Wow! Such a good movie.

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Admirable film.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

"Martin" follows the titular character, an awkward young man who has delusional fantasies about being a vampire. 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. The film begins with a disturbing date rape scene-turned-bloodletting that is discomforting to say the least. This sets the tone for the remainder of the film, which is downbeat and atmospherically dreary, largely evoked through the idyllic small-town sets and emotive camera-work. Black-and-white photography is utilized to full effect for the vampiric fantasies, which are surreal and eerie.The success of the film largely depends on John Amplas's performance as the title character, and he does the character justice. Martin is both sympathetic and abhorrent, disturbed and misunderstood—the balance struck between both extremes is nuanced, and the tension within the character's identity is where the majority of the film's power lies. The conclusion of the film is in line with its downbeat tone, and renders the film something of an unexpected modern horror tragedy.Romero has said that "Martin" is his favorite of all his films, and it's understandable why. It feels like one of his most personal works (perhaps his most personal), and Martin as a character is able to evoke a multitude of feelings from the audience. The film is both disturbing and amusing, horrific and depressing—it also maintains a high-brow aesthetic throughout in spite of its budgetary limitations. An understated, atmospheric, and compelling character study that functions just as well as a horror film. 9/10.

George A. Romero changed modern horror with his debut feature, Night of the Living Dead. He has now become synonymous with the zombie sub-genre but he also directed other very interesting films of different types. Perhaps his best of these is Martin, shot on grainy 16mm, its very low budget and low-key yet very intense in places. Like David Cronenberg's later film Rabid (1977) it takes the vampire film and revises it, albeit in a very different way. A shy teenager called Martin moves to a dilapidated Pittsburgh suburb to stay with his uncle Cuda who is convinced he is a vampire, tracing his curse back to their Eastern European descent. Martin also believes himself to be a vampire but not of the traditional supernatural type. 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. It works on a few different levels and combines the psychological drama with vampire film and serial killer flick. The result is impressively original. The characters are far from one dimensional. Martin is played very sympathetically by John Amplas, yet we know he murders young women; Cuda is overbearing and bullish, at the same time his harsh attitude towards Martin is hardly entirely wrong. So right away, we in the audience are not given the usual clear cut characters to root for or dislike. Amplas is really very good and on the strength of this he should have had a great acting career, while Lincoln Maazel is also very strong as Cuda. The remainder of the cast are also impressive and put in naturalistic performances, including Romero himself as a priest.Whether or not Martin is really a vampire remains essentially ambiguous and it is left to the viewer to decide. The black and white sequences could be fantasy or they could be a distant moment from the vampire Martin's past. My guess is the former but it can be read in different ways. What is for sure though is that the iconography of the vampire film is modernised considerably. Rather than fangs and cloaks its razor blades and hypodermic needles. Not only this but Martin's vampiric urges seem to stem from a dysfunctional sexuality, unlike the libidinous actions of Dracula. He becomes an anonymous local celebrity when he becomes a regular caller on a night-time radio talk show, even here he is not taken seriously but it proves to be the only place where he can express his inner thoughts. Martin's attacks are almost a substitute for his impotency. The confrontational and disturbing opening sequence on a train illustrates the films decidedly modernist approach to this material. A second extended house invasion scene is even more unusual in its dynamics. The film ultimately ends with a final moment of visceral horror which is sudden, shocking and darkly ironic. Martin is a real triumph from Romero and one of the smarter horror films out there.

