a journey, and we’re not at the final destination yet. There’s always time to change course, and the warning signs that we’re currently experiencing can still be replaced by something more welcoming for everyone. Like that ostentatious pink bus, culture can be reclaimed from those who are trying to cancel it.

We can all do better.

Cinematographer Brian J. Breheny shot The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on 35mm film using Arriflex cameras with Cooke anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. (Filmed in Dragarama according to the frequently hilarious closing credits.) This version is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, graded for High Dynamic Range in Dolby Vision and HDR10, but there’s no other information available about it. Aside from some light speckling and other minor debris, there’s no real damage visible, and it offers levels of detail that put the previous Blu-ray to shame. The colors are every bit as dazzling as you would hope, from the cerulean blues of the skies to just about every single color imaginable in the wardrobes, and then some. And none of it is the result of an overly aggressive HDR grade, either, since Breheny utilized polarizing filters and color processing for the outdoor sequences in order to enhance the contrast and deepen the blues of the sky. There’s one moment where the grade may seem a mite extreme, in the scene were the bus breaks down near the “Salt & Pepper” landmarks in Kanku Breakaways Conservation Park. The grade at that point almost pushes the colors to a solarization effect, but that scene has always had more exaggerated colors than the rest of the film, likely because Breheny wanted to enhance the natural extremity of the landscape (the orange gravel on the ground nearly glows). As far as the costuming goes, every point of the spectrum is reproduced accurately, and the iridescent silver of Mitzi’s rooftop costume is genuinely dazzling. It’s a wonderful visual upgrade.

Audio is offered in English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and 2.0 LPCM, with optional English SDH subtitles. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was released theatrically in matrix-encoded Dolby Stereo, and the 2.0 track does appear to be the original Dolby Stereo mix. The 5.1 sounds like a pretty straightforward discrete encoding of those original four channels into a 5.1 container. There’s not much surround activity either way, which isn’t particularly surprising, but the stereo spread is strong. The dialogue is crystal-clear throughout, and the various songs on the soundtrack bring the whole mix to vivid life—and yes, more #%@*&%! ABBA, please. Comparing the two, the 5.1 sounds just a touch more constricted while the 2.0 sounds fuller, but your own mileage may vary, and you can’t go wrong either way.

Via Vision’s Region-Free Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is #366 in their Imprint Films line. It’s a three-disc set that includes one Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film and a second Blu-ray with the majority of the extras. All three discs are housed in a single Amaray case with a flip divider, so the discs aren’t stacked, and while the insert technically isn’t reversible, it does offer an iconic spread featuring Mitzi, Bernadette, and Felicia on the other side. There’s also a 36-page booklet with an essay by Sally Christie, plus a set of six art cards. Everything comes housed in a rigid hardbox with a 3D lenticular cover. The following extras are included on each disc:

DISC ONE: UHD (FEATURE FILM)

Audio Commentary by Stephan Elliott
Theatrical Trailer (HD – 1:52)

DISC TWO: BD (FEATURE FILM)

Audio Commentary by Stephan Elliott
Theatrical Trailer (HD – 1:52)

The commentary with Stephan Elliott was originally recorded for MGM’s Extra Frills Edition DVD release of The Adventures of Priscilla. He notes that he’s recording it more than ten years down the road, but he still has plenty to say about the film. It was inspired by the growth of gay culture in Sydney at that time, and he collected a lot of jokes from that community over the years, many of which made their way into his script. He originally wanted to cast real drag queens in the film, but he says none of them wanted to participate (which may or may not be quite true, but a few of them did still make it into the funeral scene). That led to a complicated casting process, followed by an even more complicated shoot. There were continuity challenges due to shooting out of sequence, so they painted one half of the bus pink and left the other half silver, and flopped shots as necessary to make it work. (For the record, it really was supposed to be lavender just like Adam says, not pink, but that’s the color that they ended up with and they didn’t have the time or the budget to fix it.) Elliott has plenty of offbeat stories to tell, like how he incurred the wrath of the ABBA fan club with the “ABBA turd” scene, but he has a few others that were too juicy to record for the commentary, so he suggests hitting him up at a pub sometime to hear them.

Oh, and do check out the Theatrical Trailer, which opens up in an unexpectedly cheeky fashion.

