Ask any frequent moviegoer, and there’s a good-to-fair chance you’ll hear a complaint about how no one is original anymore, and with the modern-day swarm of revisited IPs and powerhouse franchise films, one may be forgiven for believing this. All that’s left now is to tell them in brand-new ways.
Enter Renfield, the latest film to throw itself onto history’s long list of Dracula stories, seeking to do exactly that; take some of fiction’s most highly-regarded monsters and bake them into a fresh reinvention of the tale. A task that, by the looks of the various trailers, is met with exciting, gore-soaked success.
But Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage, the talent spearheading the characters of Renfield and Dracula respectively, aren’t lost on where these two come from. Today’s horror comedy was yesterday’s gothic standard, after all. In a recent Renfield-themed Reddit AMA, the two stars delved into cinema’s greatest Renfields and Draculas, making note of those that informed their own performances.
It seems like the MVP of Renfield‘s homework was Dwight Frye’s turn in 1931’s Dracula, whose portrayal as the eponymous vampire’s servant was praised by both Hoult and Cage, the latter of whom would go on to note his co-star’s performance as another one of the greatest Renfield depictions he’s ever seen.
As for Dracula, Cage credited Christopher Lee’s animalistic turn in 1958’s Dracula as the most impactful on his own portrayal of the character, while also noting Max Schreck, Gary Oldman, and Bela Lugosi as some of cinema’s most quintessential vampire lords.
Renfield will release to cinemas on April 14, where we’ll perhaps learn once and for all just how original some remakes can really be.