p 　　Martin John Amplas , a young man who looks around 二0-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 br 　　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 三九 s large house where he shows Martin his living quarters Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 八四-year-old vampire from his old country He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, quot First I will save your soul Then I shall destroy you quot 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 三九 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, quot There 三九 s no real magic ever quot 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 br 　　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 三九 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 三九 s boyfriend Arthur Tom Savini arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur 三九 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 br 　　When Christine sees that Martin won 三九 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 三九 s like to be a vampire He becomes known on the radio as quot the Count quot to all the listeners But the patronizing host Michael Gornick thinks he 三九 s just crazy br 　　Martin gets a job at Cuda 三九 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 br 　　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 三九 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 br 　　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 br 　　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 三九 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 三九 s playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire br 　　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 三九 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 br 　　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 三九 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 三九 s life, she probably won 三九 t br 　　Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he 三九 s getting quot shaky quot 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 三九 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 br 　　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 三九 t need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person But when Cuda learns about Mrs Santini 三九 s suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he 三九 s done before Cuda walks into Martin 三九 s room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin 三九 s heart br 　　Cuda buries Martin 三九 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 quot the Count quot p