Greetings Romero fans and welcome back
to Day 2 of George A. Romero Week. Well I thought initially like so
many that Romero was unable to get away from his zombie comfort zone
and could not provide us any terror aside from the shambling dead
that rot. I was, in fact wrong and discovered a disturbed character
haunted by visions of vampiric seduction, impeding torch and
pitchfork wielding mobs and the inability to tell if they are real or
simply imagined. This is Martin.
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| Hmm? Yes, Satan? |
Martin Madahas: Things only seem to be
spoilers. There is no real magic. There's no real magic ever.
Our movie opens on an overnight train
with a young man (John Amplas of Dawn of the Dead, Bloodeaters,
Knightriders, Creepshow, Midnight, Day of the Dead and No Pets)
Martin after he is sedated a young women with a syringe filled with
God knows what, slices open her arm with a razor blade and proceeds
to drink her blood. A tad kooky, perhaps but maybe he is just
misunderstood. That next morning he gets on another train to
Braddock Pennsylvania with a man garbed in white (Lincoln Maazel of
NET Playhouse and Martin). The man is actually Martin's great uncle
Cuda, a strict Lithuanian Catholic that has no time for fantasies
and absurd behavior and is highly suspicious that Martin's immediate
family had died in Indianapolis while he was untouched.
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| Santa after Jenny Craig. |
He takes Martin in his home but informs
him there are rules and obligations to be met and will be met for
anyone under his roof. His cousin Cristina (Christine Forrest of
Three Stops to Murder, Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders,
Creepshow, Monkey Shines and The Dark Half) is forbidden to interact
with Martin at all which.. would make dinner time tough. Treating
his grandnephew like an outcast the boy is frustrated and asks why,
Cuda responds if anyone in Braddock is murdered he will drive a
stake right through Martin's heart.
Working in Cuda's butcher shop Martin
makes deliveries to several of the local women in town and zeroes in
on Mrs. Santini (Elyane Nadeau of Martin) whose husband is out of
town so often she tries to snare the lad for herself but it unnerves
him the first few times as she is clearly grand uncle's best
customers and must curb the beast. He catches a ride to Pittsburgh
and targets a woman that looks lonely but he is unsure now of his
predatory instincts. Will Martin be found and staked? Will grand
uncle lighten up and put on a kicky beret?
Now a few words about our film.
To escape the dreaded "X"
rating of the razor blade opening up someone's arm, Romero trimmed
the shot down by several seconds because the MPAA found it to be
vulgar, violent and unnecessary... yet every vampire movie has
protruding fangs driven in a neck or around a collar bone.
Tom Savini did all the stunts, played Arthur, Christina's boyfriend as well
as FX makeup for the movie as this was the first time collaborating
with Romero but certainly not the last. The Latin exorcism passages
read by the priest during Martin's flashback sequences are authentic
so get those recorders, tablets and laptops at the ready to translate
it just in case you have a distant relative that seems a bit hinky.
Narrowed down to 95 minutes Romero
feels the additional 160 minutes that was removed really allows the
viewers inside Martin's mind and psychosis to with Cuda talks to the
boys the vampire lore, how the art of seduction could seem enticing
but how they must never stray from the path of the lord. Deep stuff
in my opinion.
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| So wait... you're not Shaun Cassidy? Get out of my car! |
