VAMPIRA IN COLOR

Pre-orders are now being taken at MONSTERS IN MOTION for the Vampira "Color Version" action figure from Executive Replicas. The figure stands about 12" tall and comes with various accessories.

Vampira Color Version 1/6 Scale Figure with Couch

Pre-order price: $349.95

From the Bleeding-Heart of Hollywood comes Vampira! You’ve never met Vampira… but you will. She’s been waiting for you for a long time. Perhaps you’ll run into her in one of those dreams that leave you icy. Still, if you’re lucky, you’ll see her appear at the stroke of midnight. Vampira is the ghoul that men are dying to meet.

She’s magnificent, exotic, a somewhat macabre slice of womanhood. She’s the girl who looks thrilling in a form-fitting shroud, a devil-doll who has werewolves panting at her door.

She’s also a girl with a mission – a midnight mission, if you’ll pardon me saying so. She’d like you to visit her in her attic playroom… a delightfully intimate place where cobwebs take the place of chiffon curtains and bats flutter restlessly in gilded cages. If the cocktail table happens to be a tombstone – so what? Vampira pours a drink that is out of this world. And that’s exactly where a few sips may take you.

The Vampira Show 1954

The Vampira show began on April 30, 1954. The T.V. cameras would broadcast those opening moments live to an unsuspecting audience. Flickering lights dim as a wasplike silhouette appears from a misty corridor. The advancing shadowy figure materializes, as it takes the form of a woman. Nearing the camera, she raises her talons and drags them through her raven black hair. And then she screams… loudly! She quickly composes herself and addresses the camera in an old Hollywood tone, “Good Evening,” she says… “I am… Vampira.”

Los Angeles tuned in weekly to watch Vampira bathe in a cauldron, share ghoulish cocktail recipes (“one jigger formaldehyde, two jiggers vulture blood, garnish with an eyeball”), and caress her pet spider Rollo.

Plan 9 From Outer Space Featuring Vampira “The Ghoul”

Vampira plays Bela Lugosi’s deceased spouse in the Ed Wood 1957 classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space. The film starts with narrator Criswell stating, “You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here.” Within the first 10 minutes Vampira kills two gravediggers and goes on a terror spree with her bald sidekick inspector Clay (Tor Johnson). Over the years Plan 9 has been considered to be the epitome of “so-bad-it’s-good” vintage cinema.

PRODUCT LIST

Heads:

• One (1) Portrait with Normal Expression with Rooted Hair
• One (1) Portrait with Screaming Expression with Rooted Hair

Body:

• One (1) Seamless Body with Metal Skeleton and Over 30 Points of Articulation
• Hands:
• One (1) Pair of Open Hands
• One (1) Pair of Horror Hands

Costume:

• One (1) Black Dress
• One (1) Belt
• One (1) Pair of High Heels

Accessories:

• One (1) Ring
• One (1) Cigarette with Holder
• One (1) Candle Stand (Polyresin)
• One (1) Couch (Polyresin)

TOPSTONE TOPLESS VAMPIRE GIRL

There is something decidedly salacious with the impulse to dress up a naked girl in a monster mask. A pastime that is better left behind closed doors, all too often the need to share this fetish with the world at large is overwhelming and the photographer submits to the desire. Whether used to stimulate prurient arousal, unconsciously satirize the relationship between sex and death, or simply to illicit a good belly laugh, this juxtaposition is as transfixing as driving by a traffic accident.

A case can be made for any of the above in today's TOPSTONE TUESDAY entry. An alternate title could arguably be "Topless Tuesday", based on the subject matter. After all, the Internet is just full of weirdness such as this, and in MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD's never ceasing quest to bring its readers a broad (no pun intended) spectrum of interesting and curious content, one is bound to come across an occasional outre example from some Imp of the Perverse or other.

To see an unimpeded view of this photo, go here.

[IMAGE SOURCE: Retrogirly]

VAMPIRA IN LIFE MAGAZINE

Once upon a time, TIME and NEWSWEEK magazines were considered the pulse of America, and LIFE and LOOK were considered its heartbeat. Reflecting our daily lives like no others could, this quartet of publications was the most accurate collective exposure one could get of an American family snapshot.

