Vampira (1922-2008)

Today is the legendary ghoulish B-actress Vampira's birthday, and in January it is two years since she passed away. Since I found some cool pictures of her, I thought I might as well right a little something too.

Vampira was actually born in my neighbor country Finland (my maternal grandfather's home country) December 21st, 1922. Her uncle (or so she claims) was famous athlete Paavo Nurmi, one of "The Flying Finns", and probably made a more respectable mark in history than his supposed niece.
She was named Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi (later changed to easier-to-pronounce Nurmi), and at the age of two she moved to America with her family, namely Ashtabula, Oregon, the largest Finnish community in the state.

Blonde Maila Nurmi as a pin-up girl.

At the age of 17 Maila Nurmi arrived in Los Angeles, where she soon found work as a pin-up model for fames Peruvian Playboy painter Alberto Vargas. Incredibly enough, a director named Howard Hawkes noticed the lovely blonde Maila and planned to make a new Lauren Bacall out of her. He cast her in a planned film adaption of the Russian novel "Dreadful Hollow", but the project was out on hold for so many times that Maila finally lost patience and washed her hands of the whole business.

The Vampira we are more familiar with.

It was at a masquerade ball that Maila once again was discovered, this time introducing the Vampira persona. She had based her costume on a character in The New Yorker's cartoon by Charles "Chas" Addams, namely Morticia Addams of the macabre Addams Family. It was a television producer who noticed the dark beauty, now with raven dyed hair, long fingernails and a wasp waist. Soon Vampira had a contract hosting the Channel 7 midnight broadcast "The Vampira Show". With that trump card the television company easily succeeded in their quest to make more people stay up at night watching bad horror flicks.

The show was popular at least for one season (1954-55), but the audience soon tired of the badly written double entendres and the melodramatic show hostess. The next thing was an appearance in the camp classic Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), about which she had to say:

"At the time, I thought it was horrible. I knew immediately I'd be committing professional suicide, but I thought `what choice do I have?' Somehow, I seemed to be dead already. I love glamour and physical beauty. I've always been fascinated by beautiful men on the screen: Tyrone Power, Robert Walker, with soft-focus filters and velvet voices. That's what Ed Wood was like. Beautiful dreamy eyes and long, sweeping lashes just beautiful. He didn't make a very pretty lady [in Glen or Glenda], but he made an awfully pretty man."

The rest is history. Through the years Vampira has however become notorious for modifying her true relationships with famous Hollywood people. For one thing, she claimed to be on very friendly terms with James Dean. While the fact that they met seems to be the truth, there is some doubt about her claims of a deep understanding between the two. The American actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had this to say in her 1962 memoir in a chapter about Dean:

"We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.' "

She was however acquainted with both Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, and did briefly date Orson Welles, whom she said was the only man she ever traveled to other cities to be with.

In later years Vampira made a living installing linoleum flooring. She seemed to take it well, considering she said the following to the Los Angeles Times in an interview:

 "And if things are slow in linoleum, I can also do carpentry, make drapes or refinish furniture"

She later opened an antiques boutique on Melrose Avenue called Vampira's Attic, where she made items for several celebrities including Grace Slick, singer in Jefferson Airplane.

Vampira died in Los Angeles at the age of 85 from natural causes, Januray 10th, 2008.

Maybe body modification is something I should try out?

I can't believe this...

Quite the fan photo!

My favorite picture of the lot:

Vampira does her best to scare little children.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975)

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS

Director: Don Edmonds

USA/Germany 1975

96 min

What to expect? What to expect.

Me and my boyfriend popped this into the DVD player yesterday evening, and of course had no expectations what-so-ever (besides hopefully some entertainment). You will probably, like us, need 2 litres of Coca-Cola and a chocolate bar each to get through this.

It's quite easy to explain the plot, so I'll begin with that:

Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne) is the female head of the SS at an experimantation camp in Germany. She gets a kick out of experimenting (i.e. cutting limbs off, boiling people alive, sterilizing them with gruesome methods I will not describe for you, etc.) with both male and female prisoners. Sometimes she sleeps with the male prisoners, but most often that ends with them on an operating table and getting their family treasures cut off. We will also see prisoners infected with diseases, like syphilis, and a lesbian warden raping a female prisoner, accompanied by hairy and drunken SS-men. And a lot of naked bodies.

