Scenes We Love: Renfield in 'Dracula'
Filed under: Horror, Fandom, Home Entertainment, Trailers and Clips, Scenes We Love
It's really hard not to love seeing Tom Waits onscreen, but his role as Renfield in the Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version of Dracula is a highlight. The movie itself is a sentimental favorite as well, with its super-saturated colors and heaving Victorian bosoms and, of course, Gary Oldman, who transforms from Eastern European sexpot to razor-blade licking undead creep with a bouffant and back again. Also, he has this bed that half-naked lady vampires pop out of.Renfield is in an appropriately dingy Victorian asylum, where people who handle the inmates wear cages on their heads. Just in case. In Coppola's version, Renfield previously held Jonathan Harker's position before he went mad, or was driven mad by his boss' demands. Now he snacks on bugs and worms and wears a pair of most excellent and inexplicable articulated sort of hand braces that's oh so steampunk.
Dr. Jack Seward, the unfortunate asylum shrink, toys with Renfield a bit after noting, "I shall have to invent a new classification of lunatic for you." He points out that spiders eat flies, birds eat spiders, and cats eat birds, which causes Renfield to kneel on the ground and pitifully beg for a kitten.
"Oh, yes. A kitten. I beg you. A little, sleek... a playful kitten. Something I can teach. Something I can feed. No one would refuse me a kitten!" He would also settle for a cat. Obviously, he is not given a kitten or a cat, because he would probably eat it.
Enjoy the clip after the jump. You can watch the full movie for free at Crackle.com.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-12-2009 @ 1:11PM
miles said...
For my money you can't beat Dwight Frye in the Bela Lugosi version.
Reply
10-13-2009 @ 3:33PM
BarkingGhost said...
Not haven seen the Dwight Frye in the Bela Lugosi version, I think the FFC stands for itself. Not necessarily a competition piece to duel versions over.
Reply
10-17-2009 @ 6:50PM
scrody said...
You have to be joking! You never saw the original Dracula (not counting Nasfuratu) with Bela Lugosi? Where do you live, under a rock? Perhaps in a cave?
Now I admit that this shouldn't shock me, I mean, it was from 1931 and in black and white, the cameras had to be cranked for them to film...HD wasn't around, or colored TV, no TiVo or playstation...or your father and mother.
But come on...it hurts me to think that the majority of the youth don't have a clue about movies, not films, but true movies that were only seen in theaters.
This is sad.