Martin (film)

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Martin
DVD cover
Directed by	George A. Romero
Produced by	Richard P. Rubinstein
Written by	George A. Romero
Starring	John Amplas Lincoln Maazel Christine Forrest Elyane Nadeau Tom Savini
Music by	Donald Rubinstein Goblin (Italian version)
Cinematography	Michael Gornick
Editing by	George A. Romero
Distributed by	Libra Films International
Release date(s)	July 7, 1978
Running time	95 min.
Language	English
Budget	$800,000
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Martin is a 1977 horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. The film is notable for being the first collaboration between George Romero and special effects artist Tom Savini. Romero is also on record as saying Martin is his favorite among all his films.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1977 and was released in US cinemas on July 7, 1978.

[edit] Plot

In Indianapolis, Indiana, a young man named Martin (John Amplas) who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train to New York City. That night, he breaks into a sleeping car where he attacks and injects a young woman with some drug (probably Chloral Hydrate a mild but quick relaxant). She struggles with him, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she will not feel pain. When she finally falls asleep, Martin has sex with the drugged woman. He then slits her wrist with a utility razor and drinks her blood. The woman apparently bleeds to death.

The next morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by an elderly and hostile old man who introduces himself as Tada Cuda (Lincoln Maazel). The two take another train to the town of Braddock, a decaying industrial suburb of Pittsburgh. They walk to Cuda's house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from the Old World. Cuda tells Martin that he has taken him in because he is family, but promises to cure him of his blood-craving. Martin denies being a vampire, but the over-zealous Cuda believes his vampire claims. He hangs a roll of garlic on the door of his bedroom and then holds up a cross when Martin approaches him. But Martin takes away the cross and takes a bite out of the garlic saying that there is no magic to the vampire legends. Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases, but he sternly warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock.

Through the course of the movie, Martin appears to almost everyone he encounters (except for the unceasingly suspicious Cuda) as merely a sullen, lonely teenager. Though he does commit increasingly violent slayings over the course of the film, it is never explicitly revealed whether his vampirism is real or merely a delusion.

Martin then gets to meet with Cuda's granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest) who lives with Cuda. Cuda tells Martin to stay away from her, and he also tells her to stay away from Martin because he is a vampire. But not surprisingly, Christine does not believe him and instead thinks that Cuda and the rest of the family had driven Martin into insanity by making him think he's a vampire. Martin gradually begins talking with Christine. Seeing his loneliness, Christine buys Martin a telephone to talk to people since Martin is apparently too shy to talk to anyone in person. Martin begins repeatingly calling a live radio call-in show to talk about his life problems about being a vampire. Soon, Martin becomes known as "the Count" to the listeners, but the patronizing radio host thinks he's just crazy. Martin also becomes known to Christine's problems for she wants to leave Braddock with her boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini), even thought it's apparent to Martin that Arthur treats Christine badly and probably physically beats her as well.

Over the next few days, Martin goes to work in Cuda's local grocery store, stocking shelves and delivering packages. One of his regular customers is a certain Abby Santini, who repeatingly makes sexual passes at Martin. Abby is a friendly, young woman who confides in Martin that her husband is unfaithful, but the painfully shy Martin is too afraid to respond to Abby's advances. Martin again phones the radio show to talk about his situation and that he senses that Mrs. Santini wants to have sex with him. When the radio host asks Martin if has had any problems with sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with an awake woman.

One day, Martin travels by train outside Braddock to look for victims. He follows one woman from a local supermarket to her house and witnesses the woman saying goodbye to her husband who's leaving for a business trip. Martin returns to the house when it gets dark to break in, only to be equally surprised to find the housewife in bed with her boyfriend Lewis. Martin attacks both of them, injecting them with drugs, and waits for them to fall asleep. In an angry mood, Martin drags Lewis from the house, kills him and drains his blood by stabbing him in the neck with a wooden tree branch. He then returns and has sex with the unconscious housewife. But out of pity, Martin decides to let her live and quietly leaves the house.

In a surreal series of flashbacks (either real or from Martin's imagination) he drained blood from a young, drugged woman in a mansion and was chased by people carrying torches. In another real or imaginary flashback, Martin was accosted by the same people who tried to perform an exorcism on him. Martin fled them.

Another few days later, after Cuda has a talk with a young priest named Father Howard (played by director George A. Romero in a cameo role), he brings home the elderly Father Zulemas to perform an exorcism on Martin. But Martin runs away from them. He then frightens Cuda by dressing up in a Dracula costume, wearing a cape and false fangs.

Finally, Martin musters the courage and during another food delivery to Abby Santini's house, he agrees to have sex with her. But Abby is not satisfied by this lustful fling and also tells Martin that her husband has just left her. In further conversations with the radio show host, Martin is satisfied by the sex and claims not to have the same blood-craving desires to attack women. In the meantime, Christine becomes angry when Cuda tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family so he should not consider having children with her. Christine finally packs up and moves out of Cuda's house with Arthur to New York City, despite Martin's objections that Arthur is abusive to her. But Christine tells Martin that she wants to start a new life elsewhere. Christine then packs her belongings and leaves Braddock. But she does take the chance to say goodbye to Martin and promises to write to him. But Martin knows that with a possessive man like Arthur in Christine's life, she probably won't.

Shaken by having lost his one friend, Martin tells the radio talk show host that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out to find victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough area of Pittsburgh where he attacks two derelicts, killing one and slitting his wrists with a glass shard to drink his blood. But when Martin is about to kill the second derelict, a police car shows up and chases Martin. He narrowly escapes and hides in a warehouse where a drug deal is in process. All of the policemen and the thugs are killed in a gunfight, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who slips away.

A few days later, Martin finds Abby Santini dead in her bathtub where she slit her wrists. When Cuda hears of Mrs. Santini's suicide, he immediately thinks Martin killed her and he sneaks into Martin's bedroom and kills him by driving a wooden stake through Martin's heart. Cuda buries Martin's dead body in his back garden, while a voice-over of the radio talk show host is asking his listeners about the whereabouts of "the Count."

[edit] Alternate versions

Originally the film ran longer than the final version, coming out to 2 hours and 45 minutes. No copies of this cut exist to Romero's knowledge.

Similar to Dawn of the Dead, Martin was edited for the European market, with Martin's flashbacks shuffled to the beginning of the film so the story would be linear. This version's score was also replaced by music from the band Goblin.

[edit] Cast

[edit] External link

• The Internet Home of Martin Mathias
• Martin at the Internet Movie Database