Martin: The Horror Within
I’d planned on rewatching Martin for the Spooktacular but that’s a lot harder than I anticipated. The film is not streaming anywhere and DVD copies are very expensive. What gives? I suppose I’ve taken for granted the amount of films/TV I have available at my fingertips. I can watch all the seasons of the comedy sitcom Martin if I so choose, but I guess George A. Romero’s Martin will have to wait for another day. Perhaps we can will that day to come sooner if we all wish for it?
I saw Martin for the first time as part of a class on horror films in college. Yes, it was a pretty cool class… George A. Romero is synonymous with zombie films, and for good reason. Night of the Living Dead is a classic. Dawn of the Dead is too. Hell, even Day of the Dead is pretty great. But I never loved zombie stuff (I enjoyed those films despite that). I remember being blown away by Martin, Romero’s vampire flick (and allegedly the filmmaker’s own favorite). I think I only watched it one time since college though — definitely more than a decade ago. So, I don’t really remember it all that well. I can tell you it was shot in the blue collar town of Braddock, Pennsylvania — where current U.S. Senate hopeful John Fetterman once served as mayor. I can also tell you that it claimed to have a budget of $250K, but that’s only because they didn’t want to admit the budget was only $100K.
What I do remember is that it’s about a disturbed young man named Martin (John Amplas) who may or may not be a vampire. Instead of puncturing necks with a pair of fangs, who utiltizes a razor blade. I think it’s supposed to be pretty clear he’s not an undead bloodsucker, but there’s some ambiguity, sort of like a proto-K-PAX (remember K-PAX?…No?). Without the actual bloodlust, what Martin gets from killing and dominating his, mostly female, victims is power and escape from his isolation. There are some essays out there comparing the title character to today’s incels. I guess I couldn’t argue with that. Martin is someone who is divorced from reality and creates a ridiculous justification for his terrible behaviour: if he doesn’t stalk and murder women, he’ll die! He also just so happens to become less bloodthirsty after a woman takes an interest in him.
Ultimately, we’ll just have to go with Romero’s own explanation for the film:
Martin is designed so that all those supernatural monsters that are part of our literary tradition are, in essence, expurgations of ourselves. They are beasts we’ve created in order to exorcise the monster from within us…I tried to show in Martin that you can’t just slice off this evil part of ourselves and throw it away. It’s a permanent part of us, and we’d better try and understand it.
So, maybe it’s a bit more universal than just the incel experience, though that is becoming increasingly (and disturbingly) universal. In any case, we should all keep our eyes peeled (eww) for Martin. If it eventually comes to a streaming service, or even just to your local theater, be sure to give it a watch. Then we can all discuss just what the hell it’s actually about.
Is it scary? Yes. Clearly, I don’t have the strongest recollection of the film, but I do seem to recall being unsettled by Martin’s attacks. As mentiond above, his methods of bloodletting are a lot more grounded than a monster of folklore’s, which makes them all the more disturbing.
