[Editorial] It’s All in Your Head: Vampirism as a Psychological Phenomenon in Martin (1978)

Content Warning - This editorial contains discussion of suicide. 

The sleepy Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania comes alive at night with the arrival of a new resident, Martin Matthias (John Amplas), who might just be a vampire. The titular character of horror legend George A. Romero’s Martin (1977) presents us with a unique question that other films of the subgenre don’t dare to ask: is vampirism a supernatural phenomenon that truly transforms the body and soul, or just a psychological one induced by delusions and hysteria?

Martin opens with a brutal presentation of Martin’s belief in his own vampirism as well as the disturbingly pedestrian methods he uses to satiate his bloodlust in lieu of signature vampire fangs. Armed with narcotic filled syringes and common razor blades, Martin subdues his victims— almost all women— with the drugs before slitting their wrists to drink blood from them. While we’re never shown the origins of Martin’s supposed vampirism, he very well may be addicted to the drugs he injects into his victims’ bloodstreams. As the film progresses, Martin airs his grievances with vampirism and its portrayal in media versus his own experiences by calling into a late night radio show. The enthusiastic host dubs him “The Count” as he becomes an overnight sensation for his listeners. In one of his conversations with the host, Martin describes feeling shaky and physically unwell if he goes too long without feeding, which indicates withdrawal symptoms. 

When Martin arrives in Braddock as the young relative of community leader and shop owner Tada Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), he believes that Martin is a vampire, referring to the young man as “Nosferatu” and warding his home with cloves of garlic and crucifixes before Martin’s arrival. Tada Cuda’s zealous belief in vampires and his antagonizing Martin over it only adds fuel to the fire as Martin spirals further into his delusions. Martin claims that he knows it’s not magic, yet there’s something that gives him this desire to drink blood. The film is punctuated by short black and white clips of, depending on your interpretation, Martin’s memories or fantasies of being a vampire.

In contrast, Martin’s cousin Christina (Christine Forrest) is exasperated by her grandfather’s overzealous superstitions, believing Martin to be a soft-spoken yet disturbed young man who could benefit from psychiatric help. When she suggests such to Martin, he dismisses her, saying that he wouldn’t do well in a mental health facility. This brief interaction indicates that medical intervention has been tried for Martin in the past and failed to “cure” him of his vampiric delusions, or that he simply knows it won’t work because he really is a vampire.

This conflict between the supernatural and psychological comes to its breaking point when Tada Cuda invites a priest recently assigned to their parish, Father Howard, played by Romero himself, over for dinner. Tada Cuda bombards Father Howard with questions about supernatural threats, heavily implying he’s talking about Martin. The priest isn’t nearly as concerned, commenting that he thought The Exorcist (1973) was funny and doesn’t take much stock in the supernatural or spiritual in general, seeing them as relics that don’t belong in modern society. Tuda Cuda is enraged while Christina is pleased to have another voice of reason around. This doesn’t stop Tada Cuda from trying his hand at priestly intervention yet again, convincing an older priest to perform an exorcism on Martin, which doesn’t work, and once again we’re left with the horrifying possibility that Martin isn’t really a vampire but a serial killer.

Besides his family members and the radio show host, Martin doesn’t mention his vampirism to anyone, not even Abbie Santini (Elyane Nadeau), a depressed housewife who he does errands and household repairs for before the two begin a brief yet tumultuous affair. Martin’s expression of vampirism could also be linked to repressed sexuality, as his family is extremely Catholic and traditional, save for Christina, who has a more modern outlook on life and leaves town for better opportunities with her long-term boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini). Martin only feeds on women and is annoyed in the one instance where he has to feed from a man. He also reveals that he doesn’t feel the need to feed as often when he has sex regularly, as he has been with Abbie.

Since the dawn of the vampire genre, the monster in question has served as a metaphor for different themes and social issues, but overwhelmingly, vampires have come to be associated with sexuality. Martin dabbles in this as Martin almost exclusively targets women to feed from. In his musings to the radio show host, he laments that being a vampire in real life is far lonelier than in the movies. He doesn’t have a harem of wives like Dracula or any alluring love spells, admitting that the most sexual experience he’s had prior to Abbie is with his victims after the narcotics kick in and they become unconscious. Exchanging and consuming blood is intimate, regardless of how brutal the vampire is portrayed. Martin wants the experience to be as painless as possible for his victims, repeatedly assuring them “I’m always careful with the needles” and “I just want you to go to sleep.” He kisses and caresses them before and after drinking their blood, a cheap imitation of real intimacy and affection. 

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Similarly, Martin’s black and white memory-fantasies are informed by the gothic romance of classic vampire movies, an Old World setting in an ornate mansion with him giving chase to a young woman who calls longingly for him, the charming, seductive, insatiable vampire. Then, when he feeds from her and she subsequently dies, priests intervene with unsuccessful exorcisms and a vengeful mob of peasants scour the village in search of him. There’s no context for these scenes, only that they exist solely in Martin’s mind. Yet Tada Cuda alludes to similar happenings in the past, claiming that the family has a history of being cursed with vampirism.

Martin is aware that there aren’t necessarily supernatural elements to his being a vampire, and by extension, there aren’t any benefits to it. He walks freely in daylight and takes bites out of gloves of garlic and presses crucifixes to his skin to show his older relative that he’s not a traditional vampire. There’s no magic, as Martin says repeatedly throughout the film. He doesn’t have enhanced strength or otherwise impossible to explain abilities. There’s no real reason for him to drink blood as he regularly eats food. Martin lives out his violent and troubling fantasies because he’s otherwise unremarkable, a quiet and awkward young man who keeps to himself. Meanwhile, his religious uncle is convinced of Martin’s vampirism, feeding into the delusions and thus enabling his harmful behavior. Neither are willing to look at the situation from a logical perspective, and Christina is repeatedly shot down whenever she implores them to do so.

Tada Cuda’s condition for Martin to stay in Braddock is that he can’t feed on anyone in town, and after his first attempt to do so is complicated by an unexpected guest in his first target’s home, he eventually ventures back into the city, putting himself in real danger as he seeks out victims among junkies and vagrants. Abbie, whose dissatisfaction with her life has been bubbling up since before Martin got into town, boils over when she commits suicide by slitting her wrists in her bathtub. Upon hearing this, Tada Cuda immediately places the blame on Martin and drives a wooden stake through his heart. Naturally, Martin dies, and a voiceover of the radio host pondering what happened to “The Count” plays while Tada Cuda buries Martin in his garden.

Despite the care he takes to make their deaths as painless as possible, Martin is ultimately irredeemable, choosing to take lives to fulfill his own desires. Still, there’s an almost pathetic softness about him that makes it difficult not to empathize with him in some way. Almost as horrifying as Martin’s actions in the film are the religious fanaticism and implicit belief in superstition that Tada Cuda displays, making Martin’s fate almost inevitable. Ironically, Martin finally making a real, human connection ends up being his downfall as his own relative has no faith in Martin’s humanity. The underlying horror in Martin is in its ambiguity, either Martin really is a vampire which confirms their existence or he’s a disturbed young man who kills when he feels the urge to do so. With his memory-fantasies peppered throughout Martin, establishing him further as an unreliable perspective, Romero challenges us to consider the nature of Martin’s humanity or lack thereof too.

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