This intimate and moving portrait of a lost goth icon brought tears to my eyes.
It's rare to see a movie and know that it was made with love, but I would say this is a film like that. Director R. H. Greene has excavated pretty much every frame of film featuring Maila Nurmi as her barrier-shattering goth creation Vampira, the majority of which was found and presented here for the first time in over 50 years. In that way, this film is quite a present to pop culture history.
But the core of this documentary is the on camera interplay between Greene, the unseen questioner, and Nurmi, the regal, coquettish, gleeful, moist-eyed interviewee. Nurmi was clearly bloodied by her adventures in Hollywood as Vampira but she comes across as (mostly) unbowed, or at least willing to make the sacrifices that were required to give the world her creation. Knowing Nurmi at least got respect and affection from Greene and other second and third generation fans makes the rest of her story--a real Hollywood tragedy--easier to bear.
Thoughtful comments by cult comedian Dana Gould stand out, as does the amazing side story of Voluptua, a rip-off character created by men to capitalize on Vampira's popularity. Voluptua proved by her sex kitten submissiveness just how radically feminist the self-sufficient Vampira really was--when men tried to recreate Vampira's success, they created a blow-up doll, where Nurmi created a feminist icon. An amazing story, for horror fans and anyone who cares about radical.depictions of women in the media age.
