George A. Romero’s Martin

            Director George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) considered his offbeat 1977 vampire film Martin his favorite among the movies he made. And with good reason. There is a new Blu-ray of Martin from a company in England- Second Sight Films that you will need a multi-region player to see for the Blu-ray edition. But if you own a 4K UHD player you can buy the 4K edition and it will play on your machine. The DVD in America has been out of print for years and hopefully a company in the States will import this edition.

            Martin is about a moody, troubled young man (John Amplas) sent to live with an elderly relative- Tateh Cuda (Lincoln Maazel)- who begrudgingly picks Martin up at the train station in Pittsburgh and moves him into his house where he lives with his daughter Christina (Christine Forrest). The white bearded Tateh, dressed in an impeccable white suit, runs a meat market and hires Martin to deliver groceries to the neighbors. (The film was shot in the run-down ex-mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania). He is forever calling Martin a “Nosferatu” and hangs garlic over his own bedroom door, even rigs a warning bell in front of Martin’s bedroom door and often holds up a cross to Martin, who laughing chews on a bulb of garlic saying “there is no magic!”

            But the startling opening scene on the train reveals Martin’s twisted desires. He breaks into a woman’s compartment- shoots her up with a hypodermic needle to knock her out, then strips naked and slices open her arm with a razor blade and sucks her blood while writhing on top of her.

            Martin tries to fit in with his new surroundings. Christina is always defending him before her superstitious, rabidly Catholic father. And he begins an affair with an unhappily married woman he delivers groceries to. He also calls up an all-night talk radio station and chats about his blood-drinking habits (he is called the “Count” on the air). 

            But he also has to feed his blood habit, and a terrifying home invasion sequence follows.

            It’s Amplas’ sensitive, strange, haunted performance that really elevates the movie. Originally Romero’s script was about a much older man, but seeing John Amplas in a play made him rethink the entire script. Is he a vampire? Is he, as he says, really 84 years old? Or is it a delusion caused by the rabidly religious loons he grew up with? The films weaves in black and white flashbacks which could either be Martin’s memories or conjured visions from a disordered mind. Romero wanted to shoot the whole film all in black and white, and the original cut of the film was over 2 ½ hours. That lengthy print was thought to have been lost forever but only recently was discovered. The fact that the 3 ½  hour black and white director’s cut surfaced gives me hope that in the future we may get to see what Romero originally had in mind.

            I remember seeing this opening night at the Waverly Theater in NYC (now the IFC Center), and Romero and John Amplas were there to answer questions from the wildly enthusiastic audience. The film played at midnight there for over a year, and received great reviews. But it never caught on across the country. Author Michael Weldon in his seminal book- The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film– put it best: “It’s too disturbing, bleak and personal to have been a financial hit.”

            For Romero, this was a happy time making the film. He just began a love affair with Christine Forrest (who played Christina in the film). The cast was made up of friends and he was working with his trusted team- from cinematographer Michael Gornick to composer Donald Rubenstein. This was the film that introduced him to Tom Savini, who did the special effects in the film (and later would turn out memorably outrageous gore effects for Romero’s Dawn of the Dead). He even put Savini in the film as Christina’s boyfriend. Romero himself, in a witty, fun performance, plays a local Priest who stops by Tateh Cuda’s one night for some local wine. Romero was also making the film in a creatively improvisational environment where he was totally in charge. In the book by Paul R. Gagne: The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh (The Films of George A. Romero), the director admits, “I was relaxed making Martin. I was confident of what I wanted to do and we were able to make most of the shots as conceived. I learned to slow up, think methodically, and therefore, be more concise in terms of visual storytelling….Martin is still my favorite film (of mine).”

            The Blu-ray includes archival audio commentary with Romero, John Amplas and Tom Savini, and a wonderful new feature-length documentary where John Amplas and cinematographer Michael Gornick return to the locations where they filmed Martin (looking even more distressed and abandoned today).