Squeezing a feature-length documentary out of its subject required better (as in at least some) research and more careful consideration than producer-director Kevin Sean Michaels puts into Vampira the Movie (2006), a direct-to-video release. It isn't terrible for a low-budget documentary - it's too affectionate for that - but the obvious lack of serious research and its disjointed and disorganized telling limits its audience to hard-core Vampira and Ed Wood fans.

Maila Nurmi (b. 1921) herself dominates the show, free-associating anecdotes about her life and career, but this turns out not to have been a particularly good idea. In her mid-eighties she's still a bundle of energy, elaborately gesturing throughout, like a snake on a hotplate - she seems incapable of sitting still - with theatrical, Vampira-like mannerisms. She comes off as, well, more than a little eccentric: after filming her scenes for Plan 9, Nurmi says, "I went home on the bus again...but my boyfriend wouldn't have sex with me and I tried to rape a doorknob." Uh...how's that again?

Michaels' "print the legend" approach questions none of Nurmi's statements while controversial subjects about her life are avoided altogether or told by others. Maybe everything she talks about is absolutely 100% true: her friendships with James Dean and Marlon Brando (unimaginatively tacked on near the end like an appendix, as if to bring the show up to feature length), that at the height of her fame three major studios all wanted to star her in movies. None of this is backed up with any documentation or other testimony, however, and some of Nurmi's claims seem dubious. She says, for instance, that her horror movie show inspired fan clubs around the world but how is that possible? The show, produced by KABC, Channel 7 in Los Angeles, was shown locally but possibly nowhere else; I'm not aware that it was ever even syndicated to other parts of California, let alone broadcast around the globe. Reportedly she made the cover of Life and several other prominent national magazines (the Life cover isn't shown, possibly for legal reasons) and that might have earned her some fans outside the U.S. - but fan clubs? In the mid-1950s?

Nurmi/Vampira was briefly famous, but then just as quickly she all but vanished. What happened? Nurmi claims to have been black-balled after her agreement with KABC came up for renewal, but because of Nurmi's eccentric rambling her explanation for this is decidedly murky: something to do with her outside earnings or perhaps, so she says, KABC wanted to develop an "Addams Family" type show, though without her in the lead. Then again, maybe she simply asked for more money than KABC was willing to spend. It's a confusing (and confused) response, but there's no follow-up question begging for a bit more clarification. More urgently, at this point especially the show cries out for honest-to-goodness, down-in-the-dirt actual research. Did the filmmakers bother to check contemporary trade magazines for KABC's account of what happened? Interview surviving KABC associates? Take a drive up to the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood? Apparently not.

Nearly 30 years after Vampira was snuffed from the airwaves, Nurmi sued Elvira's alter-ego, Cassandra Peterson, for plagiarism. Peterson is interviewed, sort of, about the incident (she looks almost ambushed, as if the filmmakers caught her on her way to the market, simply pointed a camera at her and said, "Okay, tell us what happened"); she says the case was thrown out because Nurmi never showed up in court, though Peterson still lost about $30,000 in attorney fees preparing a defense. In the documentary, Nurmi isn't even asked about this at all or, if she was, her own account isn't included. Again, court records, newspaper stories, etc., could have provided a lot of interesting material for the documentary; they shouldn't have relied solely on Peterson to tell the tale.

Grey's book understood that many of the wild anecdotes told by Ed Wood's friends and associates (including Nurmi) were probably apocryphal and at times contradictory, but he deliberately left them in because, taken all together, they painted an overall portrait of Wood's personality that fundamentally was probably quite accurate. That's not the case here.

Vampira the Movie utilizes a few brief clips from Nurmi's TV show (c. 1954 says the documentary) that somehow have survived. There are also clips from Plan 9 from Outer Space and some unidentified newspaper and magazine clippings are seen. The usual suspects are rounded up for interviews: David J. Skal, Forry Ackerman, Sid Haig, Lloyd Kaufman, John Zacherle, as well as a batch of direct-to-video Scream Queen types.

The interviewees are not well used. Except for Ackerman, few of the interviewees would even have had the opportunity to see Nurmi's show back in the mid-1950s (though many insist it was a major influence on their careers), so a lot of the discussion digresses into an appreciation of Ed Wood and Plan 9, which even Nurmi herself dismisses. It's a shame the filmmakers didn't do more legwork; no one even mentions this, but if her show was airing around 1954 then it would have preceded by several years both the "Shock Theater" syndication by Screen Gems of classic Universal monster movies in August 1957, and the renewed interest in classic movie monsters that followed in its wake. This means that Vampira truly was ahead of her time: what movies were even available back then? What did her show consist of, exactly? The clips show a deadpan Vampira but there's no indication as to how she introduced the movies. These are major omissions.

Video & Audio

Vampire the Movie is presented in 4:3 matted widescreen. Even the Vampire TV slips are letterboxed, though the show isn't 16:9 enhanced. The lighting of the interviewees is somewhat better than the usual low-budget documentary, but the sound is inconsistent; there's an audio buzz throughout the Nurmi interview. For what it is, it looks okay, no better. There are no subtitle options.

Extra Features

Supplements consist of cutting room sweepings and self-serving promotional material of minimal interest: An audio commentary by the director, a few stray interviews. What's billed as a "Joe Flynn Show Interview" is not some long-forgotten talk show with the co-star of McHale's Navy but, from the look of it, some public access offering.

Parting Thoughts

Vampira the Movie might have been a fascinating, historically valid portrait of a true eccentric trying to eke out a career on the fringes of the movie and TV industries but for its lack of effort is just another cheap documentary for hard-core enthusiasts only. Rent It.

　 Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's most recent essays appear in Criterion's three-disc Seven Samurai DVD and BCI Eclipse's The Quiet Duel. His audio commentary for Invasion of Astro Monster is now available.