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".
【千影计划102】
受之前错误简介的误导，观影10分钟，差点让我以为下错电影。之前简介里，什么上世纪意大利母亲的，是编辑自己乱编的吧？影片基调与想象的不同。不是特别理解，母亲的困境与西班牙内战之间的关系。但是，最后殉葬坑那段，差点泪目。
他电影里的女性角色永远如此鲜活。历史和未来的连接，个人与社会的对应，被嵌在一个依旧狗血离奇的故事里。剧情发展缺乏新意，但在影院观看时依然非常享受。为Penelope Cruz的演出加了一星。
完全没有 对她说 吾肤 等等那种独特气质了 跟我去过的马德里没有区别 或许是一波人推崇的回归“真实”接地气？反正我更喜欢早期的作品
继Spencer瘫突然被Sally表白看懵我后又被这片潘突然被小女主亲吓倒。。。I would like to call them lesbians jump scare.
很久没有看到摄影这么古典主义风格的电影。另外有get到导演把抱错孩子的情节和挖掘尸体的情节是有内在联系的，但是还是感觉的割裂感非常严重，总体看下来感觉倒还是很不错的。
房子装饰颜色搭配都超漂亮 到处都少不了花花 甚至arutio家桌上小杯子里也有一支漂亮的郁金香 俩女主搞在一起本来还挺带感的20岁女孩爱上40岁姐姐但这条线戛然而止了就 不过她们这种选择成为single mom很正常也普遍的观念真好 本来就该如此
喜欢。死亡和新生，两段谎言被揭开，从私人的到宏观的，少了早年大胆奇特的犯罪戏码，多了一份《痛苦与荣耀》的温柔。这个简单的故事更是让阿莫多瓦驾驭地炉火纯青，不过有段剧情还是让我大呼WTF。看的时候才意识到是母亲节。（2022.5.8豆瓣7.2分）
感觉将两个不相容的故事结合在了一起。老梗并没有开出新的花朵。中间百合一段有点破坏整体节奏感。理解爱与性应该跨越性别。但包罗太多元素导致无法统一。
母亲的特殊情感和意外交联，未婚母亲的困局。
drama故事拖沓直白呈现 拔高主题也不能令我为之一震
然后又从母亲上升到人类，试图把传承、历史、伤痕这些厚重感的东西和女性联系到一起，但大师不知道让谁给忽悠瘸了，可能脑海里有个声音提醒他拐了拐了，于是他把剧情硬生生拐了过来。
又狗血又平淡，女人主宰世界吧，男人不是xxx年后会灭绝吗，挺好的。
除了弗朗哥历史部分，剩下的就像一部狗血的电视剧。
是无法理解明知不是自己亲生的还继续错下去也是醉了。
熟悉的阿莫多瓦，熟悉的莫兰迪，熟悉的女性主题…全片只有一个男性人物。但串联起历史变迁下对女性主义延续性和存在性的赞扬。失败的地方是剧情的割裂，孩子和考古像是在看两部电影。
继Spencer瘫突然被Sally表白看懵我后又被这片潘突然被小女主亲吓倒。。。I would like to call them lesbians jump scare.
阿莫多瓦的镜头下，永远充满着母性的悲悯与力量。不同于《痛苦与荣耀》凝聚着极为私人的情感，这一部电影借由佩内洛普的目光和言语，去勾勒出一个女性抉择与宏大的历史脉络之间相互映衬的联结。一方面是寻找逝去的亲人，一方面是忍住悲痛去讲出孩子的真相，而在这种女性独有的境遇之下，隐喻的是对于历史的正视与真相的寻找。虽然全片刚刚达到及格线，不过好在佩内洛普的发挥依然稳定。
母亲是阿莫多瓦重要的主题，其实是很狗血的抱错孩子的故事，但故事的走向不出所料走入猎奇向发展，但是看过几部阿莫多瓦后，这部明显还不够奇，但牵扯出关于民族历史政治，对于阿莫多瓦还挺稀奇的，当然色调还是很舒服。
影片应该算是阿莫多瓦的一部劣作，一个如此狗血的故事，各种漏洞都难以自圆其说，这对于一向以玩奇情著称的阿莫多瓦来说的确有失水准。看的出来阿莫多瓦这次有着更大的野心，他试图用两个母亲抱错孩子的世俗故事来观照出历史真相的挖掘，母亲的涵义要更广。然而由于撒狗血过量，导致叙事出现割裂，出现了一种诡异的感觉，最后的结尾有点儿强行捏和在一起，草草了解。
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