When I said in my review of his legendary Night of the Living Dead, that George Romero is a horror director with a very inconsistent record, this film sticks out most in my mind as proof of that struggle. Between trying the hardest to be a character study and having to fill out the genre requirements to be sold as a horror film. For his sake, I'm thankful that much of his work feels like it's straining to be horror. Because were it not to add those elements, I wouldn't be interested in seeing his films at all. Without the threat of zombie invasion, 1985's Day of the Dead would be a painfully tedious and irritatingly over the top war flick about people yelling at each other. 1978's Dawn of the Dead would be an action film about people trying to survive the breakdown of society from... what would most likely be anarchy caused by widespread riots and outbreaks of street crime (the sort you'd see in something like 1979's The Warriors or 1978's Saturday Night Fever), were you to take out the zombies. 1973's The Crazies would lack the tragedy to make the boring military effort to contain the outbreak of disease worth watching.And 1976's Martin would be a lame art film about a lanky, skinny dork walking around the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, watching the people interacting and realizing his upbringing was just not normal. Which is what most of Martin is anyway, save for a half dozen scenes of Martin stalking women, drugging them, then raping them and cutting their wrists so he can suck their "blood," which looks so much like melted-crayons, you'll wonder why the strangely un-vampiric Martin likes to drink it so much. All while the fairly mopey boy narrates almost every shot he's in. And he's in almost every shot. I was once told that narration is the last resort of a screenwriter, a product of desperation. In Martin, rather than Romero using the narrations as a tool of creepy foreshadowing, it's more to provide internal reflections over why Martin is doing what he does. Which, not to beat on a dead horse but, is really quite boring. As is the character of Martin. Who is the entire film.Is Martin a vampire or is it in his own head? Good question. My answer? I don't care. What I want most from a horror film, regardless of how ambitious it is or not, is to be entertained. All said and done, a horror film being scary is a great thing. But it's a luxury. Something I just can't expect from every horror film I see. So, I try to go with the flow. So, how does Martin flow? Quite well, all things considered. Romero does have a style to most of his films. And even though I find The Crazies to a better final film (partly because of the fact that it looks haphazard stylistically, and documentary-like), Martin is a better film in terms of style or atmosphere. Romero is the horror King of library music tracks, which has always bothered me. But, maybe I should lighten up on that. As a matter of fact, I'll never know or never care to know where the original tracks came from. So, the usage of this music by Romero's films is like sampling the flavor of music at the time. One of the few things I truly like about Martin is that I remember the music. The hallucinogenic, reverberating, trapped-in-a-glass-jar quality to most of the pieces.The other thing Martin really has going for it is Martin's amusing reactions to 1970's America. If he really was an 80-something year old vampire with almost no exposure to American culture outside the occasional children's novelty toy or magic tricks, watching him browse through stores and his amazing reaction to the sight of a suicide victim, is downright priceless. Romero's foremost focus in Martin is irony. And the film is chock full of incidences of that. Usually, it's nothing impressive. But one scene really blew me away. Martin breaks into a thrift shop at night, which trips off a burglar alarm. The cops are quick to arrive and Martin has to cut it close to evade capture. This scene is the pinnacle of Romero's brand of suspense. As Martin clings to the walls and ducks and dives around objects to hide himself from the cops' eye- I'm on the edge of my seat. Martin leaps out the door and flies through the streets, desperately looking for somewhere to hide out. As he enters the first dark place he sees, he finds himself in the hide-out of some kind of black gang. Because of Martin, the police have inadvertently caught more criminals. But brilliantly, the two sides have a shoot-out and everyone dies... everyone except Martin.Now, that's a stroke of genius. Irony is what makes it happen. But what makes it so enjoyable is that it is completely unpredictable. Though there are several other scenes in Martn that are unpredictable, none are as filling as this one. Perhaps the film's greatest attribute is that it serves as something of a response to the pressure from Christians or Catholics to conform to what is a normal manner of behavior, etc. When Martin is seen as having "unnatural" impulses, his religious Uncle (was he his uncle? I don't remember) brands him as evil and Satanic, etc. This is some small comfort for the viewers who have experienced psychotic religious people before in their lives, and living in America- it's almost impossible to avoid all of them. But, consider this: I'm getting schooled in religious ethics by a film whose main character is raping and killing women. Which is my second biggest complaint about the movie (the first is how boring Martin the character is). I guess I understand why he wants to rape the women. But, why do I want to watch him doing it?

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.comIs he or isn't he? This may be the primary question asked throughout George A. Romero's 1978 cult classic Martin, but it isn't the most important one. The question worth asking is: nature or nuture? Romero's script is one of his best, a (literally) biting commentary on a post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, blue-collar America: disillusioned, depressed and depraved.Taking vampires out of the Gothic realm, Romero sets his story in a decaying Pittsburgh suburb populated by aging, superstitious immigrants. 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. But despite his thirst for blood, Martin doesn't have vampire's teeth, he's immune to crucifixes, garlic and priests. So what exactly is he? To his credit, Romero never answers this question and opting instead to define Martin as a product of his environment, a town populated with ugly, superstitious, immoral, criminal and suicidally depressed individuals. As evidenced in a number of scenes, if Martin doesn't kill you...life will.Even though the quality of Martin is hampered by it's budgetary restraints, these flaws help Martin transcend the typical constraints of the vampire genre. As a result, Martin is afforded the ability to be disturbing in ways that emulate the horrors of raw, real-world footage. Martin concludes with an abrupt, brutal and final act, an act that puts to death the significance of whether Martin was or wasn't a vampire. In the end, all that matters is how cold and unforgiving the world is and how it leaves us with few choices. The ultimate choice and perhaps the worst one of all? Kill or be killed.