Vampira and Me

In the mid-1950s, actress/model Maila Nurmi (1922-2008) enjoyed a bit of celebrity playing Vampira, a ghoulish sexpot who hosted a late-night movie show on a Los Angeles TV station. Nurmi's time in the spotlight was relatively brief—The Vampira Show lasted roughly a year—and she virtually disappeared from view by the early 1960s, only to be rediscovered two decades later thanks to the belated cult appreciation of Ed Wood's notable turkey Plan 9 from Outer Space, in which Nurmi had a small role as a zombie and was billed as Vampira. R.H. Greene's documentary plumbs Nurmi's tumultuous and often bizarre career, which included a brief contractual period under Howard Hawks and a stint as a blonde pin-up model. Nurmi speaks frankly and sincerely here about her friendship with James Dean, and she also discusses—without rancor—the less glamorous aspects of the entertainment industry, including her unsuccessful intellectual property lawsuit against Cassandra Peterson for the copycat Elvira character. Vampira and Me gingerly touches on Nurmi's withdrawal from public view, noting that there were hard times when her impoverishment led people to anonymously leave parcels of food at her door. Sadly, little of Nurmi's Vampira act remains: The Vampira Show was broadcast live during its 1954-55 run and was not preserved, although a brief advertising promotional clip of Nurmi in character has survived and Greene does find a once-lost kinescope of Nurmi's performance as Vampira on George Gobel's network variety show. A compelling, often funny portrait of a distinctive iconoclast, this is highly recommended. (P. Hall)