Filmmaker R.H. Greene didn’t exactly make things easy on himself when crafting this 2012 film, a documentary about Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira. The first-ever horror movie TV host and the prototypical goth gal, Nurmi was a definite trailblazer, but, as is made clear early on in VAMPIRA AND ME, almost no footage exists of Vampira in her heyday.
For that reason Greene was forced to rely largely on audio recordings of a 1960s self-interview by Nurmi, and portions of the movies she hosted, including WHITE ZOMBIE, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, KING OF THE ZOMBIES and VOODOO ISLAND (FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA were likewise hosted by Vampira, but due to copyright issues go unseen here). We also see clips of Vampira performing on 1950s era game shows (licensed exclusively for this film) and, best of all, the only surviving footage of a Vampira TV broadcast.
The footage in question consists of a two minute long promotional clip depicting Nurmi, looking genuinely alluring in her provocatively slit gown and impossibly long fingernails, sauntering down a mist-laden corridor, screaming in orgasmic delirium and delivering a pun-filled dissertation about THE MYSTERY OF THE THIRTEENTH GUEST (1943). The footage is quite striking, at once erotic and deeply spooky, and suggests her limited appeal may have been due to the fact that Nurmi took her role as “A nightmare creature out of erotic fantasy” too literally; Cassandra Peterson, by contrast, always treated Elvira as a joke.
Beyond that most of the footage contained in VAMPIRA AND ME comes from a 70 minute interview Greene conducted with a seventy-ish Nurmi (for the 2001 doco SCHLOCK! THE SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICAN MOVIES, in which only a few minutes of that interview were used). In it she, in an elegantly spoken, even-tempered brogue that belies her less-than-stellar reputation, recounts the particulars of her career. One of the film’s drawbacks is Greene’s constant interruptions in the form of voice-over analysis and embellishments (at one point he even berates her for not being forthcoming enough), even though Nurmi does just fine on her own.
Her big break came in 1954, when Nurmi attended a party dressed as Morticia Addams, and was spotted by a representative for the LA based TV station KABC. This led to the newly christened Vampira, incarnated by Nurmi dressed in dominatrix-inspired getup and sporting a 17 inch waist (attained by fasting, steam baths, meat tenderizing cream and cinching), providing smart-assed introductions to KABC’S library of old movies.
Maila Nurmi
Also covered is her deep—but, as is made clear, non-sexual—friendship with James Dean, who she claims to have met in a previous life (which Greene, in his standard buttinsky manner, calls “a surprisingly metaphysical response”), and her brief association with Ed Wood: “Nobody took note of him…he had no importance.” Yet Nurmi’s best-known film appearance was in Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, after which, according to Greene, “Midnight struck hard, and it wouldn’t leave.” Poverty, chronic unemployment and crazed (and sometimes violent) fans became constants for the remainder of Nurmi’s life, although she did find success (of a sort) on the punk rock circuit, with several bands referencing her, if not directly utilizing her services as a singer/songwriter.
Several crucial aspects of Nurmi’s life (as enumerated in the 2021 biography GLAMOUR GHOUL) are left out, including the revelation that she had a child with Orson Welles and her on-again, off-again friendship with Anthony Perkins. The inclusion of the vintage Vampira footage, however (which wasn’t available to the makes of the earlier Vampira doco VAMPIRA: ABOUT SEX DEATH AND TAXES), nearly makes up for those lapses.
Vital Statistics
VAMPIRA AND ME
Protagonist
Director/Producer/Editor: R.H. Greene
Cinematography: R.H. Greene, Larry Herbst, Sean Peacock
Cast: Maila Nurmi, R.H. Greene, Gloria Pall, Dana Gould, Gabrielle Geiselman, Jane Satan, Jennifer Van Goethem