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".
一部温情的西部片，故事简单温和，伍德老爷子一把年纪还这么高产，劳模啊！和小朋友成了忘年交，一路很欢快。
老爷子很起范儿，尽管动作缓慢，但一看就知道很强大，老少配的公路片就有点平庸，挺美好的，没有什么紧张气氛。Macho，是对硬汉片的反思。
i don't know how to cure "old".
东木还想变年轻吧，只是已经给剧情推着走了…
英雄迟暮，互相救赎，最后拥抱真爱，剧情不是很新鲜，感觉看的是情怀
It is old-fashioned but surprisingly timely, and its clean, spare style feels classical because it’s fluent and clear-minded. Eastwood seems to be one of the few remaining filmmakers committed to conscientious storytelling.
成也東木，敗也東木。但是这是东木，没有什么电影是败，只是看东木想要玩什么
东木大爷精神上依旧是那个老派的牛仔，但身体明显跟不上了。
其实现在看东木的唯一意义就是看着他一点点老去
东木老爷就保持这个节奏！拍到一百多岁我就随时保持跟进！
如何温柔地与现实妥协，脚步放缓的同时也试图想让一切变的更加细水长流，让所有的美好都更加美好，让所有的温情都更加动人，没有任何技巧，没有任何所谓的套路与转折，只看到我们自己内心真正想要的东西。不过可以看出最后的倔强依然也在被保留和坚持，这趟关于西部情怀的公路之旅，是应该让当下花花世界所看到的，需要被铭记的那段回忆与歌谣。所有美好到不真实的瞬间都或许是自己享受过的梦境，不愿醒来，因为醒来的时候眼角会湿润。
牛仔帽，公路，夕阳，老爷车，浪漫邂逅，还是我心目中的东木，剧本已经不重要了，感觉到了就很满足，老爷子撑住啊，我还想再看十部
听倔驴讲电影解说完的，生命结束前总要和什么和解~
从没见过这样慈祥的东木。墨西哥小镇让我想起了西部执法者里的乌托邦庄园。
不像东木。时间回到80年代初，当时的东木拍了西部的《不屈不挠》与公路的《天涯父子情》，这次又是部黄昏牛仔的公路片。后半段有点崩（中间点关于信仰）。危险源于小孩、他人、自然、自我。
我日啊……..这片子到底存在的意义是啥，东木老爷爷你是想要电影里来段夕阳红？？？？
岁月不饶人，东木真的老了！故事本身就是老套的剧情，还有点西部情怀的成分！越看越少的东木电影！
其实他还健康的偶尔拍拍东西，我们就该感恩了不是吗，这就足够了。
东木老爷子依然创作力旺盛，可也想着休息咯～
67/100。相较于《骡子》《理查德·朱维尔的哀歌》这两部还带有一定指向性的前作来说，克林特·伊斯特伍德在本片中则完全褪掉了对社会现象的自我认知，而转成了一个耄耋之年的老人与生活达成的某种自我和解。很多可能在他年轻时的电影中变得“刺激”“惊险”的桥段被磨平了所有棱角，只剩下一种淡淡的温柔思索，让人窥见了暮年英雄心中最静谧的一面。当然这样的处理方法一方面让人舒心，另一方面还是让全片显得有些不伦不类，让那些矛盾点变得来也匆匆、去也匆匆，只能远观，不能细看。
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