Renfield: An Analysis (1897, 1931, 2023)

By Joe Gibson

The following essay is an excerpt from a cross-disciplinary research paper comparing the redemption of Renfield from the trajectory of the original book Dracula to the 1931 film to Renfield’s own 2023 film with the history and efficacy of blood transfusion itself. The scientific and historical connections to blood transfusion were ill thought out and obligatory, so here are the cult film analysis sections that should stand up to scrutiny a little more. We here at Plan9Crunch have analyzed Dracula 1931 a fair bit already (links at the bottom of this post) and will likely find new things to talk about in the future, but I hope you enjoy these research paper excerpts.

On page 72 of the Barnes and Noble edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker, it reads, pertaining to Renfield’s fly indulgence, “...he argued quietly that it was very good and very wholesome; that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him.” 

At several points of Renfield 2023 but notably the denouement, Dracula’s whole blood is administered to heal substantive damage and even death with no negative side effects. Indeed, “the blood is the life” in Renfield, as he stated it was in Dracula 1897. In most adaptations and the original story itself, Renfield was deluded; Dracula’s blood would only corrupt the user into something unrecognizable (see the personality changes of Mina, Renfield, and Olgaren in Dracula, Dracula 1931 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter 2023 respectively). This redemption of Dracula’s blood necessarily translates to redemption of Renfield (and his psychology) and not Dracula (because Renfield highlights Dracula’s abusive tendencies).

The history of R.M. Renfield (via bullet points since the admittedly profuse publications featuring this character either do little to change him or are too obscure to be relevant to Renfield 2023’s character study). Broadly, the loose inspiration for [Renfield] starts in antiquity regarded positively, then the concept itself [Renfield] emerges regarded less positively as the modern era approaches and each gets refined to such a degree to show efficacy.

Renfield’s development is grounded in the context of warping and stretching Christian symbolism and scenarios; quite clearly in the original novel, the way that Bram Stoker intended Renfield was an allusion to John the Baptist. On page 106, Renfield speaks in bride-maid and bride parables similar to Jesus, compounding the idea that Renfield and John the Baptizer both espoused similar philosophies to their lords and then deferred to them (Renfield commits himself to Dracula on page 107). Renfield’s famous line on page 148, “...the blood is the life” works as a direct quotation of Deuteronomy 12:23 (Renfield being the vehicle for most of the novel’s religious imagery). Most tantalizing, John the Baptist is understood to have eaten locusts. (He may not have, but the symbolism and imagery need not correspond to reality in literary use. Similarly, some scholars doubt that Jesus sweating blood was originally part of the Gospel of Luke, but that is obviously a strong image still on the table to use in literature.) Renfield dies from trauma to the head and neck, just like John, but this is warped because the Herod figure (if anyone fits Herod’s role in Renfield’s life, it would be Dr. Jack Seward for his notable observation of Renfield and hasty woman-motivated decision making) does not cause the death; Dracula, the dark Lord, does (Stoker, 1897, 2011). There is stark reversal more so than similarity with the Baptizer.

The audience of Bram Stoker’s Dracula understands Renfield not as a person but as an enigmatic mystical contradiction. Dr. Seward observes Renfield scientifically, where one could read neurosyphilis greatly into the latter’s behavior, but the hints of great strength (for a 59 year old man), prophetic forewarning and religious allegory communicate Renfield as a mystical character. Renfield never gets his own point of view sections to explain himself (and the audience never learns who he was before Dracula), locking his character behind two different veils of interpretation.

