Martin (1978) Review - Lisa's Review

I've had a veritable plethora of emotions surrounding this movie.  First off, I read the title and the year and was resigned that we were back to the old days of dated, old rubbish.  I looked a bit closer and saw it was a Romero movie.  It also has a part for Tom Savini, which seems to be a given in Romero movies.  I thought it was maybe a good omen as most other movies which have similar statistics were quite good.

After I watched the movie I had a look at some reviews to see how my viewpoint rated.  Seems like I was watching something entirely different than the vast majority of reviewers.  I read everything from "It's my favourite vampire movie" to "A wonderful modern day vampire story" to "One of Romeros best".

So I come right out and say it, I thought this movie was terrible.  The lead actor who played Martin (John Amplas) was repugnant in his attitude, expressions, way he carried himself... he just felt repellant to me.  Surely this character should have had some kind of sexual pull on females given his role in the movie.

Our basic premise centers around Martin drugging young women and either slicing them with razors and drinking their blood (which is clearly portrayed as a sexual thing) or raping them.  Where the comparison to classic vampires is here, I have no idea.  The movie, to me just seemed like a poorly made excuse to show some young attractive flesh and a bit of blood.

I found the storyline lacking and the other actors in the farce to be laughable, especially a male relative of his who is convinced he is evil, a vampire who can be repelled by garlic, crucifixes and holy water.

Martin goes through the movie doing much of the same until he finally relents to the advances of a bored middle-aged housewife.  Yawn.....

Some may say the ending is a bit of a surprise, but to be honest, following the usual direction of these kind of movies, I saw it coming a mile off.

So in short, I am definately not a fan of this movie.  In actual fact, I would advise anyone to avoid it.  Maybe had Martin been cast as someone else and had he been a bit older, it would have been palatable, but in its current state - No Thankyou.