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In a sad bit of news for horror kids who have grown up to be horror geeks, especially ones like me who are fascinated by horror movie hosts who entertained my parents' generation in the decade before I was born (Ghoulardi, Zacherle, etc.), word has come of the death of Maila Nurmi at the age of 86.

Who was Maila Nurmi? Well, she was better known to the world as . . .

Vampira

Her own personal website has the dates and a lovely headshot of a non-Vampira-ed Nurmi HERE.

I found out about it from Tim Lucas' lovely post at Video WatchBlog, HERE. He pretty much covers everything important about Vampira (and especially her influence on several generations of "vampire girls," as Jonathan Richman would call them), and what he doesn't cover, he links to.

He doesn't mention her fine work in the Bert I. Gordon film The Magic Sword, not such a great movie (except by Bert I. Gordon standards, by which it's exceptional), but she keeps her end up, and it made for one of the best episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Of course, she will always be best known for her appearance as "The Dead Wife" in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space.

She, as a result of her Plan 9 appearance, also in no small part inspired my favorite song by The Damned, "Plan 9 Channel 7," which you can see here in a music video that directly pays homage:

R.I.P.