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".
2022-03-17
To me this is more about extended mental illness produced by hereditary and environment.
it's all warm and fluffy until you realize there's almost nothing Disney cannot capitalize on, including generational trauma...
套路的母女矛盾，对亚裔家庭的欧美式刻板想象，多伦多符号输出，看完这个再回想瞬息全宇宙，至少人家的设定够牛
皮克斯当然不差，可总觉得那一面镜子就把是非红白划分出来，实在是太低龄了。
现在已经不大喜欢这种借一个情欲故事来探讨亲子关系或者别的什么所谓精巧的剧本，除了有些撩人的情欲之外，其实没多大意思，因为这些探讨充满刻意的“假”，这是不真实的，并不存在这种探讨和后来的醒悟，不过是种文艺的幻想
我抑郁症发作的时候，也希望可以变成这种人见人爱、好友抱抱的小熊猫啊！
Don’t hold yourself back for anyone, the farther you go the prouder I am T_T
亚裔女性视角的青春成长故事，时代背景与母女关系的刻画与阮凤仪的《美国女孩》有相似之处。传统华人家庭里家长式管教与西方环境里孩子个性自由之间的冲突，千禧年代感的细节相当惊喜。人物变身小熊猫的设计具有多重隐喻，不论是女性自身生理成熟的暗示、种族身份的指代，或者是女性精神压抑的标志，都留下了充分的解读空间，这和皮克斯去年《夏日友晴天》里人物变身与性向暗示的表达异曲同工。
哪一个东雅女孩不是这样被规训着长大的，母亲也曾经是叛逆的少女。母女和解那段我爆哭😭
卡通片想摆脱陈腔滥调真的很难，一旦说了一，二三四五六就会接着来，顺手得就像学会了骑自行车，忘都忘不掉。
對我而言堪稱是“中式（或廣式）家庭子女的噩夢重現”，被時刻與更完美的人設（父母自己或者別人家的孩子）進行比較，永遠要壓抑自己內心的需求，永遠要帶著對叛逆的負疚感，朋友要經過篩選，不能行差踏錯，永遠要選擇他們認為的正確答案，才能被認可。一旦不能成為他們所預期的那類人，會得到“生舊叉燒都好過生你”的指責。絕大多人沒有機會像美美那樣，得到嚴苛父母的一句“對不起”，哪怕父母的錯已嚴重扭曲了一個孩子的認知，內化成了是孩子自己選擇的人生，即便這並不適合ta，即便會給ta的人生留下巨大的禍根。想起前不久跟我媽溝通的那樣，她說自己喜歡“乖的小孩”，我便表明“她其實根本不喜歡孩子，因為懂事和乖，不是孩子的天性，我也是，所以我不應該要孩子。”
论皮克斯是怎么把第一印象很差的角色形象掰到超级可爱的… 男团很辣眼睛，但是细想不也是对应着我们年少时不忍直视的爱好或行为吗？
脸谱又低幼，而且我真不明白美国人为啥觉得“性需求”就这么重要，13岁的孩子追星多是单纯喜欢美好的事物，根本不是因为性幻想好吧。
一部显然是关于中国女性为家庭牺牲自我个性和欲望的故事。
乖惨了哈哈哈哈哈哈哈，成长鸡汤啥的无所谓，难得有个华裔主角故事，还有我们的小熊猫宝！
单独看Asian American的故事还是可以的，但是故事本身还是个皮克斯经典故事内核套了个异域文化壳子的电影……没啥新意也没有很感人。。
講Asian story的方式已大大進步了 不過感性上來說我是不能想象一個典型東雅家庭存在這麼美式溫情的和解的。
(●￣(ｴ)￣●) 成长是怪兽，可怕又可爱
仪式和幻境段落还算有趣，整体不如预告片。可能总有一天东亚的女儿要鼓起勇气对妈妈说，我没有那么完美，让你失望了。
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