MARTIN

1978/Director: George A. Romero/Writer: George A. Romero

Cast: John Amplas, Lincoln Maazel, Christine Forrest, Elyane Nadeau, Tom Savini(also special effects and make up), Sara Venable, Francine Middleton, Roger Caine, George A. Romero

I have to honestly admit that I have never been a big fan of the films made by Romero outside his zombie masterpieces, numbering five totally now. Some of the stuff I’ve watched such as Monkey Shine, Dark Half and his contribution to Two Evil Eyes just did not seem all that great. They were watchable movies but nothing I really felt like seeing again. I did like some of the Creepshow segments, but overall was not thrilled. Still Romero remains a great filmmaker, in my opinion based, on a handful of films including his aforementioned zombie epics. In the mid 70’s Romero and producer-partner Richard Rubenstein and Rubenstein’s Laurel Films owed a lot of money that needed to paid back to keep the business going. Romero did not make any films for three years and did projects such as making sports documentaries until the debt owed by Laurel was settled. His last two films, in 1973, were both sort of odd little pieces I never had much liking for. One was Season of the Witch and the other, slightly better, The Crazies, about people basically becoming “zombies” after becoming exposed to toxic waste. It was not a bad film. Season of the Witch was rather chaotic in my opinion. The cinematography and sound were very poor and distracting. So by the time 1976 rolled around Romero was ready to do something new and exciting. He wanted to begin Dawn of the Dead but needed more money to make sure the film was the rotting epic he envisioned.

He sat down and wrote Martin in a short period of time and given a few flaws here and there (due in part to the low budget) created what is considered his finest work. I would have to say that I agree with this in most respects. I have seen Martin so many times I do not really even have to rewatch the film to do this review. When I write about a film I seldom go too deep beneath the surface. I like to read those types of reviews but I am not that type of film writer, but in the case of Martin it almost becomes impossible not to get pulled into what Romero might be – or might not be – saying about a variety of issues in modern life. He touches on issues dealing with such things as the “true believer” – to coin the phrase used by Eric Hoffer- syndrome, religious fanaticism, isolation, sexual perversion, emotional despair, hypocrisy, suicide, serial murder, and forgiveness and compassion. It is just not common to find all these themes and more addressed so well in a horror film.

Martin is played by John Amplas in his first role and it is a perfect performance and the only one he is really remembered for. Martin leaves his home in the old country (in Europe we assume) and arrives in the desolate and slowly dying town of Braddock Pennsylvania to live with his older cousin Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazael). Martin’s boyish and forlorning demeanor belay a dark secret: his is a methodic stalker and murderer. The opening segment of the film show Martin cleverly picking the lock of a cabin door on the train then attacking a woman with a syringe of sedating medication. The medication does not take effect immediately there is a long struggle before she is soon overcome by its effects. Martin rapes the woman (or at least lays with her naked body) before slicing her wrists with a razor blade and covering himself in her blood as well as drinking some of it. He is shrewd and makes her death look like a suicide.

He is a deeply disturbed young man who either believes he is a vampire or has been driven to believe it by superstitious relatives back in the old country. The belief that Martin is a “nosferatu” is firmly held by Cuda, who has sworn to save his soul, if possible, before destroying him. The film becomes on one level a sort of satire of classic vampire films, with Martin as the Prince of Darkness and Cuda as the vampire hunter. While Cuda firmly believes that Martin is a vampire and protects himself and the household with crucifixes and strings of garlic we are never 100% sure to what depth Martin believes himself to be a real vampire. In one scene he claims he is “real old… 84”. He is either haunted by flashbacks or entertains himself with vampire fantasies. When I first saw the film I thought the scenes (shot in black and white, or actually “retained” in black and white since Romero wanted the movie to be black and white) were flashbacks to the old country and how his superstitious relatives destroyed a love affair of his by persecuting him as a nosferatu. Later I began to think that perhaps the scenes were Martin’s own imaginings. His way of dealing with the fact that his relatives all believe he is the last of three vampires in the family, as well as a way of dealing with his own sanguine, serial killer impulses.

What is interesting in this film is how likable Martin ultimately is despite his serious issues of “social maladjustment”. The truth is he kills a small handful of innocent people (and we assume he has killed before because his method is so polished) and drinks their blood. While the old man is a small minded fool, Martin himself takes some sporadic delight in tormenting the old man in return. In one scene he terrorizes the Cuda in a foggy playground wearing plastic vampire fangs and a black and red cape. One can’t help but sympathize with Martin and excuse his behavior because the old man is a religious nut who at one point brings in an exorcist to drive the demons out of Martin. But obviously Martin is a victimizer as well and a little sadistic. He could work at trying to show the man he is not really a vampire or earn some trust, but he seems to push most people around him further away while at the same time wanting a connection.

The film is the first time Romero worked with effects master Tom Savini, who has a small role as the boyfriend of Martin’s cousin, who befriends Martin and opposes Cuda’s incremenations. The gore is minimal except for one classic Saviniesque scene where martin runs a stick into a man’s throat and twists it around a bit. The man was the unintended victim. Martin had stalked a woman at her house for a while and showed up with needles and razors to do what what he does and finds the man there engaged in some hanky panky with the bored housewife. He also becomes involved in an affair with a woman who he does some odd jobs for. At first terrified of her boredom driven sexual advances he runs away. Soon however the relationships seems to give Martin a new sense of connection. It is not to be of course in this dark and depressing film, as he finds her dead in the bathtub, ironically with slit wrists for which his blamed and punished for by Cuda.

