In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Gary Oldman as the alluring vampire and Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, his stake-toting nemesis. At the time, Hopkins was fresh off his Oscar-winning performance as another legendary monster: Dr. Hannibal Lecter in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs—but he was a Dracula fan going back decades. In his new memoir, We Did OK, Kid, Hopkins looks back at his long career, including the role that would launch a thousand Halloween costumes and fava bean jokes.
A book excerpt published by the British newspaper the Times takes on a period in Hopkins’ career that all horror fans are curious about: when he came aboard Jonathan Demme’s serial-killer thriller and crafted his indelible take on Lecter. He only read 15 pages of the script before deciding it was the best part he’d ever encountered and had to stop reading because he didn’t want to face the disappointment if he wasn’t cast.
Hopkins was cast, of course, and in the excerpt he writes, “I instinctively sensed how to play Hannibal. I have the devil in me. We all have the devil in us. I know what scares people.”
He recalls avoiding his co-star and fellow Oscar winner Jodie Foster during production—in service of the odd dynamic between their characters—though he writes that they’re great friends now. At the time, though, she was a bit afraid of him, he says.
“On the day of the first table reading … I was as scary as I could be. You could have heard a pin drop in the room. A couple of seconds after I started to speak as Lecter, I saw Jodie grow tense,” he wrote.
And here’s where Dracula came in: “I also called on my childhood impersonations of Bela Lugosi at boarding school. As a kid, I went to see him in Dracula. That had been one of the first big books I ever read. In the book, the protagonist Jonathan Harker nicks himself with a razor and senses Dracula’s rapt attention. The sound I imagined Dracula made in that moment, thirsting for Harker’s blood, was a very particular combination of hissing and slurping.”
“That’s where I got the sound I made with my lips as Hannibal, the one that gets imitated so much.”
The excerpt ends after he wins the Oscar for Best Actor, so we don’t get any insights into whether or not he gave Oldman any pointers on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We Did OK, Kid is available now.
With each year, horror movies have become increasingly popular among moviegoers, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles plans to recognize it with a new museum exhibit.
The immersive “Horror Show” presentation will chronicle the genre’s “enormous cultural impact and enduring legacy” with a focus on its tropes, themes, and resonance. From a starting point dubbed “The Hallway,” visitors can explore six different hubs modeled after the most well-known sub-genres: Religion, Science, Slasher, Ghosts, Gothic, and Psychological. Each hub will highlight specific films—like Get Out, Ju-On, 1931’s Dracula, and the original Alien—and offer behind-the-scenes insight at their production and storytelling. Finally, there’ll be a catalog and public programming that includes film screenings, gallery talks, and even educational tours that’ll get more information at a later date.
“Throughout film history, horror has thrilled and moved audiences, acting as a powerful outlet for expression and a tool for social commentary,” said the Academy’s senior exhibitions curator Jessica Niebel. “Through these stories, people have found catharsis and community among fellow horror fans around the world. I can’t wait for everyone—from horror enthusiasts to the horror-curious—to see The Horror Show.”
If all this sounds good to you, there’s a catch: The Horror Showwon’t actually start until September 20, 2026, and it’ll run through July 25, 2027. At time of writing, you can’t buy tickets that far ahead, but you can at least plan things out if you’re not local to LA.
“There are far worse things awaiting man than death…”
Well, unless you’re Dracula. The world’s most famous vampire is more alive dead (or undead) and has been for more than a hundred years. He’s taking yet another bow, this time over at Classical Theatre Company, where they’re offering up Chris Iannacone’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula just in time for Halloween.
The year is 1897, and English solicitor Jonathan Harker embarks on a long journey, traveling quite the distance to Transylvania to meet with a mysterious man named Count Dracula. Harker has recently procured Dracula an estate in England, but the business reason for the trip quickly falls to the wayside as Harker starts to notice strange happenings at Dracula’s castle, as well as Dracula’s request that he stay for one month.
Back home in England, Harker’s wife Mina anxiously awaits his return, in the meantime visiting with her dear friend Lucy, who’s about to wed a Mr. Arthur Holmwood. As time passes without word from her husband, Mina becomes more unsettled until one night, a mysterious ship crashes ashore during a violent storm. Not long after, Lucy begins to suffer from blood loss – cause unknown. They send for Dr. Seward, who calls on Professor Van Helsing for help deducing the cause of Lucy’s unexplained anemia. Van Helsing suspects there’s something more to Lucy’s illness—and the two puncture wounds on her neck—than meets the eye.
Bram Stoker released his novel Dracula in 1897, and really, the gist of the story you know even if you never attempted slogging your way through Stoker’s epistolary snooze fest; its core has been filtered through the years in countless adaptations and parodies across multiple mediums with varying levels of fidelity to the source material.
Though, to be fair, more so than Stoker’s novel, it’s Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal Pictures film starring Bela Lugosi that people know best – which in turn was based more on Hamilton Deane’s 1924 stage adaptation and John Balderston’s 1927 American revision. The point is, pretty much since its inception, Stoker’s novel has existed to be adapted into better versions of itself.
Jonathan Robinson as Renfield in Classical Theatre Company’s Dracula.
Photo by Pin Lim
Iannacone’s broad-stroke swing at Stoker’s novel is decently paced and well-plotted, but the production is noticeably devoid of much substance. The focus is on the horror of the story, yes, but with the themes that underpin that horror – repressed sexuality and desire, anxiety around gender relations and otherness, etc. – tamped down, if not almost entirely stripped from the production, the show is little more than empty calories.
By not leaning into the more common themes that usually come up in this story, director Blake Weir certainly created a challenge for himself and, somehow, it’s a challenge he overcame in terms of still mounting a thoroughly watchable show. It’s genuinely scary at times, funny in moments, and unsettling throughout – i.e., just what you want to see around Halloween. And despite a script that does a lot more telling than showing, the action scenes here are top-notch.
