Renfield
Renfield tanked at the box office. And that’s too bad. It is an irreverent horror-comedy that gleefully satirizes support groups and the loopy nature of vampire lore. Clocking in at a sensible hour and 33 minutes running time, the movie doesn’t suffer from tired blood. As the eponymous protagonist, Nicholas Hoult gives a layered performance. He’s got the winning Hugh Grant twitchy quality that is endearing. Then adds on the Woody Allen persona of sophisticated neurotic. And in the wonderfully choreographed fight scenes, goes full on Keanu Reeves in John Wick mode. Energized to the max by consuming insects, his Renfield is major league badass. But enough about “the familiar,” as he’s called in this flick. Let’s move on to The Master.
Dracula is a showy part. And Nicolas Cage revels in that. An interesting tidbit is: five Academy Award winning actors including Cage, have played Dracula once during their careers. Best Supporting Actor winner Jack Palance portrayed the count in Dan Curtis’s 1974 Dracula. The others were recipients of Best Actor honors at different times in their lives: David Niven was Old Dracula (also 1974), Gary Oldman memorably enacted the role in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version, which prompts a segue. Coppola, who is the uncle of Nicolas Cage, went against the studio’s desire to cast his nephew in the role of Jonathan Harker. Purportedly Coppola had a bad experience directing Cage in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and the part of Harker went to Keanu Reeves. Back to Oscar recipients who played Dracula, Morgan Freeman donned the cape in 1971 for the family friendly The Electric Company. Cage’s take on the character involves a lot of scenery chewing but that comes with the territory. There’s nothing wrong with a campy vamp in a comedy and Cage is no stranger to camp.
Most of the performances are praiseworthy. Awkwafina is quite good as honest cop Rebecca Quincey. Rebecca, whose dad was also in the force, is determined to avenge his murder. A wink, wink note: the late dad’s name is Quincey Morris. Morris Quincey was a righteous character in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Rebecca has linked members of a mob family to his demise: Bellafrancesca Lobo, played with silky smooth villainy by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and her inept son Ted, portrayed with just the right amount of goofy menace by Ben Schwartz. When the Mafia Mama and her disappointing offspring form an alliance with Dracula, Renfield and Rebecca join forces.
There is an array of smaller parts that display the talents of other performers. When Renfield attends support group meetings for those in toxic relationships, the bits of business are excellently executed. Credit goes not only to the actors in these sequences, but also to director Chris McKay and writers Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman. The moment when the support group leader realizes that Renfield’s boss is more than a garden variety narcissist is priceless. It’s also impossible not to laugh when Dracula instructs Renfield to bring him purer blood “Bring me innocent victims! I want a handful of nuns, a busload of cheerleaders,” and then Renfield wanders into a restaurant in which nuns happen to be dining and a bus full of cheerleaders is seen through a window, pulling up to the venue. The narrative also features the most inventive use of an ant farm on celluloid.
The movie seamlessly integrates footage from vintage black and white Universal horror films in a montage that illustrates Renfield’s history with Dracula. The editing is a joy to behold, splicing in Hoult and Cage as their respective characters into the 1930s snippets. This added immeasurably to a film going experience that exceeded my expectations and underlined warm feelings for the genre.
