The following notes on George A. Romero's Martin are written by David Vanden Bossche, PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at UW Madison. Martin screened at the Cinematheque as part of an in-person visit from filmmaker Tony Buba on Saturday, September 23.
By David Vanden Bossche
Pennsylvania-born George A. Romero, who started out filming commercials and even an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neigborhood, often has the epithet “father of the zombie movie” bestowed upon him. While that honor isn’t completely accurate—among others, 1945’s Isle of the Dead with Boris Karloff, or Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie from 1943 come to mind—it is undeniable that Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead set the standard for what was to become the modern zombie movie. Romero also infused the genre with a potent subtext of social critique, another mainstay of the genre in subsequent decades. Dawn of the Dead (1978) expanded on his original cult classic with increased scope and explicit critiques of American consumerism. In 1985, Romero completed his original living dead trilogy with Day of the Dead, and in the decades since he has been canonized by fans as one of a very small class of so-called “masters of horror” alongside the likes of John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, and Dario Argento. Romero would continue to revisit the zombie genre a few more times throughout his career, and even one final zombie project, Twilight of the Dead, is currently set to be directed by The Machinist’s Brad Anderson from a screenplay treatment written by Romero before his death in 2017. His career-long association with the walking dead, however, tends to obfuscate the fact that Romero had quite a varied career as a horror filmmaker. He directed a solid Stephen King adaptation with The Dark Half (1993), the efficiently creepy Monkey Shines (1988), and even a bona fide action film with Knightriders in 1981.
Between the first and second chapters of his iconic zombie trilogy, Romero directed two low-budget thrillers that easily belong among his finest films. The first, The Crazies (1973), overcame poor initial office to become recognized as a cult classic and even inspire a remake in 2010. The second of these films, 1977’s Martin, has until recent years stood out as one of the director’s most underseen films, despite an ever-growing status among cinephiles and horror-hounds. As detailed in the recently restored home release of the film from Second Sight, Martin was shot on 16 mm reversal stock (producing an immediate positive image instead of a negative one for print purposes) in Braddock, Pennsylvania, for a mere $100,000. The film tells the story of the titular troubled teenager (played by theatre actor John Amplas, for whom Romero re-wrote the script to age down the character) who believes himself to be a vampire, although he does proclaim that “none of the magic is real, it’s only a sickness.” Martin has no fangs and as such cannot bite his victims, instead drugging them before slicing open their veins with a razor blade to drink their blood, a messy affair that we witness during the intense opening sequence (a scene that curiously was moved to a later point in the film for the European home video release).
When Martin goes to live with his cousin and uncle – a peculiar relative who truly thinks his nephew is a ‘Nosferatu’ – he must come to terms with the uninteresting life of a suburban teenager in the 1970s and all the angst that goes with it. In a way, Martin’s sickness is simply that of ‘being different’, of trying in vain (and in veins) to find some kind of connection with the world and the people around him. While there are gruesome murders—gruesome enough to even land the film on the infamous ‘video nasties’ list in the UK—they are all undergirded by a desperate longing for connection, something that is even reflected in Martin’s desire to be able to “do the sexy stuff…without the blood part.” Alas, not even a brief fling with a bored housewife fosters any true attachment, and in the end Martin’s only way of truly reaching out seems to be talking on the telephone to a patronizing late-night radio host (as in Night of the Living Dead, radio plays an important part here).
The film is also regularly interspersed with a look inside the young protagonist’s mind. In Martin’s troubled psyche, the myth of the vampire comes to life in hallucinatory black and white images reminiscent of 1930s and 40s horror movies. Sweet maidens invite ‘The Count’ (as Martin nicknames himself) to come in, and ghostly figures chase him as if in a scene from James Whale’s classic Frankenstein.
Screened in 1977 at the Cannes Market, the film initially failed to get a distributor, eventually landing a limited release only in 1978. Dario Argento later recut the film for European markets, adding a soundtrack by Italian prog rock band Goblin and retitling it Wampyr, a feat he would repeat for Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, famously released in Italy in a shortened version titled Zombi. Not attracting much attention during its initial limited release, the film’s reputation has grown considerably over time, with film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum later calling Martin “maybe Romero’s most accomplished work.”
In interviews, George Romero himself often confessed to a profound fondness for this often-overlooked little gem and the splendor of the new restoration is sure to put you in agreement with the late master’s appreciation of his own work.