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".
至于故事本身，只有一点，永远别相信男人的鬼话…
布兰切特和库珀的心智斗法看得我如痴如醉，尤其最后摊牌那里两腿一软差点给大魔王下跪。其他没啥可说的，陀螺的暗黑风格很适合拍人心鬼蜮的故事，就是有时候氛围过于诡谲拉高了期待，直接导致假高潮...
圣经咏唱:本人认为河浪荣作还没有达到胜任监督这一职位的领域。本人认为河浪荣作还没有达到胜任系构这一职位的领域。因此请求京都动画公司不再启用河浪荣作当担监督与系构职位。
画风依旧无可挑剔！但就是cp大乱炖实在是受不了啊啊啊…还有嗑上金城和清哥哥了！
看完有段时间了，但是还得当时看完后脑子里的第一反应：不愧是你啊陀螺。
拍得非常精致，摄影、服装、化妆、灯光等都相当讲究、舒服，演员表演也很克制。这部影片翻拍过几次，按理说故事应该没什么问题，关键在于整体节奏、悬念、手法的创造和运用。现在看，镜头运用似乎还是比较平稳、传统，难以让人感受到新奇之处。
【C+】第一幕的时长就足以说明陀螺的马戏团情结，过分狂热，也过分庞杂，几乎没有给影像任何喘息的空间，视觉元素眼花缭乱的同时却又无法把握真正的视觉重心。而到了影片的后半段，却又显得过于简略，正如通灵仪式一样的空洞实质。镜头运动从未停歇，哪怕其内部蒙太奇已经完全，也执意要继续无用的运动。只有结局是恰到好处的收敛，宿命论的工整剧作下终于平静地凝视那张入魔的面孔。
虽然脸会不太一样，但是，终于要来了！
想打人，期待了那么久，就这？魔兔五年再聚就这玩意儿？
一生都在制造魔法的陀螺，拍了一部关于骗局无限膨胀的电影来揭露魔法的虚假。
继歌舞片、乡愁体之后，马戏团也成了每个准大师的还愿刚需？前2/3冗长无趣的心理铺垫，甚至不如格雷《移民》般的流水情节剧有诗意，结局水准在线的收束处理，也突兀得如女心理师反水般莫名其妙。
不用借托美轮美奂的空镜头呈现其摄影之精湛，仅靠镜头推移，即可告诉观众其摄影功底不可小觑。虽不知为何陀螺钟情于这个并不算难得惊艳的故事，但本片融入他自身所擅长的惊悚与奇幻氛围之后，完成度颇高，质感可见一斑。会拍电影的导演，仅用几个简单的镜头就能彻底拉开与平庸导演的距离，陀螺轻易就能做到。
一个衣冠情兽、玉面情魔的人物，和猩红山峰的设置像的。但这部叙事更好，有两个前后呼应，与“以前”的揭秘；缺点是两部同样是人物细节差点，只有叙事来支持，人设有但不丰满，库珀你也就觉得他好看，其他自私、不择手段都是叙事支撑。暗藏的大boss是大魔王，但以为的boss是鲫鱼啊，这选角和形象完全不行，感觉最多就是个管家。怪物最好的去除就是啃鸡脖子，前后呼应，但也是剧情的，没有那种形式化的描述就觉得不够啊；受过“恐怖表演”治疗的顾客都基本以死亡告终，所以最后的结局并不冤；2077拍电影，鲫鱼保镖适合演主角那个大个头拍档。
库珀一身noir劲装，但在你魔面前还是像个小受。
看怪人的旁观者最终成了怪人的参与者。两个半小时的暗黑氛围+暖橘色调，凯特美艳到真的很治疗失眠啊！奥斯卡妥妥陪跑电影。
不知为何我的初始信息导演是托德海因斯，全程惊掉下巴的我打开条目后终于释然：make sense.
继歌舞片、乡愁体之后，马戏团也成了每个准大师的还愿刚需？前2/3冗长无趣的心理铺垫，甚至不如格雷《移民》般的流水情节剧有诗意，结局水准在线的收束处理，也突兀得如女心理师反水般莫名其妙。
继姐妹之后，打响反抗“操纵者”第二枪的亮眼之作（非粉丝请忽略）
片名诚不欺我，真·划水的一部。不过出场的人倒是真全，随便划拉一个CP 磕就完了
前篇最后我也是一声叹息，想说虽然人生就是这种反反复复的鬼样子，但也不用如此一再描摹吧.....
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