DISC THREE: BD (EXTRAS)

Between a Frock and a Hard Place (HD – 60:15)
Special Features:
- Priscilla: A Celebration for Everybody (HD – 28:37)
- The Average Little Boy (HD – 16:54)
- Birth of a Queen (SD – 29:20)
- Behind the Bus: Priscilla with Her Pants Down (SD – 9:04)
- Tidbits from the Set (SD – 6:08)
- Ladies Please (SD – 50:29)
- Backstage (HD – 9:14)
- Deleted Scenes (SD – 7:06, 4 in all)
- The Bus from Blooperville (SD – 9:35)
- Original Australian Theatrical Trailer (SD – 3:07)
- U.S. Teaser Trailer (SD – 2:36)
- U.S. Teaser Trailer 2 (SD – :33)
- Photo Gallery (HD – 4:22, 52 in all)

The centerpiece of the second Blu-ray isn’t so much an extra as it is a complete bonus feature presentation of its own: the 2015 documentary Between a Frock and a Hard Place. While it’s ostensibly about the making of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, it’s as much about the journey to the making of the film as it is about the film itself. Directed by Alex Barry and Paul Clarke, it starts by looks back at Australian attitudes toward homosexuality and drag throughout the years, and how the cabarets on Oxford Street provided a welcoming environment that gradually led to a more open community for LGBTQIA+ people in Sydney. From there, it examines the real-life drag queens who helped inspire the film, and works its way to how the project was put together. Terence Stamp serves as narrator, and it partly serves as a confessional for him in his own journey overcoming his doubts about playing a role like Bernadette. Stephan Elliott, Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, and many others (including some of the real-life inspirations for their characters) are also on hand via interview footage. Between a Frock and a Hard Place isn’t your standard making-of documentary, and it’s well worth your time.

In that vein, Ladies Please is a 1995 documentary about Cindy Pastel, Strykermyer, and Lady Bump, who are three of the aforementioned drag queens who inspired The Adventures of Priscilla. Written and directed by Andrew Saw, it lets them share their thoughts about what they do and also shows them at work. Eventually, it culminates with them making the trip to Priscilla’s premiere and talking with the actors who played variant versions of themselves. It’s also a fascinating look at the journey of drag culture in Sydney and the place that Priscilla has in it.

Via Vision has added two new extras for this release, both of which are interviews. Priscilla, A Celebration for Everybody is with Stephan Elliott, who once again relates the story of making the film, but this time with the benefit of hindsight—he’s gone through some changes since then, since he never officially came out himself until 2012. He also briefly mentions the fact that he’s still working on a sequel. The Average Little Boy is with Mark Holmes, who talks about his own experiences making The Adventures of Priscilla and how he looks back fondly on the relationships that he had with everyone.

The rest of the extras are collected from the various DVD and Blu-ray releases that preceded this one. Birth of a Queen is a much more traditional making-of featurette, with Stephan Elliott stepping viewers through the path from conception to release. Behind the Bus consists of outtakes and bloopers—and given the consistently dour expression that Terrance Stamp manages to maintain all throughout the film, it’s wonderful seeing him actually crack up a few times. Tidbits from the Set is a collection of on-set interviews, while Backstage is a full EPK featurette put together from those same interview sessions. The Deleted Scenes include four separate sets of cut footage, including a moment that explains how Bernadette’s deceased husband Trumpet got his name. Finally, in addition to the trailers and the Photo Gallery, there’s The Bus from Blooperville, which is... the same outtake reel as Behind the Bus, just with an added intro. I guess that it’s the extra that’s so nice, they included it twice. (If there are any other subtle differences between the two, I didn’t notice.)

That’s pretty much all of the previously available extras, and then some. There are even two different versions of the same extra as a bonus. Via Vision has been consistently killing it with their 4K Limited Editions, and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is no exception—never mind the fact that it’s currently the only 4K version of the film available in any territory. That fact alone should make it worth picking up, but the addition of an expansive slate of extras and some killer packaging certainly can’t hurt. If it doesn’t quite compare to their spectacular recent releases of A Bridge Too Far and The NeverEnding Story, that’s not a knock against this one as much as it is an acknowledgment that those are simply two of the very best sets from the last few years. But this is a damned fine release regardless, and it’s highly recommended.

-Stephen Bjork

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