Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

Movie discussions & analysis after midnight.

Don Nichols is a motion picture reviewer, analyst, commentator, and Late-Night Movie Host. The Night Owl Movie Talk YouTube channel features a wide variety of videos about "important" movies, filmmakers, physical media, and collectibles.

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

What's the longest you've gone without sleeping? 😴

10 hours ago | [YT] | 4

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

Last night's watch party was a fun time with some cool new surprises added to the show. Thanks to those who dropped by in the early morning hours.

1 day ago | [YT] | 2

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

Crystal Lake?

6 days ago | [YT] | 8

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

Have you seen BACKROOMS (2026)?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 6

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

Who is on your Mt Rushmore of Slashers?

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 17

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

Which word do you prefer?

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 10

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Night Owl Movie Talk 🦉

VAMPIRA - The 1st Horror Host - Appreciation Post

Born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1922, Nurmi moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Her life took a historic turn in 1953 when she attended a choreographer's masquerade ball dressed as the pale, silent woman from Charles Addams' The New Yorker cartoons (Morticia from the Addams Family). Television producer Hunt Stromberg Jr. saw her and hired her to host late-night horror movies.

Her most famous cinematic role came in 1956 when director Ed Wood cast her in his micro-budget sci-fi horror film, Plan 9 from Outer Space (released in 1959). Nurmi agreed to play the reanimated alien-zombie Vampira under one condition: that she didn't have to speak any of Wood's infamously poor dialogue. Because Plan 9 was later dubbed "the worst movie ever made," it ironically secured Vampira’s permanent status as a cult-film legend.

Beyond horror hosting, Nurmi also served as the physical, live-action reference model for Maleficent in Disney’s 1959 animated classic, Sleeping Beauty.

In 1981, when a television station tried to revive the horror-host format, they approached Nurmi. When she opted out, the studio hired Cassandra Peterson to create a similar character—which became Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Nurmi unsuccessfully sued Peterson for trademark infringement, cementing a lifelong pop-culture rivalry.

Nurmi passed away of natural causes at her Hollywood home on January 10, 2008, at the age of 85. She is buried in the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and her life has been celebrated in retrospective projects like Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood and Kevin Sean Michaels' documentary Vampira: The Movie on IMDb.