Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
啊哈哈哈哈哈我笑不活了，虽然全都是低级黑但是，我真太喜欢这个了，剪辑也很有意思，马克里朗斯这个演法我很服，这也应该是近些年来卡司最豪华的片，真·全熟脸，我以为制片成本一半都拿来请演员了，但后面的视觉效果着实让我惊艳一把，还有配乐和A妹的歌完爆今天我刚看完的魔法满屋啊
黑了俄国的发射塔，接了个中国的电话，印度完全没出现，America失败了人类就完球，这才叫真正的文化自信，nice～
用人物状态以及他们和物的互动去叙事表达，这一套用到精疲力尽之后让影片看起来肃杀但是干涩，克制却又满溢。之前简坎皮恩只看过钢琴课，两者有很多相似的感觉，不过我认为钢琴课那一套卡司远胜于犬之力，特别是霍利亨特之于本尼。最开始那朵纸玫瑰从诞生到毁灭的几个空镜真是让我喜爱。
和预想不太一样的西部片，选角持保留态度，想看原著。。
前面节奏缓慢，看着是西部片，后面开始又像是同片，结果是悬疑片。恐同即深柜，菲尔似乎跟他弟弟有点不伦，或者是互相陪伴太久了，对于女的加入，是强烈抵制，显得就像是吃醋的风格；后面光屁股那里，又对死了二十年的故友性明显，后面又看上了被他鄙夷的娘炮小朋友……结果被小朋友设计炭疽杀了。主角非常厉害优秀，但强势倨傲，不仅仅弟媳，连整个家人都不舒服，最后死了，似乎大家都松了一口气。彼得外表娘，却被他父亲评价强壮、劝他要善良，显然他父亲才懂他。而对他母亲的守护，也有点别样的味道。新西兰拍的？风景真漂亮
不是很理解觉得不好笑的人，也不是很理解觉得不够严肃的人。我觉得这部电影既幽默又尖锐，甚至还有点浪漫。用娱乐至死消解娱乐至死又有什么不对呢，确切地说，难道我们还有别的选择吗？不知道这观点是不是有点悲观主义了。但我觉得拍摄这样的电影本身就是一种黑色喜剧。“尽管有必须跨越的海洋，必须翻越的山。”世界末日那天我只会选择在家躺着吃垃圾食品all day直到大家一起灭亡。
8.0 标签里少了悬疑的成分让整部片最后大加分。前半程的摄影配乐已经三星半，加上后半程的前半小时的性暗示和后半小时的冷峻的节奏，四星有了。
4.75/5 So much is unsaid yet so much is felt.
你把陨石当新冠一样来看，就能懂里面的笑点了。
2022.3.28 空镜是我喜欢的类型，但是和片子交融的不那么合适，就算是卷福蓄起胡须，也没有西部那种野性的感觉。狂野下的细腻，不可言说的压抑。所以是自己杀死了自己、还是被“羊”干掉？主要很多暗示，不知道是不是我想太多了。
爱死刚开头这段旁白！这个氛围和配乐，真的很锈湖啊！卷福还是太英国太有文化了，这个角色给他有点违和。影片里很多细节，找机会看看原著。
冗长、沉闷、无趣的一个故事，套了个西部的外壳。
太痴情了太纯情了....明明就是爱的很深的爱情片，可是太残忍了，被看透就全是软肋，一击毙命。送绳子那里不知所措的扔在地上，好心痛。
Dope. 最扎心的是什么你知道吗，Jennifer Lawrence演的Kate到生命的最后一刻还是PhD candidate，还没拿到学位。哭了。（北美学界representation有点太真实哭哭
#观影手记# 2334 4.5
本以为这只是一部西部片，渐渐有了爱情片的元素，再后面发现有男同片的潜质，最后影片以悬疑片终结。
问题在于菲尔这个角色明显是没有死的必要的，反而儿子这个角色透着一股志得意满的邪恶
一部电影学院要分析镜头语言的大银幕电影，放网飞上可惜了
疫情前拍的真有先见之明啊。资本>意识形态>真相。地球被他们玩坏了，但他们活下来了。
蛮傲娇和幼腹黑的故事，前摇太长，年代氛围制作的好。
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