On Thursday 23rd April 2026, we’re back downstairs at The Ill Repute for something colder, stranger, and deeply unsettling: Martin.

Directed by George A. Romero, this is the other side of his filmmaking; a side far removed from the chaos of the Of The Dead**** series. Martin trades apocalypse for intimacy, stripping the vampire myth down to its barest, most uncomfortable question: what if there’s nothing supernatural at all?

Set in a fading Pennsylvania steel town, the film follows Martin, a withdrawn young man sent to live with his deeply religious cousin, who is convinced he’s a centuries-old nosferatu. Martin himself isn’t so sure. There are no fangs here, no transformations, no gothic spectacle just syringes, razor blades, and carefully planned encounters that blur the line between delusion and something far darker.

Romero shoots it with a kind of grim poetry: washed-out streets, empty houses, and flashes of dreamlike black-and-white sequences that hint at a more traditional vampire past (or perhaps just the fantasies Martin clings to.) It’s eerie, melancholic, and quietly devastating.

More psychological horror than outright gore, Martin lingers in the grey areas; loneliness, identity, belief, and the danger of the stories we inherit. It’s one of Romero’s most underrated films, and arguably his most haunting.

If you’ve only seen his zombie work, this is a different kind of revelation.

• The Ill Repute, Old Market - downstairs cinema room
• Doors 7pm / Film 8pm sharp (no late entry)
• Free entry - first come, first served
• Drinks available upstairs