From The Grave
A VAMPIRE AND HIS RAZOR
There was a period in George Romero’s career that most people don’t know about. After he made Night of the Living Dead, he made There’s always Vanilla (a romantic comedy?), Jack’s Wife/Season of the Witch, then The Crazies. After that, it was the film we will discuss, MARTIN (1977).
Martin (John Amplas---Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow.) looks like a man in his twenties but he’s really eighty-four, and has come from Indiana to Pittsburg to live with his cousin Teteh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel, singer and playhouse actor, was his only film performance) and Christina, and her husband Arthur (Tom Savini---Dawn of the dead, Creepshow, Etc). It seems the job of protecting the innocents from Nosfertu has fallen to Cuda whose family is cursed. From generation to generation, the vampire disease has caught a hold of Cuda’s cousins and Uncles. Now, there is the possibility that Martin is the last of those cursed.
Cuda seems to be an old stick in the mud, but actually he’s the only one in the film that has any standards, or at least rules in his life. He gives Martin chores and has him work in his butcher shop for room and board. Martin is an eighty year old man who has a strange habit of finding woman and slicing them up to drink their blood. Martin calls in to a radio talk show to tell about his adventures. The talk show dubs Martin “The Count” and the show finds a slew of listeners. Martin becomes disenchanted when the hosts tells him, “this is great stuff”.
There is a lingering question throughout the entire film: is Martin really a vampire? Or is Cuda taking the family myth too far?
Make no mistake; this film could not be made in today’s climate of political correctness. Martin is a rapist. He is not, by any means a nice, normal guy who happens to have this disease. But he is a great character. Romero creates a film of character where no one wears the white hat, and no one wears the black hat. It’s all shades of gray. Christina is living with a man who obviously doesn’t want to work nor stay at home to hear her bitch about her Grandfather and the state of her life. Cuda is a man who has great dislike or even a hatred for the ones who has disgraced his family.
Martin gets involved with a married woman he met by making home deliveries for Cuda. She hires him to do odd jobs. Before long, Martin engages in an illicit affair, and neither one is able to show any real love toward each other. It is all for sexual pleasure, and they can’t even feel the pleasure. The married woman uses Martin to vent her frustrations and get over her depression. The end result of the affair eventually becomes Martin’s undoing.
There is a scene in which Martin stalks a woman, watches her husband leave for a business trip, and plots his rape/murder of her, only when he breaks into the house thinking she is alone, is caught by surprise by her lover. Martin has a time with these two and actually does achieve what he sets out to do, feeding off the man, raping the woman, and cleverly cleans up after himself.
"...this film could not be made in today’s climate of political correctness"
As I’ve said before, Martin is not a nice guy. He is a great characterization of a monster. If this was to be made today, Romero would never get the film off the ground. Everyone involved would have wanted Martin to either sparkle or somehow have his victims fall in love with him.
Martin cannot express himself properly. He is an outcast from all societies which makes him uncomfortable, and most often, goofy. He is played marvelously by John Amplas. Romero even makes an appearance as a priest that doesn’t know what to make of Cuda’s backwards old timey thoughts on the present day philosophy. Michael Gornick’s camera work is flawless and when it shifts to black and white to show Martin in the days of old, it’s a work of art.
For me, the best scene in the film is the ending. Once again leaves everyone wondering, was Martin a real vampire?
Mark Slade, HMS
Read the previous installment.