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".
克隆人完全成了原来的她，忍受着原来的一切。
不是开放结局，就是克隆身活下来了，但也是痛苦地活着。这创意可以拍出更加好看的影片，浪费了。
其实观影过程挺煎熬的，这种冷淡的幽默把握不好就是冷场，《自卫的艺术》是我的底线了，结尾可以说是开放的，但我还是觉得本体完蛋了。
如果是克隆体活着，这部片子只能打三星。
一小时要能复制出个人想想还是很恐怖的
本来以为是励志片，原来是嘲讽中年人生的虚伪和丧…
人生就是一杯咖啡，闻着是香的，尝起是苦的。
5.5
喜欢第一和第三个故事，前者是对未知的恐惧慢慢探索，最后来一个柯南伯格式的身体恐怖，而后者也一样是以身体恐怖继续延展，恐怖的地方不在于形象，而是那个异化过程。
总体不如《自卫艺术》，冷淡和慢吞吞是这导演的风格，不过拖到90分钟有点过分了。
我本来以为活下来的是克隆，看评论又觉得是本体
最后死掉的应该是original，被copy毒死了。判断依据是妈妈和男友对她投以蜜汁笑容，说明他们俩都知道这个人是copy，而且妈妈还给她买了隐形眼镜(遮盖眼珠颜色)。copy蹩脚的开车技术和对车祸的描述也是copy的语言风格。
克隆题材、最开始埋下的眼睛颜色不一样的伏笔，我就猜到最后估计会是一场交换人生。但是因为女主的妈妈和男主都太畜生了，我一直隐隐期待着一场正义暴杀，意思是最后周围人都以为成功活下来的是他们所期待活下来的克隆体，但是其实是我们女主哒！中间还认真替导演思考了一下，如果决斗场的话怎么交换呢？所以她们两个一起决定私奔的时候我兴奋地：来了来了！就是现在！然后女主死了😅…。其实直到女主微笑着吐血为止我都不愿意相信这个烂片居然真的敢这么拍，是不是想气死观众，所以接下来哪怕剧情疯狂暗示活着的是克隆体，我也：等反转！然后就结束了😅！如果要拍开放式结局的话根本不用拍女主吐血那个镜头，一开始水是克隆体掏出来的，以及她催女主多喝点，喝的时候一直偷看她这几点就够了，喝都喝了还反转什么啊女主是做了一年格斗训练不是抗毒啊
这部电影还可以吧，若果你不认真观看你就不知道里面隐藏了多少秘密。
这部电影科幻部分很少，仅仅体现在克隆技术上，其他部分与当下世界无异，甚至感觉里面制定法律法规粗暴简单！到最后我也不关心哪个活下来，因为不被需要那个已经”死去“！
让克隆人替代本尊进入本尊死后的生活，这从根本上不是延续而是否定。
一口唾沫子就克隆出一个人出来，看整个场景科技不就跟现今一个样么？这一点，《天鹅挽歌》的细节就做得非常到位。
女主成了替身的替身！创意是好的…就女主像机器人一样背台词…
本来是要来替代绝症患者的克隆人，阴差阳错两人都活了下来，法律竟然规定决斗解决。女主钱不够付战斗课学费，代替付款的“潜规则”令人喷饭。最值得玩味的是当事人男友和母亲的态度，他们宁愿要脾气更好的克隆人留下，真女儿去死。这就意味着：个人不仅在社会中可替代，在家庭和亲密关系中也是一样可替代的，他人需要的只是你的一些功能而不是你本身。创作者的消极人生观令人绝望。
蛮喜欢这种能够引起社会话题和情节讨论的电影。
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