Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
欧美律政剧均秉持的同一观点，即:反对政府及其政策不代表不爱国，因为政府是为国家服务的，反而，将党派、政府与爱国高度绑定，对对于前者的监督、批评与质询视为“反动”才是最大的反动。
没有停顿、甚至没有转场，几把椅子，几件衣服，仅凭借着灯光，十几个演员一人分饰多角，演出了一万人的故事。
疫情看真的太应景了。黑暗中才更能看到善意的光。太温暖了。
读名单那一刻引起的亢奋不如「波斯语课」，不过群情激昂要比后者的行注目礼自然。看起来是在批判，其实是在赞美。
截止到今天的年度最佳。“酒吧外是20世纪60年代，酒吧内是20世纪50年代”，“是不是只有七个人带着十万卧底cop在抗议？”，还有被枪杀的黑豹党成员都太印象深刻
金句频出啊，像「我对政府的蔑视，和它对我的蔑视相比不值一提」这种台词就是为了被人摘进短评里而存在的。
真实事件？
异常中的日常，是覆盖生活的全方位关怀，那些集体记忆中珍贵的情感和善意，会跨越时间给受困的人类带来力量。没想到全剧只有十二个演员，场景转换，人物多样，内容多元，让人感动，催人振奋，是可以排进前三的音乐剧了。
现今时代已远非60年代，每一起游行变成暴乱的背后究竟是谁策划的，谁可以利用“程序正义”光明正大地行使权力？司马昭之心路人皆知。
这个视角说911的相关故事太棒了，持续性地感慨且感动。
210424@ sfm：这剧本太八面玲珑的吧，庭审戏也很爽。半年庭审前因后果俩小时完成不乏味。看的时候忍不住想这两年隔岸看到的新闻、那部不能说的提名纪录片和现在正在进行的审判。就算能理解历史总会翻页，但身处其中的人呢？Abbie Hoffman角色设定太高光了。
电影剧情和真实史料出入还是蛮大的。编剧极力淡化了八名被告在法庭上的各种激进行为和对法官的辱骂，把朱利斯霍夫曼塑造成了一个racist和顽固迂腐充满偏见的保守派，但实际上真实的霍夫曼甚至曾经撰文攻击过麦卡锡主义。
我们向失去的东西致敬，我们也纪念我们发现的东西。向世界上真实存在的善意和友爱致敬。如果是你，你也会这么做。永远为人性和善良热泪盈眶。
幽默又好看。在充满恐惧与愤怒的几周里，很难得的笑了出来。
历时百多天的审判就像个连续剧，演员各司其职，在庭审现场作秀，双方的立场很清楚，判决也早有定论，被告要做的，当然是借机扩大影响，无休止的藐视法庭，起哄作怪，把事实摆出来，让公众去评判，把战场上的死亡名单念出来，让历史去默哀。
一开始记人名就很费脑子，也没看懂最后的高潮，完全不明白大家为何起立鼓掌，但不得不说剧本从头至尾都很抓人，风格很像《社交网络》，一查才知道原来导演就是编剧大人
I've never been on trial for my thought before
The whole world is WATCHING!!!
尽管那么多人都那么愚蠢，尽管体制常常丑陋而迟钝，尽管暴力似乎总是能够得逞，也绝不要放弃努力和希望，不要轻易地向他们屈膝投降。因为说到底，做一个被世界辜负的人，总比做一个辜负世界的人来得强。
结构工整的好处是简洁有力 坏处是让真实的历史仿佛被放入玻璃钟罩里被人凝视打量 鲜活不足 这片子推出的日期就足够玩味 换选年好莱坞干脆不遗余力 一左到底 让大家复习一下历史上的今天 被标签化久了仿佛有标签成了什么坏事似的 可惜这一次我们成了在褐色玻璃里侧的人 觥筹交错间 历史在小酒馆的内外轮转 希望清醒的人能多一点吧。
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