Nothng today can compare -- even the current incarnation of TIME, with its sometimes bilious political affectations or the vapid, dead-beat celebrity-strewn pages of US WEEKLY or PEOPLE can come close to the journalistic sophistication of LIFE.

During the 50's and 60's , if you made it into LIFE, you were really something. You had to be pretty popular or unique at the moment to find yourself in its pages. After all, this was a national magazine and it seemed to have an uncanny, predestined sense that it would end up being an American icon.

It's really wasn't much of a surprise, then, when Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira, the first -- and some say, finest -- TV horror host, appeared in the pages of LIFE on May 31, 1954!

VAMPIRA AND THE GHOST OF JAMES DEAN

THE WOMAN WHO WAS DESTINED to become the very first TV horror host was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi, in Finland, on December 21, 1921. Her family moved to the United States when she was two-years-old.

After graduating from high school in Astoria, Oregon (home of THE GOONIES) she headed for Hollywood. She payed her dues as a chorus-line girl, exotic dancer, and photographer's model (including a stint as an artist's model for Alberto Vargas), until she was "discovered" and hired for films.

Nurmi's unconventional manner led to her role as horror hostess, Vampira, after adopting a costume patterned after the Chas Addams cartoon character, Morticia, and catching the eye of a TV producer who was looking for someone to introduce the newly-acquired SHOCK THEATRE package of horror films on his station.

Nurmi's husband is credited with coming up with the name, Vampira. Besides being a bustier version of Addams' Morticia, her costume and character was also patterned after the Dragon Lady from Milton Caniff's newspaper comic strip, TERRY AND THE PIRATES and Disney's evil queen in SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS.

Like lots of other actors, during her days in Hollywood she made the acquaintance of many other stars. One of them was the rebel without a cause, James Dean. The stories about them vary, and Nurmi was sometimes accused of capitalizing on their relationship, marginal or not.

Pop Culure astrologer to the stars, Sydney Omarr published a magazine called BORDERLINE. Subtitled, "The Magazine Which Dares the Unknown" it was only one of the many astrology and spiritual magazines that popped up like mushrooms on the newsstands during the 1960's occult renaissance.

In the January 1964 issue (Vol. 1 No. 4) appeared an article by Maila Nurmi entitled, The Ghost of James Dean. In it she recounts the strange occurence surrounding his death and the picture she had of him hanging on her wall that eerily changed after his passing. Despite the claims of her supposed close friendship with Dean, the article has a tone of sincerity about it that could easily refute those claims.

BEFORE THEY WERE SCREAM QUEENS

Monsterologists better know Maila Nurmi as Vampira, TV's first horror host. But, before she primmed and donned her Morticia Addams outfit she was just another struggling girl in Hollywood trying to make a buck.

Like so many others who came to Tinseltown with good intentions and a body to boot, Nurmi spent some time as a dancer, and both an artist's and photographer's model. In the mid-1950's she posed for numerous photo spreads in the burgeoniong men's mag business.

In this particular example, we find her along with a few other women in a photo feature called Take It Easy, from the men's pinup digest, GALA (Vol. 4 No. 6, March 1954). The caption reads that she is the cousin of the famous Finnish runner -- he is actually her uncle. And so far as her measurements go -- it's been reported in one extreme that her 38-17-36 houglass figure was indeed that. A more reasonable -- and I'm sure more accurate at least at the time this shot was taken -- 34-23-33 1/2 is recorded here.

The contents page shows the issue's line up. Articles were all short on text and full of women posing provocatively in swim suits or other sexy outfits. In these early days, modesty prevailed and, in pinup 'zines like these, nary a nipple could be seen.

Another example of the type of photos that were shown in these types of publications is this attractive model posing as a "Moon Girl", translated from English into man-talk as "Out of This World".

Readers looking for a little spicier fare could always send away for something in the advertising section. In many cases the descriptions promised  a little more than what the magazine was offering in the way of "exposure".