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".
▫️接纳自己的身体和欲望，停止对自己的刻薄，是每个人都应该摸索学习的，但是更多时候我们并不一定有这个机会。
作为一个女性，对这部片子的感受绝不是简单几个标签能概括的。艺术性上并不值得五星（有些情节过于强调符号意义了，反而略显刻意），可是社会意义更大。爱玛汤普森绝对我辈楷模。
拍的很省钱，场景只有一个酒店，两个主要人物。可以说英国有其开放的一面，但对于我来说，多少有些接受无能。
非常动人。作为一个从高中时代就开始对“大龄剩女”主题电影心有戚戚的三十岁女子，能感受到“nancy”对于性、对于自身欲望的谨慎、渴慕、敬畏、紧张，也能感受到她身上好为人师的强势、打破砂锅问到底的"执着"、看似维持礼貌体面但其实并不关心他人感受的自我中心。有时候会想，她都五六十了，还没有过高潮，这个人设是不是太夸张，其实并不，每个人都是某种夸张的人。。。其实精神内核非常朴实，朴实得不像是电影节电影，无非不就是“悦纳自我”的人本主义，但这个故事本身非常动人。
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非常棒！快两个小时一点都不闷！最喜欢女机长和她那段suddenly。爱上女机长！
看不下去，忍受不了古典音乐舞台剧的调调，墨迹造作看着舞台表演的脱离现实的夸张矫情感到恶心，看了三十多分钟看不下去了，然后有600多个自觉高级的小资在哪里跪拜鼓吹附庸风雅中获得自己正当时，自己存在于高雅的这个圈子里，获得有知识有想象的文化归属地位，有品位的高等人的自我确认标签，无异于圈内自嗨，让人感到那种中世纪贵族故作风雅的那种恶心感。
文广还我现场版！这个故事太好了，消防员的妈妈，女机长，中东男穆斯林...连毛孩子都被照顾到了。20 Anniversary of 9-11
看了一半实在忍不下去了。americanism epitome and condescending PC. 用圣经与黑人交流的桥段令人反胃
So wonderful, so so wonderful!
今夜我们无人入睡。
通透可爱，虽然不免落入俗套，但是前几次的会面写得太好了，不必拥有一些普世的真理，只要面对自己的身体，你是我唯一冒过的险，尽头处是自己的欢愉。有没有人知道我需要存够多少钱才能在伦敦召到这样的🦆？有学到一些词汇。
I’m an islander ，I am an islander！
有了Ham的官摄在前，这次反而觉得还是录音更好听。（果然还是要先看现场版啊！近距离摄像丢了太多细节了）
三十六行，行行出状元，好敬业的鸭。
有了Ham的官摄在前，这次反而觉得还是录音更好听。（果然还是要先看现场版啊！近距离摄像丢了太多细节了）
女导演。没有放过「这是一场金钱的交易」，这很关键。所有的注意力都在女性愉悦上，完全没在意男鸭完不完美现不现实，女性愉悦大于一切。当然，这一点也使全片与各方面都完美的男鸭得以自洽。
好喜欢。去追求浮于现实之上的一切，fantasy，pleasure，而不是执着于现实的泥沼。
前半部走的情节路线，都是能预料到的，但一切直到女主开始引入真实生活，建立在虚拟人设之上的关系忽然映照到现实里，幻想被残暴撞碎，现实又如何自处，这一点正正好好才终于打到“会喜欢的电影”上。与年上发展的性式心理咨询，最终成长为心理和解，也许才是最终让人释怀的点吧。今年看到现在最喜欢的性喜剧
我们每个人活在世上一辈子，身上背负着多少道德、伦理、价值……等等，我们相互评判，又相互伤害；我们自我评判，又自我伤害……唯有放下，才能自由。
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