By the time of Tod Browning’s Dracula, Renfield had changed somewhat, consolidating Harker’s castle scenes into his own tragic subplot. Harker loses much of his development, Mina’s moments of reflection at her infection reduce, and the suitors of Lucy are all but eliminated to make room for Renfield, a sane man, falling victim to Dracula at the castle, Renfield, an insane man, onboard the Demeter, Renfield interacting with the comic relief orderly and nurse at Seward’s sanitorium, and Renfield surviving until the final confrontation with Dracula where he leads Harker and Van Helsing to Dracula’s resting place (Browning, 1931). The novel is an ensemble, and so is the film, but, whereas Harker, Mina, Seward, and Van Helsing are the major players by amount of journal entries, it is Renfield, Dracula and Van Helsing that enjoy increased relevance and focus for the movie adaptation. That is important for the horror and terror since, in all versions, Renfield is the most clear picture of what Dracula can do to a person, but, now, Renfield was a sane person before, which means Dracula can turn anyone into Renfield, a far scarier thought than one Renfield existing somewhere in isolation. There is still a layer of separation between the viewer and Renfield: the tragic delusion. Renfield is wrong and insane, and the audience, like Seward before them, observes Renfield live and die in delusion.

Seemingly, the biggest reframing Renfield 2023 does is posit “What if Renfield is not only the point of view character but also undeniably correct in his delusion?” That is why Dracula’s Whole Blood carries infallible life giving properties: because Renfield has always believed it does. (Likewise, rather than ambiguous mad strength, eating bugs genuinely gives Renfield and any of Dracula’s other familiars super strength and reflexes.) However, if Renfield is now correct and has the opportunity for growth and change as an audience insert character, the pendulum has swung to necessitate a vehicle or mechanism to explore how the average audience member can become Renfield through Dracula’s interference (and how Renfield’s foil Teddy Lobo can become a Dracula familiar). The answer to that problem is very simply an abusive codependent relationship. This is pretty blatantly the point of the film, especially since Renfield sums himself up as a codependent during the climax, but there are more specific examples as well.

The opening, midpoint and denouement of the 2023 film take place in character Mark’s Dependent Relationship Anonymous Addiction Group (DRAAG) within the gym sector of a church, where Renfield explicitly (and the film implicitly though Dracula’s dialogue during pinch point confrontations with Renfield) identifies the relationship between servant and master as similar to the codependent relationship of Caitlyn and her narcissist boyfriend. Beyond the obvious, Caitlyn also, despite herself, finds herself defending ska music as one of her partner’s interests, just as this film indicates Renfield’s life obsession was given to him by Dracula as Renfield is capable of letting go of his bugs after he makes a breakthrough. Most interestingly, a use of double entendre occurs when Teddy Lobo replaces Renfield as Dracula’s familiar; because Dracula is aiming for world domination and Lobo’s gang, led by his mother, has lofty ambitions, the pact between them comes with the romantic image said by Teddy that Dracua should meet his mother (McKay, 2023).

Much of the audience distance from Renfield in the earlier referenced works came from comparison to more sane characters (or a saner Renfield in a cold open), so much of the audience sympathy for Renfield in this film comes from comparison to other characters. Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield only does the Dwight Frye laugh when preparing to kill abusers and drug dealers, and Teddy Lobo serves as a shadow to Renfield (being the weaker element to a criminal enterprise) especially after supplanting him as Dracula’s familiar because of the contrast of “Drug Use and Bug Use.” While Renfield abandons the bugs as part of his new life early into the story and treats “bug use” as part of the curse that puts someone under Dracula’s spell, he consumes the largest amount possible in the climax and puts up the most credible attack against Dracula possible (meaning no correlation between the bugs consumed and being under Dracula’s thrall). Renfield consumes the bugs for strength, and he is ultimately correct, so he can consume that for strength independent of Dracula, but Teddy Lobo, established to be in the cocaine trade, also uses cocaine and takes his bugs via snorting, making him more vulnerable to Dracula’s influence because he is treating it as a hit not the disgusting source of strength it is (McKay, 2023).

