Martin
Tags: cult, suspenseful, murder, violence, flashback

Plot synopsis:
Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family since Martin's parents are said to have recently died, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I will destroy you." Cuda tells Martin that he is free to come and go as he pleases, but he also threatens to destroy Martin without salvation if he kills a single person from the neighborhood, also adding his granddaughter, Christina (Christine Forrest) lives with him.Martin chases Cuda to his own room, busts open the door, forcing Cuda to grab a crucifix from his dresser drawer and defend himself with it, whispering "Nosferatu". Martin denies being a vampire and states that he is merely Cuda's cousin. Martin then grabs a string of garlic on Cuda's door, bites it and grabs the small, white crucifix Tata Cuda aims at him. Martin holds the cross gingerly to his face, saying bitterly, "It isn't magic... even I know that. It isn't magic".That evening, Cuda introduces Christina to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christina instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christina, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. (It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues.)Christina is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christina's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's casual attempt at a conversation. Christina later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.When Christina sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatedly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (voice of cameraman Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store, stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed who tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her. Nonetheless, she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.One day, Martin travels by train outside of Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband, Mr. Willard, (producer Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and programs a walkie-talkie to open the garage door on an open frequency.Throughout the sequence, Martin begins 'remembering' the distant past, in black-and-white: possibly he was a vampire on the hunt, killing a young romantic victim, then chased by an angry horde armed with torches and pitchforks, or he has seen one monster movie too many. Open ended.Back in the present, Martin is in the house intending to surprise and attack the housewife whom he believes her to be alone. But it's Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into the bedroom to find the housewife in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (porn star Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles full of narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a small forest on the other side of a low fence, and down a hill, where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck, and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live. He then removes any evidence of his presence with practiced, methodical precision.After one Sunday at church, attended by, among other people, Abby Santini and her philandering husband, Cuda brings home Father Howard (director George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemas (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemas confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country, people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and fleeing. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well.A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire, thus humiliating the old man who takes on Martin in single combat, holding his crucifix while Martin playfully japes him. Then Cuda attempts to conquer him with his walking cane, whereupon Martin spits out his falsies, wipes makeup from his face, holding it out for Cuda to see, and states, 'It's just a costume... It's only a costume," then drifts away into the night mist.One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Abby during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having consensual sex for the first time, Martin learns that a tearful Abby is extremely depressed because her husband just left her after she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards Martin are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda in a bar and tells him that he wants Christina to leave town with him to New York City so they can get married and start a family. Martin later meets Christina on the front porch, where she's put out about Arthur apparently forgetting they were going out that night. Martin finally voices his dislike of Arthur, stating, "I don't like Arthur, he makes you feel bad," after which Christina complains about her current life and goes back inside. But Christina becomes angry at Cuda when she learns that he told Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. After confronting her grandfather, he slaps her for blaspheming, twice.Shortly afterwards, Christina packs up and leaves Braddock with Arthur, despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christina tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christina's life, she probably won't. With no one to cook for him now, Tata Cuda has to do it for himself and Martin, which is only the tip of a slowly melting iceberg, including Martin now stalking a verbally-abusive Mrs. Bellini, a local neighbor and regular grocery store customer, with an eye toward making her pay for her insolence.Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts (Tony Pantanella and Regis Survinski) in a junk and grime-filled storage building. He kills both of them by beating them viciously with a steel pipe, then slitting one bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin runs and breaks into a second-hand store full of items to change his blood-splattered clothing. Just then, a police car shows up and two cops get out. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the store, through the garbage-strewn streets and into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and three thugs ends where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who hurriedly runs away from the carnage.The next day, after shopping for poultry with Cuda, Martin finds Abby Santini dead in her bathtub, after she has slit her writs with a razor blade and swallowed booze. After calling the police to report the dead body, he phones the radio show host later that afternoon to say that he didn't kill her and really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person.After joining a town parade with a marching band, Shriners-types, and other kids, Martin calls the DJ one final time, believing his life all about to get better. But Cuda has heard about Abby's suicide, mistakenly thinking Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. The next morning, Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".

Review: This modern 'vampire' flick ranks among his very best films!Shy teenager, who believes himself to be a century old vampire, comes to live with his superstitious old cousin in Pittsburgh.Romero's Martin is a truly unique, one of a kind psychological thriller.
Martin, like most of Romero's classics, is a film with plenty of social commentary and believable characters.
Attractive youth Amplas is a greatly sympathetic character, even as he is the films monster and hero all at once.A film unlike any other of the horror genre, Martin remains a terrific low-budget masterpiece that is as hauntingly effective today as ever.**** out of ****.
