Martin (1976)

Posted on Nov 21, 2001 under Horror |

Written and directed by George A. Romero
Starring
- John Amplas
- Lincoln Maazel
- Christine Forrest
- Elayne Nadeau
- Tom Savini

The vampire, as far as I can see, is the most often reinterpreted monster in Western mythology. Look at novels, or movies, or comic books; no two of them use the same backstory or laundry list of vampire abilities. (In fact, it’s become standard practice at some point in a movie to have one character explain to another which of the many and contradictory vampire rules hold true in this particular movie’s universe — see Vampires for a pretty obvious version of this exchange.) You’re probably expecting me to break into a half-assed hypothesis for why this is so, but I have no intention of doing so (hah!); suffice it to say that, with the scare potential of the vampire archetype, everyone wants to recast it with details that are scary to them.

The infamous vampire, in all his influence and glory.

In this case, George Romero decided to strip away almost all of the supernatural romanticism that separates the vampire from reality and makes what is essentially a serial killer into some kind of charismatic anti-hero. The titular Martin is as deadly as any vampire in cinema, but he’s about as far from being a romantic figure as possible.

We first meet Martin (John Amplas) on an overnight train to Pittsburgh, indulging his nasty little habit: drinking blood. Unfortunately, he has none of the usual attributes that assist with such practices — namely, pointy teeth and a hypnotic gaze. Instead, he compensates with syringes of an unnamed tranquilizer, and razor blades. (Somehow, these aren’t the symbols of “cool” vampirism adopted in the Goth community.) He picks the lock of a sleeping car, injects the startled woman within (Fran Middleton), and struggles with her for the two minutes it takes for the sedative to take place, desperately trying to keep her quiet. Then he strips naked with her, slices her wrist with a razor blade, and drinks messily. As you can guess, Anne Rice isn’t anywhere nearby.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ted V. Mikels!

After a well-practiced clean-up, Martin is met at the station by his cousin Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) — and here’s where things start to veer marginally from the strictly naturalistic, as Cuda is somewhere in his sixties or higher. And his first word of greeting to Martin is, “Nosferatu!” (I’m guessing that that’s not actually the Romanian word for “How’s it hanging?”)

We get the backstory revealed to us little by little, through dialogue between Martin, Cuda, and Cuda’s granddaughter Christina (Christine Forrest), as well as through grainy black-and-white split-second flashbacks showing Martin in settings of a hundred years ago. It appears that Martin is the shame of the (originally Eastern European) family; he’s 84 years old, even though he looks like an older teen, and the elders of the family affirm in whispers that he is indeed a vampire. He’s been shuttled from one family member to another for “safe-keeping” for decades, and now it’s Cuda’s turn. And Cuda’s not going to let one get by him; the house is festooned with crosses and garlic, and Cuda declares his intentions: “First, I will save your soul — then, I will destroy you.”

Eww, dismembered celery — I think I’m gonna be sick…

Martin, though, rejects all of the supernatural trappings (to punctuate his point, he chomps down a mouthful of a garlic wreath); “There is no magic,” he declares on several occasions. And indeed, he’s so little like the traditional vampire that the label is almost meaningless. He goes out in daylight; he eats normal food; he enters churches and shakes hands with clergy (as played by Romero himself). His only vampiric qualities are his agelessness, and his periodic lust for blood.

Cuda is determined to keep the boy/man busy helping in his little grocery store, and warns him against playing any of his shenanigans in their neighborhood. But Cuda’s a little too wrapped up in his stereotypes of traditional vampires to be able to effectively oppose the real one in his house, and Martin’s been doing this for a long time. But he also breaks with his routine when his quiet listening demeanor proves attractive to a lonely housewife (Elayne Nadeau); it is, as he describes it, the first time he’s been naked with a woman without all the blood.

“And if my mystical weapons from the Old Country fail, I could just make you look at my shirt.”

Describes it? That’s right, on the late-night radio show he takes to calling anonymously just to have someone to talk to, where he describes his life and travails (an idea plucked wholesale for Psycho 4). It’s here, where he talks about his isolation in completely different terms than the Ricean “ennui of immortality” blather, that Martin becomes humanized for us. If still not a sympathetic protagonist, at least he’s not so monstrous.

If you’re a fan of Romero’s movies (as opposed to being a fan solely of his zombie trilogies), you can see hallmarks of his writing all over the place. The Pittsburgh neighborhood in which Cuda and Christina live (as well as Christina’s boyfriend Arthur, played by Tom Savini) is depressed and aging badly. The clientele of Cuda’s store jokes bittersweetly about their mass geriatrification. Christina and Arthur both long to escape to some locale of greater opportunity. The Catholic church has recently burned down, and the congregation meets in a waterdamaged upper story of a warehouse, under the direction of Romero’s priest character, who’s too new and progressive to identify with the fears and worries of his sheep. One senses almost that Cuda’s greatest rage against Martin is that, of all the things crumbling to dust, only this nosferatu, the shame of the family, will outlive the decay.

It’s true. The Lord looketh upon the inner man, not the outward nose.

It’s a cunning little film, which probably hasn’t caught on as well because of the lack of mystique, compared with the Dead trilogy; after all, the point of Martin is to strip the vampire of his baggage and romanticism, and that doesn’t make for cult cinema. Also, despite the socio-economic background that figures in the story’s atmosphere, there’s not nearly the colorful social commentary and satire that one sees in such other Romero films as Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies, or Dawn of the Dead.

It is, just like most of Romero’s films, both thoughtful and thought-provoking; if you can tear yourself away from the gothic self-indulgence that the vampire motif has gathered to itself in recent decades, you could very well enjoy this one.