Decades before RuPaul’s Drag Race and beloved drag documentary Paris Is Burning helped launch the drag queen lifestyle into the mainstream, in 1968 there was Frank Simon’s pathbreaking The Queen, a brief documentary whose ostensible focus is the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest held at NYC’s Town Hall. Now with a full Blu-ray makeover, The Queen is a low-budget, uproarious peek into an alternative lifestyle that could, at the time of its original release, still land you in jail. The contest comprises transvestites from across the USA, most of whom would have won similar contests in whatever region they hail from. Some of these participants fall more on the ribald Divine-like side of drag, but one contestant, the petite Harlow (Miss Philadelphia), is the early and obvious favorite to win. Although it’s a hoot to see these drag queens strut their stuff in the different stages of the talent competition, it’s the behind the scenes footage—in hotel rooms and rehearsal dates—that we really get a feel for the wit and wisdom of these fabulous nocturnal characters, consummate actors all. They lounge around half-nude chatting about their 'husbands' or, more interestingly, their varied experiences with avoiding the draft and the raging Vietnam War. (One contestant when asked whether he told the army he was homosexual to avoid the draft: 'No, they told me,' is the witty comeback). As felicitous an affair as the whole drag spectacle is, especially with the proceedings emcee’d by the charismatic New Yorker Flawless Sabrina (aka Jack Doroshow), there’s also the inevitable unhinged diva episode included here, as one runner-up storms off the stage in a huff, showering the winner with a hail of bitchy cut-downs and melodramatic accusations that the contest was rigged. But as we learn from Miss Sabrina, this was still a time when you could pop down to Andy Warhol’s Factory and convince the eminent pop artist to judge your drag contest. We glimpse Warhol in the audience, along with other cultural movers and shakers of the day such as Terry Southern and George Plimpton, among others. There’s some suspense at the end to see who gets the Drag Crown, but you pretty much know who it’ll be from the first few frames. The Queen, while certainly not great cinematic art, is an indispensable visual LGBT time capsule to a pre-Stonewall era marked by generational attitudes to gender, sex, and self-image that seem charmingly quaint and innocent from a 21st-century perspective. Recommended. (M. Sandlin).