Instead Martin is a low-key intense underplayed film that reverses the usual expectations without rejecting its genre.I don't think Romero is somehow upholding the ideals of faith either;  the religious zealot, Martin's uncle, is the least sympathetic figure in the movie, though he may be right in thinking that Martin is "nosferatu."  Or his fanaticism may have created the delusion in Martin's mind, an attempt to reject the religious dogma by adopting its traditional/mythic opponent.
In any case, Romero's take on faith is very complex and is as interesting in this film as his complex take on individuality and consumerism is in Dawn of the Dead.Romero makes great use of the depressed area of Braddock Pennsylvania, the kind of down on its luck, conservative, fading neighborhood I know from my own experience.
The radio talk-show angle isn't as well handled but it is interesting.I thought this film was very impressive in its deadpan update of the vampire story and Martin is a strangely moving character.
There's something to think about with his films, even as flesh and blood get tossed about.But this time, for Martin, he made a story that deals with the human relationships even more so than the creepy and supernatural elements of his other works.
Martin is a vampire movie, and there are some key scenes that deliver the good for the fans (and, again, going against expectations, as if Romero was a "new-wave" filmmaker from Europe), but also giving something for people who may not be expecting depth in the themes and situations with these people.
The main characters of the film, aside from the protagonist Martin (a twisted and very confused protagonist at that), are all developed very well, and aren't necessarily one-sided or even two-sided portraits of caricatures in other vampire movies.
Martin himself, played in a peculiar, low-key way is John Amplas (an actor who has his peak in this film, having only appeared in bit parts in other films, mostly Romero's).
That the other actors, all indie actors (one of them, Christine, played by Romero's wife), are really quite good with the material, helps the feel and flow of the film.Some directors can't stand editing their own films (John Ford once said he hated sitting in on it, as other have as well), and while they sit in with the editors and make notes, few actually go to the machines and do the work themselves.
In some ways his movement within the frame, and with the pacing of Martin's sense of reality and of the past, makes the film seem like it should almost belong in an art-house (so to speak) as opposed to at a midnight cult-horror theater.
In fact, there is one big sequence in the film (where Martin stalks and attacks, needle in hand, a married woman who's having an affair) that is one of Romero's most suspenseful and unusual.
Not to mention there is an ending that wraps everything up rather terrifyingly- one knows something like this would be coming, but not from this direction.Simply this, Martin is smarter for it's regularly intended audience out for simple thrills and cheesy characters- it's a drama that involves searching for companionship, the significance of religion on people, and trying to fit in to one side or another.
Four years after the socio-political horror of "The Crazies", he returned with "Martin", a vampire film like no other before or since.Romero's intelligent movie turns on its head all the things associated with the genre, and presents us with a modern day story of addiction, sexuality, and obsession.
What initially appears to be a brutal rape, is twisted by Romero into an almost tender love scene between attacker and victim.With brilliant use of locations, and nondescript atmosphere, "Martin" is a horror movie that both disturbs and intrigues.
I am not real sure, but he does examine the life of a young man(says he is over eighty...is he?)that certainly thinks he is a vampire but has no fangs or claws but needs to use razor blades and needles to drug his victims.
But he's craving for blood towards young woman but he has problems with his cousin or it could be his uncle Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), who believes in the family curses of vampires.Written & Directed by George A.
"Martin" is a strange and bizarre low-budget vampire movie with a totally different story.
"Martin" further benefits from music by Donald Rubinstein that is sometimes discordant and unusual, and melodic at others.Amplas (actually in his late 20s at the time of filming) delivers a subtle, nuanced performance, receiving strong support from Maazel, as the zealot convinced that his kin is "Nosferatu", Christine Forrest (whom Romero married in 1981) as Cudas' rational-minded granddaughter, Savini himself in the role of her boyfriend Arthur, and Elyane Nadeau as single woman / deli customer Mrs. Santini.
is this legendary early Romero work really all it's cracked up to be...?Martin is about a young man who likes drinking blood.
The film is about poor Martin after all.Here's the breakdown:The Good: --Unique take on the vampire mythos--it is an interesting story with some interesting characters.
--Decent Atmosphere, but not Romero's best.The Bad: --The movie creeps along at a pretty slow pace and with Martin saying very little through the whole thing, it can really drag at times.
Look For: --George Romero as a priest.Acting: 7/10 Story: 9/10 Atmosphere: 7/10 Cinematography: 7/10 (generally average, but good flashback/fantasy sequences) Character Development: 7/10 Special Effects/Make-up: 4/10 Nudity/Sexuality: 4/10 Violence/Gore: 6/10 Sets/Backgrounds: 4/10 Dialogue: 6/10 Music: 4/10 Writing: 7/10 Direction: 7/10Cheesiness: 1/10 Crappiness: 1/10Overall: 6/10Well, it's an early Romero work and pretty much only going to be really enjoyed by Romero fans.
