I think Martin was this crazy mixed-up adolescent kid who only thought he was a vampire.
You've seen Guy Standeven in something because the man was in everything.

I lean towards yes he is 84 because he is Cuda's cousin. I don't see a big age gap like that between cousins.

I didn't see any ambiguity in this. I didn't see anything at all that suggested that he was really a vampire.
I don't know where people got that the black and white scenes were flashbacks. The movie never says that. Did none of you "he was a vampire" people notice that those scenes just happened to completely coincide with whatever he was really doing at the time? They were just "romanticized" delusions of what he was really doing at the time. Like he was in the clothes store getting rid of his bloody clothes and the cops are coming for him, but in his mind he imagines himself as this movie-style vampire also cleaning blood off himself and movie-style angry villagers coming after him. or when he is going through the house up the stairs to attack another woman, in his mind he sees himself again as the movie-style vampire in some romantic scene with the woman inviting him up the stairs. He was just a messed up kid from a messed up family. It's not that complicated.

The modern plumbing in the flashbacks lead me to believe the psychotic interpretation: Martin could base his false memories on period films, so that costume, candles etc would seem realistic, but would he have seen period plumbing in a film? His mind would fill in the gaps with objects he was familiar with.
This can be also viewed in a different way: A real memory can be altered by later experiences. As more time passes a memory is less clear and gains a different shape. That doesn't mean that the basis of memory is false. Just another viewpoint on that flashbacks. The film is still perfectly ambiguous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#Early_Modern_Europe
The toilet is as old as Martin in a form very similar to the modern toilet, so, it's not impossible that these scenes were taking place in like 1910
And of course it could have just been an editing mistake.
But, I honestly choose not to have a position on whether he's a vampire or not but old cousin with family birth records, etc would need some kind of explanation to be able to completely dismiss that he's as old as he says.

Our stereo typical vampire is based partly on the writings of Bram Stoker but also on film portrayals. The canine "fangs" only appear since 1956/7. Most of what we "know" about vampires has no basis in folklore (Let alone fact)
If Martin is a vampire, he would not necessarily follow the modern stereotype. The vampire interpretation and the psychotic interpretation are both viable.
The modern plumbing in the flashbacks lead me to believe the psychotic interpretation: Martin could base his false memories on period films, so that costume, candles etc would seem realistic, but would he have seen period plumbing in a film? His mind would fill in the gaps with objects he was familiar with.

Very interesting movie
But a lot of what we believe must hinge on the fact that his "cousin" is about 73 and he is about 27 at most.
Nearly 50 year age gap between the offspring of siblings is very odd. Coupled with the flashbacks and so on
If he is not as old as they both say he is (and don't forget the family records), then he is very crazy along with his "cousin".
Either way, I greatly enjoyed this movie, and have to say that it is probably the oldest horror movie that I can enjoy on a pure level.

I didn't think he was supposed to actually be 84 - for starters, a lot of the 'flashbacks' looked like they would have to have taken place a lot longer ago than that, so I didn't take them for any kind of reality - although I did wonder how his cousin was so much older than him
I think the black and white scenes were, like a few others have said, fantasies. He repeats throughout the film "I'm not a vampire, its just a sickness". To me, he's referring to a social or psychological malaise brought on by the weight of generations of religious paranoia in his family. Perhaps he and his relatives before him have been driven to act like 'vampires' but they're not supernatural creatures, more like disturbed individuals.
He's beyond socially inept - crippled by shame and shyness - to such an extreme degree that he feels compelled to drug and rape women before drinking their blood and (I presume) leaving them for dead. He tries to do it the 'kindest' way possible; it seems as though he would like to think of it as intimacy, but their cries and struggles always betray the true nature of the endeavour. Even if it's consensual he's terrified of it, however; the first time a woman shows sexual interest in him, he literally runs a mile. But if you notice, the women in the b&w sequences are nearly always welcoming him in some way, they're seduced by him. So I think the vampire myth is a way of romanticizing his actions, to shield him from the true horror of his impulses. But it's also the end of him, as he'll never get away from the baying crowds who persecute him for acting on them.
I also like the idea that he is actually a vampire - just not THAT sort of vampire. As someone else pointed out, it's a good metaphor for teen angst he might have started out as a healthy, if eccentric, boy but he's been forced into deviancy by his cousin's proselytizing.

He is a 84 year old vampire and the b/w shots were flashbacks, perhaps to his first kill.
Somebody here has been drinking and I'm sad to say it ain't me - Allan Francis Doyle

The real question should be 'what is a vampire'?
If liking to drink human blood is what defines a vampire, then yes, he is.
If fangs, magical powers, and a physical aversion (or uncontrollable repulsion) to crosses, garlic, and the sun make a vampire, then no, he's not.
It seems pretty clear that the film is open to interpretation. Are martin's flashbacks memory, or delusions? Are the voices that he hears his vampire instincts, or some form of insanity? Regardless, it provides us with something compelling to consider and contemplate.

