Why we should care, and care v-e-r-y much, about this seemingly peripheral C-list celebrity is made artfully clear in Poole's excellent work. She was going to be made a star by Howard Hawks (didn't happen), bombed around with James Dean and Elvis, toured in the 1950s with Liberace, and was in Ed Wood's 1959 masterpiece, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Scott Poole explores deftly and accurately the history and the politics of both feminism and the outsider, the parts of America pushed to the curb but yearning for acceptance, love, and financial success, the new and shiny promise of the (supposed) post. And yet, as Poole incisively explains and illustrates throughout, Vampira's social and artistic influence has been pervasive and subversive. In Vampira, Poole gives us the eclectic life of the dancer, stripper, actress. Her show, Dig Me, Vampira, ran for one season only, 56 episodes (none of which, sadly, exist today), on Los Angeles's KABC channel 7 in 1954. Maila Nurmi, the eponymous Vampira, was a deliciously sexy siren from the graveyard with a deathly wan pallor, 19-inch cinched waist, talons for nails, a busty chest, and an orgasmic scream to die for (really, check it out on YouTube). He continues his macrocultural exegesis in this microquasibiography and cultural (especially the 1950s) explication of TV's first and most revelatory horror host. Scott Poole has shown how brilliantly he can unearth cultural fears and desires, both dangerous and heartbreaking, by analyzing what passed itself off as entertainment. Scott Poole is a whip-smart piece of pop culture detailing the story of cult horror figure Vampira that actually tells the much wider story of 1950s America and its treatment of women and sex, as well as capturing a fascinating swath of Los Angeles history. of Charleston Monsters in America) sure knows a monster when he sees one. Vampira represents a way to talk about fifties culture, especially about the political and moral pressures exerted then and what costs ensued. The new book from award-winning historian W.
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