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".
电影一开始就展现了一场决斗，高台上的女人，一定与她密切相关。但随着第一第二以及最后第三个视角的展开，我们才慢慢地发现，故事的确与这个女人有关，不过再一细想，又与这个女人完全无关。这个女人，只是父亲交易的一个筹码，只是丈夫的声誉（及泄愤工具），只是另一个风流倜傥男人又一个到手的猎物，还有大众餐桌上的谈资。我在想，假如这个女人，玛格丽特不说出真相呢？就像尚的母亲说的：真相并不重要，我也被强暴过。随着推移的镜头，我一下子被震住了。旧时代由于女人们隐忍着没有反抗，所以才持续着这种黑暗。活着，但是代价太大了，她们的女性后代永远都摆脱不掉这副枷锁。男人？女人当然需要男人们的支持，但归根结底，还得靠自己争取，一代人接着一代人，才勉强争取到现在一点点的权利。一个人在社会中，不可能只解放自己，而不解放他人。
有意思的是一些看似相同的场景在不同的POV中的展示。实际还是在探讨中世纪女性的地位和生存现状。
以前“强暴不是对女人施加的罪行，而是侵害她男性监护人的财产。”真可怕啊
人们在伪女权哀怨的时候，忽略了残酷的第一道前提是男人要先死。女人的不忠，在生物学上是毫无损失的，相对来说，男性会被取消生物意义。真正的客观是考虑当时的生产条件，而不是用天堂的法则去管地狱的事
兩個半小時不覺得沈悶，縱使故事講了三次，再看第三個故事的時候還是聚精會神。女性真的是最堅強的存在，無論如何都被看低和拿來作為籌碼，反抗需要莫大的勇氣。女主長髮好美，最近真的很常見Adam Driver。
还是很开心看到本马达再次联手编剧的，不过这次感觉前面稍微冗长了，到最后女性视角才有趣起来，也能理解为什么票房会扑街。朱迪科默太美啦，本和马达都啥造型啊（btw亚当司机在里面居然一直被夸英俊，作为粉丝我都爆笑如雷了
每个女观众都会感触很多吧。（到底他们/她们是怎么想的？让司机演这个角色，还能让所有人淡定的说出他好英俊这样的台词不止一次？？？我不理解。这角色就这么非他莫属吗？换个演员不行吗？
3.5。其实故事本身没有特别精彩，只是在叙事上搞了个小结构。女性确实挺惨的，决斗就是大戏了，前面一直让人有些跟不上趟……
故事还是很扎实的，不过三段的主观性本应通过视听表现，老雷这块儿有点儿行货那意思了。然而从思想性上，老雷八十多了可比某些年轻导演在平权上先进多了。
要拍不同视角就加大对比，不痛不痒地拍三遍更像省钱吧，细节抓的不好，立意也暧昧不清的，看在服化道的面子上及格分但是真的不值得1.0倍速😥
拍得四平八稳，结构冗余无效。决斗刺激过瘾，中世纪质感出彩。
年轻的朱迪科默在一众男星簇拥之下鲜花盛开，该为她日后的星途打开空间了吧。看了几十分钟才认出本阿费莱克来，汗。亚当德赖弗是个超强实力派演员，在《婚姻故事》中就有上佳表现，可惜被约翰斯嘉莉光环给遮盖了。
女权主义者的控诉，女人什么时候才能站起来？
感谢雷德利，从异形到末路狂花再到本片，一直致力于女性电影的发展。
雷老爷子的“罗生门”，影像传递出来的是导演一以贯之的历史厚重感，延续着一向以来的风格，用心之作。
斯科特真的是老女权了。《罗生门》式叙述讲这个故事恰到好处，叙事从容不迫，最后一段精彩的中世纪对决则把之前挤压的情绪全部用暴力的方式释放了出来，而这种暴力性、命运的随机感，起到的作用又不仅仅是释放情绪，它进一步升华了整部电影的议题。
罗生门式的讲述，决斗将女人的无力、矛盾与绝望推向高潮
拙劣、幼稚、浅薄的第三幕，令人发指。中世纪怎么拍能拍出花？好好学学范霍文的《冷血奇兵》吧。如果说雷公三十年前的《末路狂花》是走在时代前端的强音，那么这个第三幕就是跪舔当下的帮闲，谄媚而愚蠢！
阿里辞退周某那天看的，也就更有现实意义了，虽然眼下的”过气热点“，不可能被老雷以字幕圈出重点”The Truth“，甚至有可能依然不是真相，但古往今来的性别战争都在盔甲长枪的决斗场外，继续进行着。三个视角，除了至死是情圣的司机视角稍平之外，其他都很立体，人物丰富而饱满。只不过什么年代了，能不能不要再用英语讲非英语故事了呢？
D / 天呐，这真的是2021年该被拍出来的电影吗，花那么多投资整那么多服化道是为了什么，同为去年为数不多历史题材的电影，和这片比起来「圣母」是不是过于前卫了点。
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