As the last vestiges of syphilitic imagery in the 2023 film, the seductive Dracula also takes form as a decaying corpse clinging to Renfield when the title henchman tries to escape Dracula’s destructive influence. There is some symbolism in Renfield that a fair analysis must ignore, because if Dracula’s Whole Blood were syphilitic in this film, it would not have those life-giving qualities (the syphilis subtext is only here because this is a Dracula story). Along those same lines, the narrative of Renfield’s backstory only hazily corresponds to the 1931 film; Renfield was not present to attend high society with Dracula or assist him in procuring any of his successful victims after the boat. The name of the DRAAG leader, Mark, is most likely unimportant on a larger scale, while being a notable Christian name.

The recent data that Whole Blood can efficiently combat preventable deaths raises an interesting implication in that the preventable deaths and collateral damage of the story (Renfield himself, the gang’s foot soldiers, Rebecca’s sister, and the other DRAAG participants) are the ones healed by Dracula’s blood. Dracula’s blood does not save the leaders of any given faction (Dracula himself, Teddy’s mother, the police captain and Rebecca are figureheads whose deaths would necessarily be conclusive, but the film never uses the blood to heal any of them, just the unnecessary preventable ones).

The final image of Renfield is that pitcher of Dracula’s blood on a table in the church next to a bowl of some bread product (likely muffins), and the caricatured nature of that imagery masks it somewhat, but that is a holy sacrament, perhaps a picnic version but a holy sacrament nonetheless. Does this entail some commentary on or against organized religion? Perhaps; if someone at a later date can delve into that interpretation, it may be helpful for overall analysis on the film; but there is another simple implication. Because the film is dealing directly in the redemption of Renfield and his ideology, and Renfield has always been a symbol of warped religious devotion, this sacrament is most simply the ritual necessary to redeem R. M. Renfield in this movie. In that sense, Renfield finally gets to rise above John the Baptist. Renfield first partakes of the bread of DRAAG by attending and opening up to it, then dies opposing Dracula, but gets to live again from the miraculous blood of Dracula, becoming an admittedly haphazard Christ figure. Both were necessary for the redemption of Renfield (but the purpose of this essay is obviously to focus on the blood).

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2016/09/dracula-85-years-later-vampire-is-still.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2015/02/tod-brownings-dracula-defense-of-often.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/06/dracula-was-count-resigned-to-his.html

'Tod Browning's Dracula' a defense of an often-maligned film and director

By Doug Gibson

It’s a safe bet that when the word Dracula is uttered, most of us think of Bela Lugosi, who played the iconic role, or Bram Stoker, who wrote the novel. But far fewer have heard of Tod Browning, the man most responsible for Dracula and other vampires maintaining their edge in the popular culture and not stuck on the sidelines with, say, Svengali.

Academic Gary D. Rhodes, of Queen’s University, Belfast, is one of the best genre scholars and he’s often tackled the film career of Bela Lugosi, who starred in Browning’s 1931 “Dracula.” In recent years, he’s broken new ground in books he co-wrote with others on Lugosi’s “lean years,” the mid 1940s and 1950s. Rhodes, along with Arthur Lennig, Frank Dello Stritto, Andi Brooks, and others underscore why Bela Lugosi, and Dracula, exceed Boris Karloff, the Frankenstein monster, Lon Chaney Jr., and the wolf man, as icons. 

But one man who has got the shaft the past couple of generations is “Dracula” director Tod Browning. In fandom and scholarship, it has become the norm to demean the 1931 film, to trash Tod Browning’s direction, and even occasionally Lugosi’s performance, although that’s more rare. David J. Skal and William K. Everson are among respectable researchers who often maligned Browning’s “Dracula,” notes Rhodes in the book “Tod Browning’s Dracula,”  376 pages Tomahawk Press, 2014. Another strong genre writer, Tom Weaver — who graciously praises Rhodes’ book — has been none-to-kind to Lugosi, Browning, and “Dracula” over the year, particularly in his excellent multi-authored book, “Universal Horrors.” 

I’m taking a long time to get to Rhodes’ book, but I enjoy the minutiae, and want it all on the pages. But here we go. Rhodes’ new book, out in the USA this year, is a spirited defense of Tod Browning’s direction of “Dracula” and the film’s high quality (which by the way, was nearly universally praised by critics when it was released 84 years ago). 

