2021 got started with the release of Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi (order a copy HERE), a 400 page book Sandra Niemi wrote about her aunt Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira, who is believed to have been the first horror host. So it seems fitting that the year is ending with the release of another Vampira book, The Vampira Diaries.
The Vampira Diaries are a collection of
Maila Nurmi’s personal diaries starting from the year 1953 during her Hollywood rise to fame with the groundbreaking Vampira Show. Featuring unearthed, never-before-seen photos, original scripts, news clips from her personal scrapbook, excerpts written in her own hand, and scores of rare photos from the inception of Vampira 1954-1956.
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The collection comes to us from author Jonny Coffin and features a foreword by Bela Lugosi Jr., with an afterword by Dana Gould. The Vampira Diaries has a page count of 176.
The Vampira Show only had a brief run in the mid-1950s, but the character has a popularity that endures to this day. Nurmi established a formula that many horror hosts still follow: show lower quality movies that you can make mocking comments about while interacting with creatures and dropping ghoulish puns. The Vampira Show was so well-known, Nurmi was able to continue playing Vampira – and take acting roles where she was credited as Vampira – for years afterward. Her most famous acting role came in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, and her involvement in the making of that film is why Nurmi was played by Lisa Marie in the 1994 biopic Ed Wood. Sadly, Nurmi passed away in 2008.
Copies of The Vampira Diaries can be purchased for $89 at Vampira.BigCartel.com.
Will you be buying a copy? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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