I don't think it's ambiguous at all, but I also don't think that Romero shoves the answer in our face.
Think about it, he's definitely familiar with gothic/mythical depictions of vampires (when he speaks to that DJ, when he scares Tada Cuda a strange scene being that he's trying to convince Cuda of the lack of magic, but then again, he is unhinged), and from the countless old photos found in the house (which the camera often focuses on), he can create images of the mob and his victims. All of them were delusions; as people said before they came from his mental instability and Cuda's own ridiculous beliefs/Martin's environmental upbringing.
As an aside, I really appreciate this film, and I love the irony of the ending.

It's the ambiguity that makes Martin such a brillIant film.
I interpret that the characters are clearly emotionally unbalanced.
I love the argument of Old World superstition vs. New World reasoning.
"Your soul is damned, Nosferatu" vs. "There is no real magic"
Amazing film!
Sorry for rambling.

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And just to continue this threadGREAT movie with an ending that came out of left field. Was he a vampire? If Romero said he wasn't, then he wasn't. Period.

A vampire is a supernatural creature, and there's absolutely nothing supernatural happening in this film. He has flashbacks where he is chased by a bunch of angry people who thinks he's a vampire, and so what? They all seem crazy on his side of the family. Personally I hated the film, I thought it was really bad in many aspects and in particular the story. It's just a shallow serial killer movie with artsy pretentions, uninteresting empty characters, and a vampire flavour that seems here only to cash in on Romero's fame in the horror genre. Everyone seems to love the film on this board so I'll just disappear quietly like a bat in the night.

Last watched:
http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=7838626

how the hell can you not know 911 is the number to call if you have an emergency? But back then, in some small hokie-podunk Pennsylvanian town, who's to say?
Since her lover was there and she didn't want the affair to be discovered by her husband, she didn't want to call 911. I was under the impression that the number that she couldn't remember was the number for the hospital, which she obtained from information (and Martin interfered with her attempts to dial). Furthermore, in 1977, 911 wasn't the well-known thing that it is today matter of fact, many areas didn't even have the service back then (and there's still like 4% of the USA that doesn't have 911 services
today
).

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Aside from what Romero has supposedly said in an interview, I will say that he is (was) 84 years old and the whole point of the movie was that Martin was a real vampire but due to Hollywood's depiction of such creatures and Religious mania or old superstition manja, it has distorted the facts which make it easy for one (a vampire) to move about and kill people.
I also feel that the flash backs are real and Martin, a wierd looking kid who's detached is as normal as anybody else with no super powers and or because of his condition he suffers both emotionally and physically from it. Today, such cases could be look at as a rare blood condition but back then (31 years ago) hey
and my point is,
how the hell can you not know 911 is the number to call if you have an emergency? But back then, in some small hokie-podunk Pennsylvanian town, who's to say?

I watched this last night, and I gotta say it is a really interesting movie! I think the "family curse" was generational madness myself. I think there is much more proof to that end then there is of him actually being nosferatu. Anyway, I will definitely be watching this one again!

But at the same time, if the flashback sequences are just fabrications in Martin's mind, maybe he himself had a slip in logic? Maybe just a hint at the flaw in his fantasy?

In one of the "flashbacks", a priest is performing an exorcism in a bathroom. Martin is standing in front of a modern sink, and when the camera moves to the right, you see a modern toilet. For a movie as well-crafted as this one, that seems like a glaring oversight.

He's not 84. He wasn't born in the 19th century. He's not a vampire. He's just a messed-up homicidal kid. There is no evidence that he really is a vampire. All of the creepy flashback scenes being in black and white, with period clothing and furniture (including a girl carrying candles in the dark instead of electric lights) were not flashbacks in reality but what this screwed up little boy imagined he remembered after a lifetime of being raised by lunatics like the colonel sanders wannabe.
If he is a vampire, a nosferatu as his insane "cousin" insists, with the superhuman ability to live 8 decades yet appear only as a teenager or preteen, why then doesn't he have any other superhuman powers that vampires are endowed with? Why can't he control people's or wild animal's actions, grow fangs, turn into a bat or wolf, crawl around on walls, have super human strength that could wipe out any cops, motorcycle gang members, drug dealers etc. instead of running in fear? Why does he need to get his blood by drugging victims to sleep and then slicing their veins open?
As someone else said, George Romero can say whatever he wants. It's his story. Nonetheless, he still leaves it open. In this regard, his opinion isn't any more influential than our own. The question is still open, which is how it should be. It's like did Arnold really dream all that adventure in Total Recall or was it real? Is this kid really a vampire or just a mixed up kid made even more mixed up surrounded by kooky lunatics? I think that it's more likely that this is a case of severe mental illness running in a family, not vampirism.
I may be wrong, but I doubt it. I think that we are supposed to question for a moment the possibility that this kid may be a creature and not human, so we can empathize with the "cousin", understand life through his eyes. Clear proof is never generated for either side (although there are substantial clues) and that makes the ultimate outcome and overall theme of the film, all the more powerful and chilling. It's a case of superstition gone haywire, out of control, leading to one senseless death after another(culminating in the old man killing Martin). Martin was already unbalanced and the normal confusions of an adolescent combined with his mental instability AND being condemned as an evil beast created a culture of murder that continues with the patriarch of the family burying the corpse of a child in his backyard as if he were doing God's work.