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".
感觉片子的节奏还是挺稳的，只是有些场景我是觉得真的惊悚。
已看一半。
好在铺垫够长，马戏团的戏整整用了一小时，享受极了。不好在离开马戏团后情节有点普通，和铺垫相比收尾太快了。万万没想到在大魔王和小白兔竟然就一场对手戏。
这个中译名差点让我以为豆瓣没这个片子。黑暗氛围全程压得不错虽然有些部分过于刻意，但后半截叙事感觉过于着急，开始走下坡路的部分未免也太突兀了
陀螺对这些黑色奇诡的东西是真爱啊，他心里一定也有一个打包好的大篷车，随时准备扎营开秀吧，能通过影像来实现，再想想他那个装满收藏的荒凉山庄，挺羡慕的就是说。Stan的一生也像是一个讲着悲惨故事的秀台，一个畸胎标本罐子，一个恐怖装置通道那样，利用着观众的弱点也燃烧着自己的命运，一步一步走向错位的循环。I was born for it，啧啧啧。
不難看，但可能剪成幾集電視劇放上netflix效果更好
B-. 年度失望，即便它已经在美学上实现了真正“五彩斑斓的黑”。根源在于剧作彻底的滑铁卢。第一幕的冗长散漫对叙事节奏的打击是毁灭性的，后续即使不断加速，也再也没能做到引人入胜。作为悬疑类型，转折过于平淡而失去惊喜，甚至不及我作为观众脑补的预期；作为角色研究，对人物的塑造又缺乏complexity。三位女性角色各成脸谱，卡司之间也没能有足够的化学反应。成片就像它描绘的马戏团，是一具艳丽的空壳。2022.2.5 Gaumont Parnasse
好工整的电影。what a crazy world
为了魔王和麻辣兔看的结果对手戏只有大概10秒。。。气得我回去又来一遍Carol @バルト９
70，现在是流行花一半篇幅写个序章还是怎么？
后半部分节奏把控得很好，明知道where it would go我们还是不由自主地屏住呼吸。
1.只有我觉得凯特和布莱德利之间一点性张力都没有吗 2.理解马戏团的个人趣味大展演，但是全片两个半小时确实用不着
结局确定完了吗？？魔兔的呢？？她俩带着钱远走高飞的画面呢？？
这有什么好拍两个半小时的，两个女主都没说几句话！
60/100 前面马戏团部分铺垫太臃肿，两年后的诈骗才是正题，而且没有什么惊艳之处，依旧是陀罗的黑暗哥特式的色调/服装/装饰/艺指/光影在支撑着，人物仅停留在疯魔之上，悲怆感被冲散（大魔王和鲁妮·玛拉居然近乎零对手戏啊，被这卡司骗到
改编加的几句台词太好了 You don’t fool people, Stan, people fool themselves. 凯特布兰切特真是个大魔王。好喜欢fantasy和陀螺的暗黑童话风。
与此同时，斯坦顿还在马戏团里邂逅了名为茉莉的女孩，随着时间的推移，斯坦顿和茉莉之间产生了感情。最终，斯坦顿带着茉莉离开了马戏团，他们坚信他们能够靠自己的双手打开一片属于他们的天地。一晃眼多年过去，虽然斯坦顿在占卜圈已经小有名气，但他并不满足，渴望更多的金钱。此时一个名叫莉莉丝的女人出现在了他面前……
知道导演本意是想讽刺伪善的黑心资本家，但是殊不知愿意装装样子走走形式的老板在我们这儿已经算好人了。
好看，工整，优雅，吉尔莫·德·托罗真的拍出了上世纪四十年代好莱坞流金岁月的电影范儿，服饰布景摄影都极尽典雅，太对我胃口了。
观感还不错，演员们的演技都在线，剧情也颇有亮点，特别是第一幕在马戏团的戏成功拍出了西方老式的神话般的诡秘感。但虽说是翻拍，这种故事放到现在显得比较过时，我更倾向于大改会比较好。马戏团和城市之间的转换稍微有些割裂，全片的节奏也很拖沓，铺垫得太详细太冗长了，完全没有必要凑两个半小时，导致直到最后半个小时节奏开始滚动起来以后才能完全入戏。
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