He habitually attacks and drugs young women only to then slash them and drink their blood.Like other Romero films, this is another horror film which is far better written and acted as is usual for such low budget fare.
The director's sardonic sense of humor is best illustrated via the key moments during which Romero oh-so provocatively deconstructs the traditional vampire lore."Martin" also marked the beginning of Tom Savini's career.
Martin is by filmmaker George A Romero and was his favourite film from his oeuvre.Martin is a young man who we see travelling by train to Braddock in Pittsburgh to live with his elderly cousin, Tata Cuda who seems convinced that Martin is the latest in a long line of vampires ('the family curse').The film centres around whether Martin is actually a vampire or if he is just a very confused young man suffering from a severe neurosis and only commits his bloodthirsty acts because of a self fulfiling prophecy.In fact the film constantly makes reference to Martin proving that there is 'no magic' in the world and that the conventions surrounding vampirism (many inherited from books and films) are untrue and so disproving the myth.On the train journey over to Pittsburgh we see Martin sedate a woman, making love to her naked body before slashing her arm and drinking her blood.
George Romero delivered a movie that strips away all magic from the vampire mythos and replaces it with the gritty realism of sickness...so of course it was filmed on location in Pittsburgh in the Braddock neighborhood.
"Martin" is about a young disturbed boy who believes himself to be a 77 years old vampire.Martin drugs women and drinks their blood after slashing their wrists with a straight razor.He becomes a radio sensation known as The Count when he describes his crimes nightly to a late night radio DJ."Martin" is a weird and atmospheric tale,with John Amplas character being alternately creepy and charismatic.The cast is surprisingly good,and the atmosphere is beautifully surreal with hypnotic flashback sequences.Romero builds up a great amount of suspense with the good use of locations,story and a little bit of gore.Recommended viewing for horror fans and vampire enthusiasts..
They reminded me of another great Italian director, Sergio Lione, with the credits, music and action combining to set the pace that continues through the rest of the picture.The story is original and very believable, about two people who share the same delusion, namely that Martin is a vampire.Don't let the glaring mistake in the first murder scene (look for the disappearing face cream)influence your judgment on this film, it is still great despite a few minor technical mistakes and an obviously low budget.I agree with the others who wrote here that the low budget look of the film actually added to the "real" feel of the film..
martin is a young boy who is either mentally ill or an ancient victim of that terrible disease known as vampirism, and what i love about it is that romero deliberately makes it ambiguous.
in any case, as regards the need for blood, it does not really matter if martin is a mythical monster or a deranged sicko, since either way he takes many lives by the end of this film.
this little known gem is also unusually substantive for a horror film, as all of romero's are, and in this one he seems to be taking shots at our ludicrous superstitions and assumption that man is the and all and be all of all things, and so believes he is attacked by supernatural evil when in reality his beliefs are absurd and entirely unfounded.
Believing himself to be an 84-year-old vampire, Martin (John Amplas) kills to feed his thirst for blood, using a syringe to drug his victims and a razor blade to slice open their wrists.
It's a shame, because his work outside of the zombie genre contains several gems of the macabre that are just as worthy of attention as those featuring grisly gut-munching ghouls that have returned from the grave.Romero's 1976 'vampire' movie Martin, for example, takes an intelligent, innovative, and admirably ambiguous approach to its subject matter, yet still delivers enough genuine horror, shocks and bloodiness to appease those looking for more basic thrills.Martin's carefully planned assaults on his victims are brilliantly staged exercises in tension and fear, yet they make the viewer continually assess and question what they have seen.
Is Martin really 'Nosferatu', his condition the result of a terrible family curse, or have his deranged relatives from 'the old country' warped his mind with their superstitious clap-trap?Romero never lets on either way, thereby making his film's shocking, bloody conclusion all the more powerful.
Aside from working in the special effects and makeup department, Savini also starred in a number of Romero films as an actor - sadly, he officially announced his retirement from special effects a few years ago but still participates in other areas of film-making.Martin is about a young man with an affliction; he craves human blood.
His second cousin, sworn to uphold the principality and honor of the family, believes Martin is of vampiric decent and has chosen to watch over him and cease his activities.As I mentioned before, Tom Savini starred in a few of Romero's works - this was his debut as an actor.
Martin (1977) *** (out of 4) Some would call George Romero the greatest American horror director while others would label him a disappointment who got lucky with Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
The year before Dawn was released the director did for vampires what he did for zombies and that film is the now cult shocker Martin.Martin (John Amplas) boards a train headed for Pittsburgh where he is going to be living with his Uncle who plans on saving his soul before killing him.
Martin is not only a troubled young man but he also believes that he is a vampire but without the fangs, he must resort to other ways of seeking blood.Martin is a film I first saw nearly ten years ago and I really didn't care too much for it.