The surprising thing about this film, which you expect to be really bad and tasteless (and it is, mostly), is that after about half through the picture it actually gets really good. That's when the prisoners gather and figure out a way to escape. With the help of a well-hung German/American man (who thanks to his technique in the sack hasn't had to cut his male limb off, in order to please the sexually frustrated Ilsa), they go berserk and kill guards, in an action scene worthy a normal action movie. This part is actually really good. Especially when Ilsa gets her punishment - that's pretty lovely.

With the present day audience's eyes, this film does not contain as much gore and erotica as one might expect - but it certainly helped pushing the gore trend in movies, not to mention the exploitation genre.

(Note: The cut version of this film is R-rated in the USA, the uncut X-rated. Here in Sweden, everyone from the age of 15 is allowed to watch it.)

A little history lesson?

The interesting thing about Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is that it states to be based on real life events - we even get a little text screen, informing us of the realism of this film, before the movie begins.

And it's true to some extent - the Ilsa character is obviously based on the real Buchenwald and Majdanek concentration camps commendant Ilse Koch (1906-1967).

Hard to tell them apart, huh?

Ilse Koch, AKA The Beast of Buchenwald, worked at the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1937 (a camp for Jews, Poles, Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, prisoners of war etc.). She didn't waste any time, and as soon as she was installed there properly, she started torturing the prisoners - a favorite method of hers being to force the prisoners to rape each other in front of an audience. She got half-hearted orders to be a little more human to them.

In 1943, Ilse and her husband Karl Koch were arrested for embezzlement and for murdering prisoners. She was imprisoned until 1945, when her husband got the death penalty and she was set free by the German authorities. Soon, however, the USA stepped in and arrested her again.

At the trial evidence like cut-off tattooes of prisoners and a shrunken human head was revealed. She was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. September 1, 1967, she was found in her cell, having committed suicide by hanging herself.

Below: First a picture of the evidence - tattooes cut off from prisoners. Film clip: a silent film clip from Ilse Koch's trial, where the evidence is shown.

Our heroine Dyanne Thorne went on making sequels to this film (even though Ilsa got her brain blown in bits by the end of it) - Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia (1977) and Greta, the Mad Butcher (1977).

And don't you forget Dyanne's earlier successes with characters like The Fairy Godmother in The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio (1971) and "Hooker" in Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975).

Some people are just born to make history.

Posters:

Wow, look at how they marketed this movie back in the 1970's! Different posters for each day - "Teaser No. 1 - 4 days prior to opening". Brilliant.

Forbidden art

I found this beautiful compilation of old film clips, forced to be cut out because of its erotic nature. Look at it - it is almost magical.

Today, May 18th, is also the day when silent star Norma Talmadge signed her footprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1927, after having stepped in the wet concrete by mistake. As we all know by this time, a trend had been introduced.

Double Agent 73 (1974)

Double Agent 73
Director: Doris Wishman
USA 1974
73 min


No, I'm not going to tell you anything about this film until you've seen the intertitles:

Juri Productions? Sounds like quality!

And the title of the film. Could have been a James Bond movie.

Chesty Morgan? I bet that's her real name. Why didn't my mother name me that?

Well now. Got your own picture of what the film is going to be? Otherwise, I can tell you.

Let me begin with the fact that this is a reeeeally bad movie. I mean, REALLY bad. But let me give you a tip: buy a bottle of wine, some crackers and cheese, and watch this wonderfully entertaining cult film with your best friends. It is hilarious.

So, the plot:
Double Agent 73, who's real world name is Jane (played by polish "actress" Chesty Morgan) receives a call from her boss during her vacation, telling her he as a really important assignment for her, and she is the only right person for it. She is going to find and kill... an evil man. Isn't too important. But he sells low-grade heroin on the market. And that is not good.
The important thing however is that Jane has gigantic breasts (and I mean gigantic, see following pictures) and that she has a camera surgically installed in her left breast (!). In other words - she is perfectly equipped for the assignment!
The last thing you need to know about the plot is - Jane has a habit of making herself comfortable every time she gets alone, meaning that she takes off the clothes on her upper body. But don't all women do that, anyway?

