SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Claudio Carvalho The unbalanced teenager Martin Mathias (John Amplas) travels to Braddock, Pennsylvania, by train. During the night, he breaks in a cabin and kills a passenger in a peculiar way, injecting drug with a syringe and draining her blood to drink in a careful way. Then he meets his old cousin Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) in the station and they go to Cuda's home where Martin will live. Martin was raised by his dysfunctional mother and believes that he is an 84 year-old vampire. The religious Cuda also believes that the teenager is Nosferatu and uses crosses and garlic in the house to protect himself and his granddaughter Christina (Christine Forrest) that lives with him from Martin. Along the days, Martin befriends Christina, who has a problematic relationship with her boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini), while continues to attack persons every now and then. Further, he uses the telephone to tell the truth about vampires to a radio show. Martin has a love affair with Christina, but when she commits suicide, Cuda does not believe that his granddaughter killed herself. "Martin" is a strange and bizarre low-budget vampire movie with a totally different story. There is a documentary on the DVD where George Romero gives details about the production that uses real locations. He also tells that "Martin" is his masterpiece. Martin's daydreams with black-and-white are ambiguous and the viewer never knows whether whey we recollections or his imagination. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Martin"

Will Neill I saw this film a few years ago, so my memory isn't great... Martin is a film I first saw as a matinée for 50p, and I wish I could get that back. First of all, the picture is HORRIBLE. It all seems just... sh*t. I know it was the 70s but they should have had some production values. It might symbolise something, but I don't get it at all. Secondly, the ending seems rushed. I mean really, really rushed. All I remember was "NOSFERATU!" *stab* Finally, I was shocked that it was George A. Romero who made this. I can't say it's all bad, It is possible to look at it as a vampire satire. (Although, again,if it was I definitely missed that), plus it isn't as bad as the vampire abomination that is Twilight.

Was it All a Dream? 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?

Michael_Elliott Martin (1977) *** (out of 4) Some would call George Romero the greatest American horror director while others would label him a disappointment who got lucky with Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. No matter which side of the fence you're on the one thing I've always admired is that Romero always stuck to his guns and did things he own way. Between the first two Dead movies Romero had a string of disappointments, which included the rarely seen There's Always Vanilla as well as The Crazies and Season of the Witch. The year before Dawn was released the director did for vampires what he did for zombies and that film is the now cult shocker Martin.Martin (John Amplas) boards a train headed for Pittsburgh where he is going to be living with his Uncle who plans on saving his soul before killing him. While on the train we learn why Martin is to be killed. That night he sneaks into the room of a young lady, drugs her to sleep and then slices her wrist open in order to drink her blood. Martin is not only a troubled young man but he also believes that he is a vampire but without the fangs, he must resort to other ways of seeking blood.Martin is a film I first saw nearly ten years ago and I really didn't care too much for it. Over the years I was somewhat shocked to see that many consider this the best horror film of the decade so I was looking forward to this second viewing. While I found the film slightly better this time around there were still many problems I had with the film.Anyone slightly familiar with this film will know about the legendary 2 ½ hour cut of the film, which was cut down for theatrical release and has gone missing since then.I'm not exactly sure what was in this longer version but I think viewing it that way would be the only way to get the full impact that the director was going for. Martin contains some brilliant moments but it's quite clear that a lot's missing here and that keeps the film from being a total achievement. What's most interesting is Romero updating the vampire myths including killing off everything we've learned from previous films. Martin has no fangs, no beautiful women and the sunlight really doesn't bother him.The film moves at a snails pace but that's not to say this is a boring film. The slow pace, like that in Dawn of the Dead, helps tell the story and lets us get to know Martin, his actions and those around him. It's very interesting getting to know this troubled kid and how those around him react towards him. Some feel sympathy while others feel horror.Romero takes his time in telling the story, which again, it would be important to see the longer version. Even in this 95-minute version, we get enough clues to keep us mildly entertained throughout.The most fascinating moments are the actual stalk and murder scenes that Martin goes out on. The idea of a vampire having no fangs and having to resort to cutting wrists for blood works perfectly and adds all sorts of needed suspense. There's a wonderful sequence where Martin breaks in on a victim only to be confronted by someone else. I won't ruin the scene for everyone but Romero has a wonderful time playing the audience as well as the characters on screen. Another wonderful thing about the film is its atmosphere, which is able to make this appear like a classic Gothic tale. The atmosphere is thick throughout and really helps the pacing.The problem with Martin however is that there is clearly stuff missing and the story here really isn't fully explored, in this version at least. Towards the end of the film Martin begins to have a sexual affair with a woman and this here is sadly all too brief. I'm going to guess this is expanded in the longer version and I'm sure it is a very important moment so that the ending makes a bit more sense. Even the nutty Uncle is never fully brought to life and his beliefs in the subject are never really understood. There are other small characters that pop in that are never fully addressed.This 95-minute version of Martin is fun to watch due to various brilliant moments but in the end I can't help but feel we're watching a bastardized version of a better movie. The producer's needed a hit, they cut the film and sadly it appears the longer version is lost but as it stands, this longer version is perhaps one of the most important films that needs to be found. Martin works well but I suspect this longer version might very well be one of the greatest horror films ever made.