Renfield is
one of the all time great hanger-ons. Made in to a vampire slave by
Dracula while visiting him on real estate business, the poor schmuck
is enslaved by the count and forced to eat bugs to live. Though I
personally find much of Lugosi's performance as Dracula laughable,
there's a tremendously eerie scene when a ship carrying Renfield and
the count arrives in England. Authorities find that every single
member of the crew has been killed, and they stumble on the sole
survivor, Renfield, who is at his creepy and maniacal best with a
disturbing laugh that makes the authorities sure he's gone mad.
For a cool storyboard
retelling of the film with original pictures,
CLICK HERE.
An interesting
bit of Dracula trivia for you. This film was the first truly
licensed version of Bram Stoker's classic novel. In fact, Nosferatu,
which was made 9 years prior, was the subject of an intense legal
battle from Stoker's widow which resulted in a judgment that required
all existing copies of the film to be destroyed (luckily, they
failed). Universal didn't have enough cash to do a very good
adaptation of the book, however, so they opted to base the film on
the stage version of the tale, instead.
