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".
7.6/10 #2020观影补标 即便酣畅淋漓，但是归根结底这种倾向性是高度危险的，即便它甚至与我的个人观点相符合，因为我们深知它在“服务”于什么，且力图“刺激”什么，所以本质上这类影片和单调重复的肾上激素性商业类型片并无二，只是在用另一种催化剂而已。
对美国的很多制度都不是很了解，通过这部电影又可以知晓一二，小雀斑看着不言不语的，最后开始念名字终于高光。另一位主演对汤姆·海登的评价没有错，是真正的爱国者。
索金的剧本和剪辑依然出色，密集的信息量依然带来了等量的爽感，外加这样的全明星卡司拍法庭戏真的好奢侈。最后有点《辩护人》那味儿了。敬佩这样的一群斗士们。
无论是要流血就在全世界面前流，还是最后宣读一个个因越战死去的士兵名字，你都可以把他划分到政治作秀去。可是，政治作秀本质上并不是贬义词，其关键点在于他所要阐述的是否事实和其背后所追求的目的是什么？强权可以轻易干扰司法公正，警察可以随意摘下徽章，但自由思想不会因此而灭种。
are we allowed to talk about it?
独权真可怕，每个人都在以百万分之一的概率幸运活着。
索金的剧本就不吹了，但他对于自己的剧本依然无法进行取舍，整部电影仍然是被剧本支配带着跑，铺陈满密集对白和庞大信息量的法庭辩论、会议演讲、示威游行以及纪录片段，没有给予片刻让观众停下来思考喘息，你知道它所批判所要表达的，但影片结束后并不会被感染不会被煽动不会去反思，这是电影技法和视听的失败不是剧本的。在看的时候一直会想要是大卫芬奇、贝尼特米勒或者原定的绿草或老斯来处理这个剧本会是什么样？
最后歌曲响起很感动，虽然对那段历史不太了解，也看得出是美国一贯的电影风格，追求自由才是宪法精神。
这部电影的台词就是一切，酣畅淋漓的俩小时；“60s outside the bar, 50s inside the bar”
法官大概是被告派的卧底，帮助被告塑造受害者形象
电影拍的很不错，几场法庭戏十分精彩，如果2020年10月之前看，我会热血沸腾，但全程围观了2020年底那场丑陋的选举回头再看，只能感叹那种公正，民主，正义的社会土壤已经变质，美国再也不是人人向往的世界灯塔。
10-18 去年就出了，就收藏了，竟然拖了一年还没看，大概因为觉得是庭审相关的会有些不感兴趣，但是昨天又突然觉得能静下心来看它了，就点开了。讲越战的，最近是把美国的历史捋得越来越清楚了，这场战争真的是从影视剧里认识的，但是也就这两年才看懂了。This is us里按照生日来征兵，教父2结尾里michael自愿参军，去年看的《早安越南》基本绕不开越战。（准备去多看点相关的纪录片和电影了），这里是讲本土民众如何反对战争的，台词紧凑毕竟是索尔金，就还是蛮好看的，有些写的真好。但是人物太多了，有点流水。
工整，利落，好看！雏菊和鲜血背后的爱与勇气。亟须永志莫忘
那個時期青年反抗運動的訴求在於，不希望看到同胞們為了當政者的意識形態，而去參與一個不屬於公平正義、不屬於維護自己國家安全、不知為何而戰的戰爭行為，當然還有更重要的……Make Love Not War。
7.8 对法庭逼逼片一直都很有好感，这片毛病不少，但看着挺爽。
The whole world is watching.
太激动人心了，镜头语言和剧本编排都超好，最喜欢嬉皮士。
法官大概是被告派的卧底，帮助被告塑造受害者形象
Best liberal porn in a while and had a nice shout out to Brandeis lol.
看的同时想参与他们的活动…头一次觉的游行这么有价值
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