I’ve always had a knack for women with a dark and morbid aura about them. Maybe it’s because of my natural dark hair and high arched dark eyebrows that I can relate to these figures.

When I was little, Wednesday Addams was as iconic a figure for me as maybe Barbie or some popstar for other girls. I was pretty shy and started to ask myself the important questions at a very early age, so I guess I related to her character as a no nonsense kind of person and even looked up to her bravery and confidence. In fact, Wednesday Addams was one of my first halloween costumes and I nailed it without even having to put that much work into it.

Now that I’ve grown up, characters like Wednesday’s mum Morticia Addams or Vampira have become style icons to me (even though I will never give up the classic Wednesday ‘black dress and white Peter Pan collar’-look).

It has always been a fascinating topic for me to dwell on: Why this kind of character pops up in our culture periodically and why everyone seems so fascinated with these kinds of women.

I guess what defines these women is the morbid aura about them, always paired with a strong sexual allure and mysteriousness. They’re also very smart and extremely confident. They’re outsiders but have no problem with that, they even seem to like it. They also don’t seem to have a problem with their own mortality and take it with humor (of course they’re considered as some kind of non human creature like a vampire – thus immortal – but they confront us humorously with our mortality). And there is always a great amount of ‘camp’ involved in these characters, which makes them all the more lovable.

And without further ado, here is a brief history of ‘the Vamp’:

1. Theda Bara

You can’t talk about ‘the Vamp’ without a least mentioning Theda Bara. Theda Bara in her role as the vampire in the silent film ‘A Fool There Was’ from 1915 is considered the first Vamp in history. Not because she was the first vamp, but because she was the first to be called that way. In the film’s credits, Theda Bara is listed as ‘the Vamp’. So, you could say that it is named after her. As you can see, her image has highly influenced our perception of ‘the Vamp’. A seductive look with heavy eye-makeup, a not that put together style, loose hair. Since the makeup industry was almost non existent (only actors and prostitutes used it), Theda Bara used actual charcoal to get that smokey eye look. After the release of the film, that look became very popular. A lot of women started to use makeup and it became more accepted in society. This influenced the heavy makeup of the flappers in the 1920s and led to a boom in the makeup industry.

2. Frankensteins Bride

This has been another past halloween costume of mine. The iconic look of Frankenstein’s Bride has first been exposed to the world in 1935, when the movie ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ was released as a sequel to ‘Frankenstein’ from 1931. The bride was played by Elsa Lanchester and her look in that movie is still omnipresent in our popular culture today.  I’m pretty sure, it was also in part the inspiration behind Lily Munster’s streaks of white hair. It is fascinating to me, that her image is so widely featured in today’s culture, yet very few know who or what she is or have even seen the movie (which I think is actually not that good. Cute… entertaining… but not very good).

3. Morticia Addams

I would say that Morticia Addams is the best known one of these ghoul-gals. The reason for that would be, that the Addams Family franchise was creating content way into the present. Originally, ‘The Addams Family’ started as a comic strip by Charles Addams in the New Yorker in the 1930s. Because of its huge popularity, it was turned into a TV series in the 1960s, with Carolyn Jones in the role of Morticia Addams. To this day, there is a huge fan base and people still watch the series. I am a fan myself because of its witty dialogues (creating timeless humour is not that easy) and its iconic characters. In the 1970s, a cartoon series was created. The Addams Family’s popularity reached its peak during the 1990s, when a series of movies (with an incredibly perfect cast) were created. Anjelica Huston took over the role of Morticia Addams and made it her own.

4. Vampira

I loooooove Vampira. It is apparent that there was a certain ‘cute-horror’ culture in the mid-century. We can also get that from the whole ‘horror-surf’ music genre with its funny horror movie sounds in the background and musicians like Screaming Lord Sutch and Bobby Pickett (his ‘Monster Mash’ is still a very popular Halloween tune). In this time, the finnish actress Maila Nurmi created ‘Vampira’ as an alter ego for herself. Her look was inspired by Morticia Addams of the New Yorker cartoons. In fact, she was attending a costume party as Morticia Addams when she was spotted by a TV producer. She hosted her own TV show in the 1950s and became the first horror movie host. Vampira can also be seen in the hilariously bad movie ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ (1959) by Ed Wood, which may well be my favourite thing about her (I really recommend watching the very entertaining Tim Burton movie ‘Ed Wood’, to learn more about him and Vampira). Maila Nurmi seems to have been a pretty cool person and her look was propably also a big inspiration for punk culture. At one point in her life she shaved her head. That must be the earliest picture of a woman with a shaved head (for style reasons only) I have ever seen.

5. Lily Munster

Lily Munster is very often confused with Morticia Addams, which is a shame, really. Both series are very similar to each other, they even ran at the same time, but they are both great! They were unconventional in their delivered values (especially for the time in which these series have aired): To accept and welcome different people and different families and to support female empowerment. In ‘The Addams Family’, both parents spend equal amounts of time for parenting and in ‘The Munsters’, Lily Munster (played by Yvonne de Carlo) clearly is the one steering the wheel, since her husband is always portrayed as being a bit soft in the head. As you can see, her look is very inspired by Frankenstein’s Bride. Her husband, Herman Munster, looks like Frankenstein’s monster, of course.

6. Elvira

And last but not least: ‘Elvira – Mistress of the Damned’! Elvira is a character created by the comedienne and actress Cassandra Peterson. Just like her apparent inspiration, Maila Nurmi, she created the character as an alter ego for herself and appears as that character in real life. As Elvira, she has hosted horror movies on TV in the 1980s. In 1988, she starred in a comedy by the same name. To this day, Peterson reprises her role as Elvira now and then.

If you haven’t noticed yet: Let me make clear that this is NOT about the trope we normally define as ‘the Vamp’. ‘The Vamp’ in the classical sense would have almost the same definition as a ‘Femme Fatale’: a woman overloaded with sexuality, that doesn’t care about anything but herself and uses her sexuality to get what she wants without considering the consequences. Yes, the aforementioned women always have an element of sexuality and of confidence, but that is not the only thing that defines them. They evolve from being a real ‘character’, a kind of freak. Their being different is what defines them, not their sexuality.

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