Exclusive Video Premiere: VHS Wanna Be Exsanguinated In “Martin, Martin”

With his 1977 film Martin, director George Romero — best known for defining the zombie horror genre with Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead — brought moviegoers something far scarier than vampires: vampire wannabes. The film’s titular character isn’t an ageless bloodsucking ghoul, he’s a psychotic young man who kills people because he thinks he is. The film added a disturbing psychological element to vampire horror as a whole, reminding viewers that it’s their love of murder and bloodshed which really makes the undead scary. Now, death metal horror hounds VHS have paid homage to this cinematic gem with the video for their track “Martin, Martin.”

As you’ll see below, the video for “Martin, Martin” really locks down what makes the film it’s based on such a gem. One minute, it’s a bunch of goofy church-bound, cape-wearing vampire shit; the next, someone is getting drugged and exsanguinated in a bath tube. The track, meanwhile, is a gnarly, grungy death metal stomper, which is of course what the Canadian maniacs (Canadiacs?) in VHS are good for. The scariest part of the video, comes at the end, when the band capture footage of an actual vampire on camera. Swear to God, dude.

Says the band’s own Mike Hochins:

“We’ve worked with Tony [Newton] before and he has a very cool shot on video style that really matches what we are going for with the band. It’s part campy, part disturbing and raw in all of the right ways. The song itself is very Macabre influenced and something a bit  different from our usual sound. We threw some synths in there, the distorted vocals are something we’ve never really played around with before and even the samples are used in a slightly different way then we normally would. It still sounds like VHS but is a slight detour for sure.” 

Check out our exclusive premiere of the video for “Martin, Martin” below. VHS’s vampire-themed album I Heard They Suck…Blood can be listened to below.