Plastic Fangs Can Still Break Skin

It's Horror Week here at the Wheel so let's celebrate with reviews of some spine-tingling, chill-inducing, buttock-clenching scary movies. Now we could discuss The Invention of Lying here since I was horrified by how bad it was, but I'll start instead with Martin, a horror movie in the more conventional sense of the word. I have this strange fascination with odd 70s horror films and I really don't know why. They usually disappoint me but I keep dipping into the pool over and over again, hoping to find another Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Something about the graininess, the weird mood and somber tone just calls to me like a siren song and I am helpless against it. Martin fits the bill perfectly. It came out in 1977, it's snail paced and moody and there barely a fright in it since it's more concerned with psychology than scares.

I didn't understand this movie yet I also didn't really care to stop watching it. The whole "is he a vampire or isn't he?" premise was interesting but didn't really make sense after the first 2 minutes when you see him drinking blood from a victim's wrist. At that point, I was pretty sure he was a vampire.

Is Martin a vampire or is he simply a maladjusted young man who is antisocial, awkward and suffering from an insatiable thirst for human blood? That seems like a pretty easy question to answer.

Yet he keeps protesting that he's not even while secretly calling the local radio station and telling about his need for the warm red stuff. His problem is not that he likes to drug people, have his way with them, suck their blood and leave them for dead, it's that he can't own up to the fact that he's an 84 year old vampire trapped inside the body of a freaky twenty something in Pittsburgh. He's living in a delusional state and needs a wake up call.

Well he certainly gets one by then end of the movie.

Indeed. Martin has a lot of the elements of an interesting film (George Romero directed, there's a chase scene involving hypodermic needles, police and thugs engage in a shootout) but it didn't coalesce into an overall enjoyable film. I give it a 5.

Once again, I liked the setting, ideas and look of this seventies horror movie but there was no real payoff. John Carpenter, you have ruined me forever.