Unlike a lot of apologetics, “Browning’s Dracula” is not full of forced defense or spin; he has accumulated a strong amount of evidence to support his claim that “Dracula” is worthy of classic status and that Browning’s direction was carefully nuanced and designed to create a dark, scary classic story that is both creepy, other-worldly, full of specific images and very well-paced. Also, Rhodes easily swats away long-accepted myths, such as that Browning offered little direction to the film, or that cameraman Karl Freund actually directed the film, or that Freund, in protest left the camera static, or that Browning’s “Dracula” had less camera movement than the longer “Spanish” version. 

Take this example: It’s long been a source of amusement to “Dracula” and Browning critics that there is a piece of cardboard stuck between a lamp and a headboard of the bed where “Mina,” Helen Chandler’s character, is resting. Through careful examination of the film, Rhodes makes a strong case that the inclusion of the cardboard is a story device in which the protagonists, eager to protect a resting Mina, have placed the cardboard there to keep light rays off her face. Also, Rhodes notes that the scene as displayed also allows more light to shine upward. One can criticize Browning’s choice of prop, but it wasn’t a result of carelessness or ineptitude by the director, as so many have claimed..

Rhodes also, I hope, puts the definitive end to the long-held fantasy that the “Spanish” “Dracula” is a better film than Browning’s “Dracula.” It’s a splendid film, I agree, and a lot of fun, both as a companion piece and bit of history that’s mostly lost today (films made specially for foreign lands). But it’s not as good as Dracula. It plods at 30 minutes beyond Browning’s 74-minute film, and the acting, save Lupita Tovar’s “Eva,” (Mina) is too melodramatic. Also, as Rhodes writes, Browning has far better camera placement and interaction between his principal actors, better pacing, better continuity, better symbolism, better lighting, better dialogue, better scene selection (the Spanish “Dracula” neglects Dracula’s attack on the flower girl) and, as mentioned, the direction is better paced and more suspenseful.

As Rhodes notes, much of the criticism of Browning’s “Dracula” is rooted in what we wish we could see, such as victim-turned vampire Lucy’s death scene, or more depth to Dracula’s sea voyage, or a deathly flight back to Transylvania, or even more blood (although Rhodes notes that many critics error on their tallies of blood in the film.) However, Universal was working under budget constraints due to the Depression, and finances were tight. Rhodes’ thesis, which I agree with, is that a very talented director made a memorable, classic film. Particularly interesting uses of symbolism recounted include Chandler mimicking a bent-over male figurine — representing Dracula — by Lucy’s bedside, and an insect in the Dracula’s castle opening scene appearing to be near the size of a “coffin.” More examples: the symbolism of three women on Lucy’s bedside lamp, and their relationship to Dracula’s three wives; and Browning having Chandler, with long dress train, following Lugosi on Carfax Abbey’s stone stairs as if she is nearly another vampire wife. In the Spanish Dracula, the symbolism is lost with Tovar being carried by actor Carlos Villarias.

There’s far more to this book than I’ve mentioned. Rhodes deals with the public perception of vampires through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Readers may be amused to learn that in the early days of silent cinema, Theda Bara and “vamps” were more often associated with vampires. In fact, Universal, wary of complaints, pitched “Dracula” initially as a strange romance. As Rhodes adds, once the film was out, it quickly become known as a horror film. 

Besides Rhodes’ intent to set the record straight on “Dracula” and Tod Browning, the book, with loving detail, delves into the minutiae of the making of the film, its initial reception, and its long lifespan through the decades. Our opinions are subjective, and we are entitled to like and pan as we please. But facts are important, and Rhodes has compiled the facts well in “Tod Browning’s Dracula.” I imagine it will settle a lot of arguments and debates. You can buy the book from the publisher here or via Amazon here.