Auditioning for Vampirella

Well-racked comic book character Vampirella turns 32 this year, and her publishers, Harris Comics, were looking for someone to play the busty vamp in the flesh?posing for photo covers, appearing at conventions, that sort of thing. So they held a casting call. It was one of those casting calls that gets covered by Penthouse.com and the comics magazine Wizard. A documentary crew filmed the event. At times there were more press people than prospective Vampirellas running amok in the studios on W. 22nd St., next door to the reading for the Volvo commercial. It's tough to fill the stiletto boots of the current "live" Vampirella, Julie Strain, the towering former Penthouse Pet of the Year.

The day's first speed bump was a result of the Daily News' running an item about the casting. Harris Executive Publisher Jonathan Rheingold explained, "We had a little controversy this morning. The owner of the facility was like, this was not an open casting call. They had a few people that said they responded from the Daily News and they turned them away before I knew about it, which we don't want."

Harris needed all the potential spokesmodels it could get, especially since many of the women at the audition had no idea who Vampirella was or how abbreviated her costume is, and some walked when they realized what the character was all about. Most of the girls looked more like FIT students than centerfolds, but Harris staffers were quick to point out that attitude was just as important, if not more so, than physique.

"I asked, what's the wackiest thing you've ever modeled in, and one girl said, 'Just jewelry'," said Seth Biederman, a self-described "gonzo journalist" whose role was to pepper the girls with semi-outrageous questions and see how they reacted. "That's the kind of person we want, someone that is out there."

Instead they got Jen, a former lottery spokeswoman from Louisiana, and Dawn, who used to work at a club in Tampa and "wouldn't take her clothes off," according to a cameraman. Mireia from Barcelona was also in attendance?a tall, dirty-blonde real-model type with blue snakeskin boots and a thick Castilian lisp. She was undoubtedly right for many things, but probably not for Vampirella.

Then there was Jill, a top-40 DJ/ actress/model/dancer from Long Island. Unlike many of the candidates, Jill had done some research on Vampirella and liked what she saw.

"I think she's hot! All I know is Wonder Woman, but this girl looks like she could kick her ass."

Jill had no problem stripping down to her bikini, and she even left her black ankle boots on, since they went with the character. Jill's breasts looked kind of peculiar, encased as they were in a particularly severe sort of push-up bra?but her ass was impressively round and firm and, more important, she was totally up for anything. "My family already knows I'm nuts," she explained when asked if anyone might be uncomfortable with her playing Vampirella.

The prospect of dealing with hordes of crazed comic-book fans didn't faze Jill at all.

"What if you had, like, a smartass 20-year-old who's trying to cop a feel?how would you deal with that?" she was asked.

"Stop 'em at that moment?you can't touch Vampirella," she laughed. "You wanna look at me, buy the comic book."

Everybody liked that answer. When Kim, a sultry-voiced, raven-haired beauty who used to be the Campari girl (you know?orange-red body paint) got the same question, she responded with shocked disbelief: "You guys let them grab her butt?"

No no no, she was assured, but to little avail. Leaving the studio to go to a doctor's appointment, she was skeptical: "That was very bizarre... I don't know how much someone would have to pay me to let someone walk up to me and have access to grabbing my butt... That would be a little unnerving."

Mary, a tall, thin actress and fitness model, was more than unnerved. Her agent had sent her on the call without much information, she explained. "They just said a cartoon character, young, beautiful, sexy or whatever. As far as this goes, I wouldn't do that?no way?I'm an actress. This is like Hustler or something." Asked what she thought Harris was looking for, Mary was blunt. "Well, you can see what they want, they want that"?tapping her finger on a photo of Julie Strain's "enhanced" tits. "There's a lot of work like this, I guess, nothing wrong with it, it's just not for me."

After Kim?who's an actress, painter and musician as well as a former Campari girl?delivered what a Vampirella editor called the best reading so far, involving a lesbian love scene with a character played by the female managing editor, she glued her cellphone to her ear and successfully resisted Biederman's attempts to rattle her with his questions.

Maybe Harris wasn't experiencing total success in its quest for a new Vampirella, but people seemed to be getting something out of it. Publisher Rheingold donned a black cowboy hat and promised the Penthouse.com folks "an exclusive," while Dawn from Tampa shed her restraint and made lascivious faces into the camera at the command, "Give us your best you-gotta-buy-me look."

Would-be stars filled the benches, flipping through Vampirella comics and getting ready to audition for some sort of ideal?"something people strive for," in the words of editor-in-chief David Bogart.

"Yes, Vampirella is probably about 35," he conceded. "But an older woman?they have blemishes, they have cellulite, you need a younger woman."