I probably watched it 100 times in high school, although I probably haven't put it on in this decade. And how does it look now that Uncle Fuzzy has replaced my old Betamax copy? Well the first thing I noticed was the fine detail of the bored-housewives this teenage vampire gets mixed up with, and how that milieu really does affect their behaviour and hence the plot. I noticed that the bits of romantic dialogue that I used to find shudderingly cheesy are DELIBERATELY that, because that's how these people would actually talk. I noticed that old Tata Cuda, the colonel-sanders-like uncle who is out to save Martin's soul, is not completely unsympathetic, not due to anything the conservative old codger actually does, but due to the fact that Lincoln Maazel's performance is - I can hardly even type it - UNDERSTATED. I noticed that Romero's smoking-priest cameo is even more hilarious and apt than I remembered it. I saw how this guy can barely pack into one movie everything he's trying to get across, new stuff just keeps happening - he's not connecting the dots or marking time, he's inventing something new. And I asked myself again whether this puberty-parable-for-grownups is an even greater film than Romero's anticapitalism-for-teenyboppers. And once again I just dunno.
Review of Martin