Now - look at all these glorious screenshots. They tell everything you need to know.

Look at that beautiful woman! Love her shoes. (?)

"What? You want me to work on my bare-chested vacation?"

Professionally dressed agent Jane is informed about the assignment.

Making herself comfortable while finding important documents.

A woman is killed in the shower. Hitchcock must feel embarrassed by his shower scene in Psycho (1960).

Brilliant! She kills a man by forcing ice cubes into his mouth until he suffocates. Why didn't I come up with that one?

And this is how Jane takes photographs with her boobies.

Yes. She kills a man by rubbing poison on her breast and seduces him to lick them. Watch this movie with your kids! Or even better - with someone else's kids!

Can it get more 1970's?

"Oh no! He caught me! And my breasts are trying to escape!"

The evil man is... evil. Grrr.

And the film ends. But the last frame can't just be of a boring airplane, so we put a couple of boobs there to.

Isn't it amazing that a woman has directed this? People have tried to explain Doris Wishman as a feminist, being a sole woman in a man dominated industry. But no. All women in her films are mostly blonde and stupid. I intend to watch all Wishman's films. For the heck of it.

As for Chesty Morgan, her career was a short one. She made another movie with Wishman, Deadly Weapons from 1974 (I wonder what those "deadly weapons" were...?), but then she got fired because she never came to the set on time. It was also a bit of a kerfuffle to re-dub all her lines because of her Polish accent.
Chesty Morgan made an appearance in Federico Fellini's Casanova (1976), but her scenes were cut. The last film she made was in Hong Kong called Third Hand (1981). Just check out the info on that one on IMDb - nada. Her performance isn't even confirmed.
What a tragic loss of a great actress.

Quotes:

Chesty: Flowers are pretty, aren't they?

Let Me Die a Woman (1978)

Let Me Die a Woman
Director: Doris Wishman
USA 1978
79 min

Let Me Die a Woman is a dramatized pseudo-documentary made by cult soft porn director Doris Wishman (1912-2002) in 1972. The subject is transsexuals, both male and female, who want to make / have done a sex change operation. The film wasn't released until 1978.

The films mixes educational scenes with dramatizations of real events with soft porn. All through the film Dr. Leo Wollman, a sex change specalist, guides us through transsexual group meetings, interviews and even a sex change operation.
The film was rejected by UK cinema, and wasn't released there until 1982, more than 10 minutes shorter.

Let Me Die a Woman is really interesting, amusing and bizarre. Of course you have to realize that it isn't a documentary in the true meaning of the word. The transsexuals and the operations are real, but they obviously had a script to read from. It would be sad otherwise, if they always sounded like bad actors when speaking. I will return to the fascinating woman Doris Wishman in later posts, the woman who often is called "the female Ed Wood".

Most of her films made during the 1960's and 1970's were made for the American sexploitation film market. All self learned she used the camera in an innovative way, experimenting with angles, close-ups and cutting. In that way she had far more talent than earlier mentioned Ed Wood.
She was one of the most prolific female directors through cinema history and was making films until her death. Her last finished film was Satan Was a Lady (2001). On her death bed she said that she would continue making films in hell.

Leslie, a Puerto Rican transsexual, tells us about her difficult childhood and the becoming of a woman.

Dr. Leo Wollman, the narrator and informant.

Dr. Wollman tells us the story about the man who couldn't afford a sex change operation, and in his desperation tried to do it himself. With a hammer and chisel.

A group meeting for pre- and post- operation transsexuals.

A genetical male has developed breasts due to a hormone treatment.

"Not all dildos are used for medical purposes." Dr. Wollman tells us.

Illustrations of the male and the female sex organs.

A not-so-cosy sex change operation scene. But interesting and informative.

A dramatization of a story about a newly operated transsexual who had a hurry using her new vagina.

An example of successful sex after a sex change operation.

Inverted black and white photo.

The End.