"Martin" is a  good vampire film that I think that anyone into gore and gross special effects and vampire movies.
Whether Martin is really an eighty year old vampire or a screwed-up teenage kid is almost by the by; he's a wonderful character either way, and a terrific metaphor for everything from good old young teen angst and confusion to the way the life blood is being sucked from modern Western society.People with a low tolerance for low-budget '70s horror movies, with their technical flaws and sometimes choppy acting, will have a hard time with Martin.
Martin is a troubled young man who thinks he's really a vampire as he murders people then drinks their blood.
This is an original movie that doesn't have the usual rules for vampires like being burnt when the sun hits them or showing fangs but instead using sharp things to slit then drink blood, it's also a human drama with horror blended into it with some of Romero's usual social commentary.
"It's not magic" the hero says as some kind of leitmotiv.His cousin urges him to go to an hospital whereas his superstitious old uncle has stayed in the Middle Ages ,with its obsolete "methods" with garlic,crucifix,exorcism and priests galore.The black and white flashbacks tells the ancient story of a Martin's ancestor.The Police replace the populace coming to kill the monster in the Gothic castle.Handicapped by a rather weak cast (the hero lacks charisma,and the supporting actors are mediocre) who did not seem to understand what Romero wanted to show:a revamping of the old horror myths which Polanski had begun with "the fearless vampire killers"..
Deciding on Braddock — one of the hardest hit mill towns — and utilizing family and friends, Romero started to film what he would later call his favorite film.In the film's first script, Martin is an older man who is definitely a vampire, struggling to live (unlike?) in the modern world.
But after seeing John Amplas in a Pittsburgh Playhouse production of Philemon, Romero rewrote the film to make Martin younger and more innocent.Martin's family has all died in Indianapolis, so he's on his way to Pittsburgh — but not before shooting a woman up full of drugs and drinking her blood.
Martin yells at Cuda, showing him that he can touch the crucifixes and eat the garlic and bitterly exclaims, "There's no real magicever."This is in direct contrast to Martin's fantasies, shot in black and white (there's supposedly a 2 hour and 45 minute cut of this film that's only in black and white) like a romantic vampire movie, where women willingly give up their throats to him.
After relocating from Indiana to a small Pennsylvania town, he moves in with his cousin and aged grand uncle, where his vampiric tendencies begin to spiral out of control.One of George Romero's more understated offerings (I'd liken it in tone to his offbeat 1973 effort, "Season of the Witch"), "Martin" is as much a psychological character study as it is a horror film; in fact, it's something of a collision of the two.
Much like how "Night of the Living Dead" looked at race relations and the breakdown of the nuclear family, "Dawn of the Dead" poked fun at consumerism, and "Land of the Dead" showed how the rich hide themselves from the chaos and the common people have to fend for themselves, "Martin" shows the end of the American dream.Anyway, it's a really fun movie, and it's especially cool that they pulled this off with a crew of only about 15.
Romero's pseudo-vampire is Martin (John Amplas), an awkward teenager with few social skills and a sadistic habit of feeding off the blood of innocent victims he methodically drugs and rapes.
The films show us America (Pittsburgh) suburbs,the underground, and the crazies that live in it, crazies like Martin (John Amplas\the main character) , that pretend to be a normal kid, but is a murderer, who kills without a propose, a schizophrenic\paranoid kid that pretends to be or not be a vampire.
His a nice movie, full of strange and dark ambiance and a genial touch of horror by Romero, with great performances, especially by John Amplas (Martin).
Martin thinks he's a vampire.This is a very atmospheric film by George Romero.
The combination of Tom Savini's stunning early gore effects (not overdone in this movie like they were in the slightly silly comic-book-style Dawn of the Dead) and the fast-editing and surreal quality that can be seen in many early Romero (especially the under-rated Season of the Witch and the Crazies) lead to a slow-moving, disturbing movie that, more so than any other vampire movie, maintains its believability right up to the killer twist of an ending.
Romero leaves a lot of questions open ended in this film like Martin's mortality or immortality and whether he physically needs to drink blood to survive.
As you can tell by my comments, this movies raises more questions then it answers and it certainly will make you think more then the average horror movie...which isn't a bad thing.Stylistically, I love the way Romero weaves the current time (the late 70's) in color with the black and white footage of the turn of the century era Martin.
I think this is an amazing achievement from George A Romero in just how to shoot a very scary, ultra-realistic horror film which feels like some documentary filmmaker decided to follow this family of nutcases with his camera..well mainly supposed vampire Martin and his "vanquisher" Uncle Tada Cuda.
This was an interesting little gem from Romero, it's not your typical vampire film, and it was rather slow paced but still very engaging, and i liked all the characters.