Some humorous satire of the vampire genre is given in the form of a call in radio talk show that Martin calls regularly and becomes known as the “Count” by the host and callers. There have been ample vampire satires that use comedy as the method of parody, but not too many I can think of that are so bleak are still able to poke a little fun at a genre that has become easy to get a tad bored with a t times. I love vampire films and have seen my share. But I have become sort of burned out on the super sexy vampire with a tinge of royalty in his blood or manner much in the vain of Anne Rice’s narrations. I lived in Seattle for ten years and grew jaded about the Goth scene there. The macabre looking vampires down on the Ave, all spooky and darkly royal, but the image was shattered whenever they panhandled me or my friends. Come on, vampires don’t beg for spare change! But Martin is not from the same mold as traditional vampires anyway.

Martin does not sleep in a coffin. He does not wear black. He eats garlic bulbs. He has no super human powers. He can’t slap a man across the room and not mess up his cool hairstyle. He cannot change into a bat or wolf. Except in his fantasies he has no royal lineage. He looks like the awkward boy next door you never notice or pay attention to. Yet he is in fact a dangerous and crafty lad who loves killing -or is driven to kill whether he loves it or not- and drinking blood. Yet the viewer at no time really comes to hate him. Instead of mesmerizing eyes he uses syringes and drugs to hypnotize his victims, and razors instead of fangs to get to their blood supply. However, in a rare successful, twist the monster, killer becomes the hero at the same time. Somehow we can identify with Martin more than most of the characters in the film. This has been done on other films as well of course, where we sympathize with the bad, evil person, but few have done it as well as in Martin.

I will make one criticism about a sequence that seems all out of the place. It is the one where Martins is out trolling in an anxious state then stumbles upon a drug deal or something, then a shoot out occurs with the police in a department store. Martin winds up later in an ally and kills a wino. I just felt that the scene was distracting and made no sense and it would have been better to just have him kill off another drugged up housewife or something, and keep the depressing pace of the film as it was, without hokey shootouts and stereotyped homeboy drug dealers. That scene would have worked better in Blacula.

The atmosphere of the city and the unemployed citizens is not ignored. We are not in a romantic village beneath the Carpathian Mountains with a looming but beautiful castle casting its shadow at sunset over the local church. Instead we are in the middle of decaying, industrial America, with unemployed middle class factory workers and average looking housewives desperate for attention.

The movie is ultimately very depressing and sad, relentless in its alienation of poor Martin, up to the final scene where he has a stake driven through his heart by the equally delusional Cuda and is buried in the back yard and forgotten about. I have read that the original version Romero wanted to release was 2 ½ hours long, but it was trimmed way down to its current 91 minutes. There are no copies of that version in existence I understand but what a gem that would be. I hate director’s cut films usually, or “reduxs” but I would love to see what was removed from this fine movie. Romero’s next film would be Dawn of the Dead and Martin sort of was forgotten about, though Romero has said it remains his favorite of his films. Amplas never really did anything comparable to this role again. He was the scientist in Day of the Dead with glasses and goatee. A fotgettable role really. With Martin he did a exquisite job of creating a character so absolutely lost and melancholy that the grim world of zombies seem bright in comparison. We know that the dead will never really the earth (there is always enough room in Hell), but in some ways we know that there are despondent Martins – though maybe not killers – all over the place. The movie is unnerving for me because I can identify a little too much with poor Martin. If I were a twisted, serial killer it would be like the introverted and guilt ridden Martin, and not like the remorseless master mind Kevin Spacey in Se7en. Martin is a really great movie, not just a great horror movie, and I can not recommended it highly enough.

NOTE: This article is my contribution to the vampire blogathon hosted by some fine horror movie bloggers. I believe the project was conceived by LAMB member Ryne over at The Moon is a Dead World. If you can check out his site. I also recommend for the truly vampirically obsessed out there to check out Tal’s Taliesin meets the Vampires. A site dedicated solely to bloodsuckers, and with plenty of info on the Chinese variety. I believe Tal is located in Britain, the home some of the best horror films ever made thanks to the creative geniuses at Hammer Films. I have a couple Hammer vampire films I am preparing posts for even as I write these words. And of course check out Chick Young at Trash Aesthetics for culturally relevant topics and sexy vampiric babes top ten lists, as well as a Sherman Potter rating system.

The last two images are of my copy of Martin bought here in China. There is an embossed crucifix for the “T”. The picture is not too good and I may try it again one day, but I think fans of the film may enjoy this cover. The Chinese characters say Ma Ding, the way Martin would be pronounced in Mandarin. Not a wealth of images for this movie on the net. Very frustrating.

Amazingly I just could not find that many greats images or scans of this great Romero film on the net so I went through the labor of creating some scans for people to use. It is a task fro me because for some reason I can not capture directly from DVD, probably because the DVDs here in China are all pirated and there is some conflict. I have to convert the chapters to AVI then use Total Video Player (the only player I have that will capture frames) then do some basic editing. I hope the effort is appreciated by the patrons of the Cafe out there. Me, I’m just doing my job.

I am getting a little better at my gif making. If you have already seen the ones I made for Tetsuo: The Ironman please recheck them. I redid them in Adobe Image Ready and I think the new versions are better. Smaller and with the dark borders removed. I can do it in a short period of time now and I hope to have more of these coming at you. I love animated gifs and yet find the net to be lacking in cool movie scene gifs. One of my missions here at the Cafe is too provide you, the riveted reader, with lots of freaky little animated images to gawk at and share with your fiends and family. Why would I go through all this extra work and toil just to make maybe one reader a little happier? Why you ask? Because I care, that is why. Maybe that little homemade gif will let you know someone out there in that black hole called the Internet cares and it will prevent you from turning into a Martin and killing lonely housewives. We are saving lives here at the Cafe!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under American Horror . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.