STACK #223 May 2023

CINEMA FEATURE

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THE MANY FACES OF RENFIELD

IT SUCKS TO BE RENFIELD

Alexander Grannach (1922)

Dwight Frye (1931)

Klaus Kinski (1970)

Jack Shepherd (1977)

The legend of Dracula is told like never before in the outrageous Renfield . Words Gill Pringle

N icolas Cage’s bizarro performance as Dracula in the new comedy horror movie Renfield is a role he was born to play, and it’s not just because he based the portrayal on his late father, author and film executive August Coppola. It’s also that Coppola introduced him to the legendary vampire at a tender age. Cage retains fond memories of his dad projecting 35mm black and white films on a screen in the family’s living room. Among them was 1929’s groundbreaking, silent Nosferatu , an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 book. The gruesome creature with a bald head and long, talon-like fingernails was seared into his memory. “Let me tell you something,” says Cage, 59. “When you see that movie when you’re five, with him doing those crazy things with his eyes and his fingers, that leaves an indelible impression!” When considering how he wanted to portray Dracula in Renfield , Cage mined the past for inspiration - Max Schreck, the German star of Nosferatu , was an influence, as was Christopher Lee, who starred in the many Dracula movies produced by England’s Hammer Films. He also appreciated the vulnerability of Gary Oldman’s take on the Count in 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula , directed by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. But his most direct influence

Roland Topor (1979)

Tony Haygarth (1979)

thought Dad would be a pretty good model for this character.” But the real star of the film, as the title suggests, is Dracula’s “familiar” Renfield (Nicholas Hoult), who has been working for his vampire master for more than a century, and wants out - inspired by attending self-help groups, where he finds tips on how to escape from an abusive relationship. Renfield first appeared in Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897, portrayed as an inmate at an asylum who consumes flies, spiders or birds to gain their ‘life force’ and attain a kind of immortality. Most famously, singer TomWaits took on the role in Bram Stoker’s Dracula . “Renfield’s just exhausted with the prospect of continuing to do Dracula’s dirty work,” says Hoult, 33. “He’s worn down, beaten down and looking for an escape or some sort of spark to return to his normal life, and what he misses. It’s a toxic relationship between Renfield and Dracula - they’ve been together for so long, and they really know how to push each other’s buttons.” One of Renfield’s defining attributes is gaining superhuman strength by eating bugs and insects, but when it came to training for the role, Hoult did not necessarily prepare for the number of bugs he would need to consume. Fortunately, most of them were made from confectionery, though he did chomp on various flavours of dried crickets, and at least one real insect. “They made caramel

Tom Waits (1992)

Peter MacNicol (1995)

Giovanni Franzoni (2012)

Nonso Anoozie (2013)

Samuel Barnett (2014) Mark Gatiss (2020)

Renfield isn’t Nicolas Cage’s first vampire comedy. He starred in Vampire’s Kiss (1988), a role afforded to him when Dennis Quaid declined and made Innerspace instead. DYK?

was an even closer relation. “My father was a very elegant man who spoke with a mid-Atlantic accent, and was impossibly intelligent,” Cage says. “He always knew he was the smartest man in any room he walked into. So, I

Nicholas Hoult (2023)

cockroaches, so I didn’t have to eat real ones,” he explains with a grin. “I would not recommend the potato bugs. They were very buggy in flavour.”

Renfield is in cinemas May 25.

26 MAY 2023

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