Vampirella was created by Forrest J Ackerman and comic book artist Trina Robbins for Warren Publishing, first appearing in her own black and white horror comic magazine, making Vampirella a sister book to Creepy and Eerie. Archie Goodwin was the main writer who took her from a host of horror stories to a character all her own.

In the Warren magazine — the origin has since been changed as the comic book is now published by Dynamite — Vampirella comesfrom the planet Drakulon, a world where blood flows like water for most of the year, until droughts threaten the planet. When an American space ship crashes on her planet, she follows the astronauts home to try and save her people. There, she learns that Dracula is one of the Vampiri, the people of Drakulon, and has been corrupted by demons.

In the movie — which was one of the Roger Corman Presents Showtime films — Vlad Tepish (Roger Daltry) kills all of the rulers of Drakulon and leaves for Earth to take it over. Ella (Talisa Soto) follows him to get revenge for her father.

After being stuck on Mars, she is taken to Earth by a spaceship crew and soon joins Adam Van Helsing (Richard Joseph Paul) and his army of vampire hunters as they head to Vegas to battle Tepish, who is now singer Jamie Blood.

This film was in development for a long time. All the way back in 1976, Hammer was going to make it with wither Caroline Munro and Valerie Leon as Vampirella and Peter Cushing as her friend Pendragon, as well as roles for Orson Welles and Donald Pleasence. Supposedly, Jim Warren wouldn’t give up the merchandising rights.

Riccardo Chiaveri’s interpretation of Munro as Vampi.

Valerie Leon as Vampirella.

Hammer and American-International Pictures almost made a Vampirella movie in 1976 with John Hough directing, Christopher Wicking writing and Barbara Leigh as Vampirella.

There was also a 2019 script reading that had Munro, Judy Matheson and Georgina Dugdale, Munro’s daughter, as Vampirella.

When asked about the film, director Jim Wynorski was not happy with the film that he made, telling Big Gay Horror Fan “My take on Vampirella is that it’s a mess. The last time I watched it was to do the commentary which was awhile ago. It’s a film I cannot watch. Everything went wrong. Everything! I like Talisa Sota as a human being. She’s very pretty and she’s very sexy. But she’s not Vampirella. They forced me to use her. She just didn’t have the body for the costume. Roger Daltry was great. But, yeah, it was in Vegas. There was embezzlement on the set. It was really a nasty, nasty picture to work on. And it came out badly, too. So, I’m just saying that’s one that I look at and say, it could have been and it wasn’t…I should have had Julie Strain. But they didn’t think Julie Strain meant anything. So they put somebody wrong in the role. I should have stopped and said let’s just not do this. But, I was going to lose the rights in 6 months, so I did what I had to do. At least, I got the film made. But I should have said no.”

You can download this from the Internet Archive.