Sunday, December 11, 2022

Happy 100th Birthday, Vampira!

Everyone's posting pictures and lovely tributes to Maila "Vampira" Nurmi today, and of course Mr. Karswell shall now do the same. Having spent a great deal of time with everyone's favorite cool ghoul horror hostess in the early 90's as not only a personal assistant, but also as a friend, I can only say that she would seriously be love / hating every moment of this century mark milestone. So amongst all of the very familiar, iconic photos you'll see of her around the web today, not only as Vampira but also as stunning pin-up model, Maila, I thought I'd throw this astounding article back into the media mix as it doesn't really seem to have made much of a blip on many people's radars. I originally posted this "Hollywood's House of Horrors" story from the 1961 issue of Charlton's Mad Monsters #2 over at AEET nearly a decade ago HERE, and while it's not a comic book story typical of THOIA, I figured that many of you Vampira fans who missed the original post would dig seeing it, and thus equally reel from the mind blowing revelation that these full-sized monsters, including Vampira, could be rented for a weekend--- arghhhh! I always wonder where they are today. I also included a photo of my recent Brides of Barlow Halloween display (CLICK HERE for it) which includes my own Vampira mannequin! 

Happy birthday, Maila! Miss you dearly...

2 comments:

Mr. Cavin said...

Man, I don't know where I was when you first posted this stuff over at AEET, but I sure am glad I got a second crack at it. This is great. I love the Vampira figure (nyuk nyuk), but what I really want to rent is that giant sabre-toothed bat.

Happy birthday, Maila Nurmi!

Now I'm off to the past to read that Werewolf Story over at the link.

Brian Barnes said...

I'm enchanted with the bat, too, it reminds me of some type of Bill Tracy stunt.

The figure that is supposed to be Hitchcock looks more like Peter Lorre to me!

Trying to figure out what the figure is between Frankenstein's Monster and Vampira ... the wolfman? I'd love to have seen the fly figure!