Vampira and Me

Maila Nurmi hosted a horror show in Los Angeles in the mid fifties. On screen she went by the name Vampira. She was the one who opened the midnight movie slot. The broadcasts went out live. Nothing was kept. Almost no footage of the show survives today. That is the first problem the documentary has to solve. Ray Greene puts together television material that had only recently surfaced. He uses a long interview he made with Nurmi himself. There is also a much older piece in which she interviews herself. Her life outside the show is covered as well. Her closeness to James Dean and to other figures of the period is discussed. She even made an attempt at music. Her part in the goth wave that came later gets its own section. Maila Nurmi and Gloria Pall appear in the hundred and six minute documentary, an American production Ray Greene finished in 2013.