In honor of the the upcoming Tales From Mutantville shoot with MVP’s own Muticia the Movie Goddess, the producers at Mutantville Productions thought this would be a good time to take a look at the history of horror hostesses through the ages. It would take a book length essay to properly cover this subject, so for the purpose of this discussion, we’re going to keep it simple. We’ll take a look at the roots of Horror Hostess-dom starting with it’s originator – Vampira, then we’ll take a look at the rise of Elvira into 80’s pop culture stardom, and lastly we’ll visit our good friend and self-made horror hostess extraordinaire – Miko Macabre.
The origins of the horror hostess are as murky as the smoke filled stages they haunt. There is some dispute as to whether the woman named Maila Elizabeth Nurmi was born on December 21, 1921 or on December 11, 1922. What is not in dispute is that she would one day find inspiration in the character of Morticia Addams from Charles Addams’ The Addams Family comic strip and create the persona of Vampira.
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The Addams Family is about a crazy monster filled family consisting of Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday and Pugsley. The Addams Family was a sharp satire with characters who took particular delight in bizarre and macabre acts whilst completely unaware that they were frightening to the rest of the world.
Vampira came about when Maila’s costume caught the eye of television producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr. at a costume ball. Stromberg tracked 
her down and offered her a job as a horror movie hostess on KABC-TV out of Los Angeles. Nurmi’s husband suggested the name “Vampira,” the dress was inspired by Morticia Addams and the personality was all Maila. The Vampira Show went on the air in May of 1954. The show was an immediate hit and before long Vampira was gracing the pages of Life magazine and sharing the stage with Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr., and Bela Lugosi on The Red Skelton Show. The Vampira Show was canceled after one year – but Maila retained the rights to the character of Vampira.
Twenty-six years later, KHJ-TV attempted to revive The Vampira Show – but negotiations with Maila Nurmi fell apart. Enter Cassandra Peterson who won the show’s producers over with her auditions. She was offered the role of hostess for Movie Macabre with the caveat that she come up with her own wardrobe. Peterson teamed up with artist/designer Robert Redding and after their initial design was rejected by the producers, developed the goth/punk trailer park goddess look for the persona of Elvira that we all know and love today.
Starting in 1981, Elvira hosted Movie Macabre for several years and became a house hold name when the show went into syndication across the US and Canada. In 1985, Elvira started hosting movies on ThrillerVideo series of VHS releases and even starred in her own campy flick – Elvira Mistress of the Dark. Elvira became THE brand name of horror hostesses in the 80’s making appearances on everything from Wrestlemania 2 to Coors commercials to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
At the height of her popularity in 1986, Elvira told USA Weekly that she’s “in a great position. . . here I have a character that is so unique – my only competition in this market is Vincent Price and we look rather different. I really have my own niche.”
There were well documented disputes between Vampira and Elvira but they were eventually resolved so there’s no need to go into it here. Elvira maintained her popularity through the 90’s and has even had a recent resurgence of late with a sequel to her film entitled Elvira’s Haunted Hills and even the return of Elvira’s Movie Macabre to DVD and Blu Ray!
In 2004, a little website called Youtube opened it’s url doors – and forever changed our access to media as we know it.
The Age of the Internet gave viewers access to anything anywhere and anyone that could plug into it could reach an audience that was virtually unlimited – all outside the auspices of Hollywood. Out of this fertile ground burst Miko Macabre the hostess of Cryptique.
According to legend, Miko was a college student who teamed with her fellow media studies students to create their own horror host show as part of a class project. In July of 2007, Miko and her friends wrote, filmed, edited and uploaded Cryptique to Youtube where it quickly spread across horror forums and websites acround the net. Miko never reached a mainstream audience as the show ceased production as suddenly as it had appeared. During Cryptique’s second season, Youtube started banning their videos, so Miko & Co. decided to pull the plug to avoid the frustration.
On her Myspace page, Miko described herself as “a girl who really likes horror films. Good horror films, bad horror films, old horror films, new horror films, low budget horror films…medium budget horror films. You get the picture . . . I’m sick of bad (and good) horror films not getting the attention they so rightly deserve, so I decided to create my own show–Cryptique. It’s like a critique that takes place in a crypt, get it? Eh? Oh, I’m so alone. . . Watch my show!”
With the cessation of the show, the Mutantville Players saw their hopes of guest starring on an episode of Cryptique dashed upon the rocks of Youtube policy violations. Rather than admit defeat, MVP decided that the easiest way to get on Cryptique was to create our own Cryptique, and so Mutica’s Movie Morgue sprung whole and armored from the collective heads of MVP.
So now you know where this grand tradition of Horror Hostesses started, where it went and what seems to be coming around the curve ahead. Thank you for joining us on the Mutantville Mothership for this little horror history lesson. To keep up to date on all the latest news on Muticia and the Movie Morgue, sign up for the MVP newsletter and you’ll have all that info delivered directly to your electronic doorstep.
