This is thoroughly a 70’s vampire movie. I mean, who travels by train? A Suspicious Suspect, that’s who! And when things start playing out rather quickly, even Bill Cosby would be proud. Damn. Too soon?
Martin is going to Pittsburgh. By train. He’s a fairly young-looking lad who has some particular nocturnal behaviors involving needles and razor blades and women. Needless to say, he seems a bit...off. His grandfather/uncle/cousin Cuda takes him in, shelters him, and tells him straight up, fuck you, Nosferatu! (except in more Catholicly terms) But basically...You’re the family problem, we take care of our own. Just follow the rules. Cuda’s granddaughter, also living at the house, has her doubts on the whole old-world mythologies. Martin? He is a strange bird. Is he a vampire like his cousin grandaddy thinks, a family curse known for generations? Well, it’s...complicated?
We go between the current state of affairs and some B&W flashback-looking gothy melodramas. The scenery is considerably different, but the chasings are always the same. The story might move a little slow, it still has some interesting juxtapositions with some maybe puberty-kinda sex stuff, parallels to drug culture, and, well, being a vampire in the 1970s, but with none of that hokey-pokey magic myths kinda shit. Or sparkles. Allegedly. Romero does a decent job doing an odd emotional take on the modern vampire here. In the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Who’da thunk?
