RIP George A Romero. The iconic horror director and creator of the 1968 Night of the Living Dead and the (original) series that came from it, died this weekend at the age of 77. It was Romero's zombie film that gave us the modern perception of the undead as shambling, flesh-eating ghouls instead of the mindless voodoo slaves that they had been portrayed as previously. But Romero directed more than just zombie films, including the film he considered to be his personal favourite, Martin.
Martin Mathias is a young man travelling from Indianapolis to Braddock, Pennsylvania to stay with his elderly relative, "Tateh" Cuda. Martin is also a vampire - or at least he believes himself to be one. We see him break into a woman's sleeping cabin on the train, drug her and then slice her wrists with razor blades to drink her blood (killing her in the process). Cuda (who dresses like Colonel Sanders for a lot of the movie) also believes Martin to be a vampire, calling him "Nosferatu" and hanging garlic and crucifixes all around the home to try to keep Martin at bay. None of it works, of course - Martin may be a vampire, but those things are just superstitions and "old magic" which doesn't exist. Martin - who claims he is 84 years old, even though he barely looks 20 - has evolved his vampiric practices over the years to leave no traces of his predilections and operates in a thoroughly modern way. But is Martin actually a vampire, or just a mentally ill serial killer whose superstitious family have convinced him of his vampiric nature over the years? That answer is left for us to decide as we follow Martin through his life; both as he awkwardly makes friends and starts an affair with a lonely housewife, and as he chooses, stalks and kills his victims - trying to decide what world he belongs in...
I showed this movie to Nick once, because he was a fan of vampire movies and enjoyed the more intellectual movies of the genre as well as the cheesy b-movies. Unfortunately, he didn't care for it at all, probably because the movie is admittedly quite slow-paced and ambiguous as to whether Martin is really a vampire or not. There's also very few "action" scenes in the film, aside from Martin's attacks on his victims - basically, Martin is a very atypical vampire movie. I know that's not going to be to everyone's tastes, but I personally really enjoy the way the film lets us come to our own conclusions as to whether Martin really is a supernatural creature who needs to drink blood to stay young and survive, or just a mentally disturbed young man who, after years of being told he is a vampire and abused (it's suggested that other family members have tried at least one exorcism on him in the past, and Tateh Cuda's treatment of him is definitely abusive), becomes the very thing he's being accused of.
Martin is quite an anti-religion movie, with its main character repeatedly pointing out that it's all superstition and magic, laughing at Cuda's attempts to keep him at bay with crucifixes and rosary beads and being utterly unmoved when Cuda brings in an elderly priest to perform an exorcism on him. Martin doesn't believe his vampirism is of a supernatural nature at all - he has no fangs, no power to compel women or people in general (something he complains about at one point, saying, "In real life, in real life you can't get people to do what you want them to do."), no ability to turn into a bat or mist. He has to use thoroughly modern lockpicks and sedatives to commit his crimes, and clean up very carefully after himself to avoid leaving any evidence. Interestingly though, Martin seems to have idealised images of what he wants to be happening when he is attacking his victims, where his female victims call to him and welcome his advances and bloodthirst. These imaginings, as well as what could be either flashbacks or delusions of an old-school mob, complete with pitchforks and torches, chasing him, are shot in black-and-white as opposed to colour, enhancing the otherworldly feel of them (Romero actually wanted the entire film to be in black-and-white but the producers objected, apparently having never seen what he did with black-and-white film ten years previously). Throughout the film, Martin always seems markedly out-of-place wherever he is - shy and awkward. Most of his attempts to reach out to people end badly or at least awkwardly, such as his calls to a late-night radio talk show where he becomes known as "The Count" and, while everyone is fascinated by his calls, he's still clearly seen as a figure of ridicule.
The disturbing aspects of Martin come not from the murders Martin commits to sate his bloodlust, but in the ideas that people could still think in such a way in the latter years of the 20th century (and onwards into the 21st, where you still hear of people - sadly often children - dying as the results of exorcisms or punishments for being a "witch" because of people twisting and taking religious belief to extremes). There are also people who believe themselves to be vampires as well - I've heard the term "moroii" being used to describe them - who feed off only willing "victims", taking either blood or psychic energy and never killing the ones they feed off. No doubt Tatah Cuda would have wanted to drive a stake through their hearts as well. Then again, the ambiguity of what type of vampire Martin is, and the way it is left completely up to the audience to decide, also adds a level of discomfort to the whole thing.
Martin was also the first film that George Romero and special effects artist Tom Savini worked on together (he has a supporting role in the film as well as providing the wrist-slicing effects). Interestingly, it was also one of the films seized and confiscated, but not prosecuted, under Section 3 of the UK's Obscene Publications Act during the video nasties panic of the early 1980s (probably because people were afraid that the film could influence others into killing people for their blood, just as Martin may have been influenced by years of abuse by superstitious family members...)