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".
道德寓言故事感太强，各种意义上的陈词滥调。
又是那么的简洁高效
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。
又一部大导演翻拍作品，制作和表演都精良，故事不吸引我，看不下去。
7
挺喜欢马戏团的部分，有一种绵密的质感。两年后就变成狗血地摊文学了（精神分析？不过是“角色背景”这种最廉价的东西罢了)！不过还是很喜欢一些声音设计，比如手表的嘀嗒声，玻璃杯的嗡嗡作响等等。
陀螺何苦又何必翻拍这。前面不到一小时的马戏团部分显然是最好的，各种奇幻蒙太奇轮番亮相，但作为铺垫又是冗长的，两年后的叙事迅速泄气，大魔王也无法救场，而且跟鲁妮玛拉的对手戏就几句话就没了？定位有偏差，想制作一部古典惊悚黑色电影，但显然小题大做，也不适合如今时代（除了美学）。
充满震慑力的主线也好，丛生而相互关联的支线也好，都非常适合陀螺按自己的风格发挥。
导演功力深厚，主角玩火自焚，最喜欢的最后一幕很有张力，把对主角这个人物的讽刺以及悲剧体现得淋漓尽致。赞一个中文名翻译。
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。
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
三星半，结局太惨了，别人怎么说都不听。非要沦落至此，这是人性使然吗？
#流动马戏团
AMC 没看过老版的，故事节奏很差，导致两个半小时让我觉得过于拖沓，毫无必要；马戏团真没必要着墨这么多，和后面的故事发展有很大的割裂感。其他方面都很好，有点可惜。好莱坞大概真的拍无可拍了，不是炒冷饭就是炒冷饭，还炒不好，食之无味。
好工整的电影。what a crazy world
都1202年翻拍70多年前的片子了，那不精致点还能说的过去吗？给R级加一星，搭配不搞预言，搞人物前史的一小笔冲出了更浓的精神分析味儿，男主的悲惨宿命已经不是当年的自我发现和救赎，而变成了当今时髦的自己作的活该。
靠一些Carol情结（又是rabbit又是Christmas然而魔兔全程无互动 很好奇如此无聊的剧情怎么拍到两个半小时的不如去看freak show 以及第一次发现Cooper侧脸好像Ralph😑
结局真是讽刺啊。。兜兜转转回到原点了
You don't fool people. They fool themselves.
对不起，欧洲人对公平的追求超越了对效率的渴望。也有可能我被美式管理术PUA了。
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