31 Horror Movies in 31 Days: Martin

Martin (1976)

Directed by George Romero

Starring John Amplas, Lincoln Maazel, Christine Forrest, Elyane Nadeau, Tom Savini

A young man on train drugs a woman, slits her wrists, and drinks her blood. This young man is Martin; troubled boy and self-professed vampire. He’s prone to murdering women for their blood in addition to black and white dreams about romantic bloodletting and angry mobs. Martin is traveling to Braddock, Pennsylvania to live with his cousin Christine and his granduncle Tateh Cuda. Cuda is an old world Lithuanian Catholic who immediately sees Martin for who the monster he is. He warns Martin that he’ll kill him if anyone in Braddock is murdered. While working in Cuda’s butcher shop and getting seduced by lonely housewives, Martin struggles with his urges. How long can he keep secretly feeding his bloodlust before his family finds out?

This is one of George Romero’s best movies. It’s bristling with interesting ideas, unsettling scenes, and tension that doesn’t let up. Martin is a vampire movie, a slasher movie, and a mystery. Because of Martin’s visions of the past, it’s questionable as to what’s really going on with him. You could interpret the movie as Martin’s psychotic escapades and delusions of dark grandeur. Or you could see the film as a more grounded and well thought out vampire tale. Either way, Martin is a genuinely terrifying movie.

There are few special effects in Martin, but what does appear looks good. Mainly, the makeup effects are bloody. Syringes pulling fresh sanguine, dripping wounds and the like look credible. The real show stopper is when someone gets staked in one long, painful scene. The act of hammering a sharp piece of wood through someone’s chest is displayed in such an utterly convincing way that it’s almost hard to watch if it weren’t so terribly gorgeous.

John Amplas inhabits the role of Martin. He has an authenticity and charisma that make his misunderstood vampire/psychotic fetishist performance a thing of movie magic. Amplas makes Martin charming, flakey, sympathetic, and disturbing. Lincoln Maazel does well as Martin’s uncle and foil, granduncle Cuda. Maazel portrays a determined man stuck in his ways and unwilling to accept the more modern notion that vampires don’t exist. The rest of the cast is a grab bag of people who can mostly act (Christine Forrest, Tom Savini) and lots of bit players that really can’t. Luckily, the movie never feels poorer for it. It just shows the low budget, independent spirit of Romero’s early work.

Martin is a great Romero movie and a great vampire movie. It reinvents the cinematic vampire mythology while playing up the sexual violence undertone present in every vampire movie. Make the effort to find this movie and you won’t be disappointed.

10 out of 10