One positive change to the story that deserves a mention is that Iannacone has added a much-appreciated agency into the character of Mina “I will not be the cause of our failure” Harker. Other hand, with only two women in the piece, it exacerbates the usual horror pattern that still rears its typical head here – the superficial one who discourteously calls a place “backwater country” is the one who is punished in the story while the loyal, responsible other one who thoughtfully considers the beauty of said “backwater country” is the one who survives. It’s more subtle than what’s in Stoker’s book (and in many works of horror in general), but it’s disappointing that it’s still there.
Going back to the novel, Stoker didn’t exactly go all in on characterization, leaving Iannacone with a flat character problem that goes unsolved in his script. The actors are left to give us reason to care about these people, a chore they approach valiantly and overall successfully.
There’s Kyle Clark as weary traveler and nervous talker Jonathan Harker. There’s the tight-laced skepticism of David Akinwande’s Seward. Jonathan Robinson, who brings a shuddering insanity and a hauntingly maniacal laugh to Renfield. Eva Olivia Catanzariti’s sympathetic Lucy and Patrick Fretwell’s steadfast Holmwood. And though their appearances are brief, the Weird Sisters, played with haunted house vibrance by Luke Fedell, Maggie Maxwell, and Jasmine Christyne, are the theatrical equivalent to statement pieces, uniquely designed by costume designer Leah Smith.
Maggie Maxwell as a Weird Sister, Kyle Clark as Harker, and Jasmine Christyne as a Weird Sister in Classical Theatre Company’s Dracula.
Photo by Pin Lim
Elissa Cuellar’s Mina shines brightest in those moments where vampirism takes hold and flashes of an almost sinister nature appear. Greg Dean’s Van Helsing reads as knowledgeable and well-meaning if a bit scattered in appearance and mannerism, something unimpeded and maybe unintentionally aided by noticeable line flubs.
Finally, there’s the man himself – Dracula, played by Spencer Plachy. In Plachy’s hands, Dracula is menacing. He’s not at all dandified or sexy like we often see; instead, Plachy’s Dracula comes off as a patronizing predator. (This choice right here, by the way, is the closest the production comes to making substantive meaning.) And not unlike the shark in Jaws, Plachy’s Dracula is used sparingly, which makes each time he appears, all hunched shoulders and harsh breath like he’s barely restraining himself, all the more enjoyable.
Scenic Designer Afsaneh Aayani’s frightfully versatile set, with an assist from Properties Designer Charly Topper, serves the entire production with ease. The use of the windows as screens for essential projections by Weir, Edgar Guajardo, and Brenda Palestina, as well as photobooth-like framing for the characters, is particularly clever and reflective of the production’s great use of space. They also help with smooth transitions, with scenes blending into each other.
Aayani’s set is lit by Guajardo’s hope-you’re-not-afraid-of-the-dark lighting schemes. Really, I can’t remember a show so happy to live in the shadows, which it does deftly. The playground is only better in the moments when smoky red light fills the theater and washes across the stage. And Jon Harvey’s eerie soundscape, from the buzzing of flies and barking of dogs to the non-diegetic, synth-y rhythms and jump-worthy musical cues were absolutely killer (no pun intended).
The final verdict: If you’re looking for a little chill down your spine, Classical Theatre Company’s Dracula is just the lean, alluringly atmospheric production for you.
Performances will continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and Monday, October 21, and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through October 26 at The DeLUXE Theater, 3303 Lyons. For more information, call 713-963-9665 or visit classicaltheatre.org. $10-$30.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice andBluey fever join horror classics and spooky lore-inspired collections at major home decor retailers and seasonal pop-up giants Spirit Halloween and Party City.
Halloween’s niche in horror fandom has expanded way beyond October 31, so it makes sense that home decor and goods inspired by scary movies, classic monsters, and supernatural legends are becoming more and more a staple of everyday life. Hey—if the comic book and sci-fi nerds do it all year, so can the spooky season folks. What’s so shocking, however, is that Halloween teases are now dropping so soon after July 4. In previous years, anticipation for stores to fill their shelves with orange-and-black delights got more of a chance to build, at least until back-to-school aisles were cleared. And while some retailers are apparently still checking the calendar—including Target, which has thus far kept its Halloween collection under wraps—if you visit the sites or even locations for the Disney Store, Lowe’s, Spirit Halloween, Home Depot, Party City, Michaels, At Home, and Joann, you can start shopping pumpkins, ghosts, skeletons, and more.
You’ll have to be quick though! Early-bird horror fiends are already raiding the aisles—as are re-sellers intent on snatching up any items with the potential to go viral and become the Halloween must-haves for 2024. That’s why so many are sold out in the middle of summer—though most will be re-stocked, so if you see something you can’t live without, get on those alerts so you’ll be first in line when it returns. And keep in mind what’s been dropped so far isn’t everything; there’ll be more as we get closer to fall. The Disney Store just started its release schedule with The Haunted Mansion collection but has more planned in the coming weeks. And Beetlejuice stuff has begun to trickle out to retailers like Spirit Halloween—witness this giant inflatable at Party City of the circus carousel ghost with the most—but it’s worth noting that so far it’s only been product from the iconic first film. We have yet to see anything from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but it’s definitely coming. Tim Burton fans will be happy to learn that The Corpse Bride will be a huge feature at Spirit Halloween as will slashers like Scream and John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise. Home Depot will feature the Universal Monsters, the not-so-scary (but clear-cut kid favorite) Bluey, and more Nightmare Before Christmas with that 13-foot Jack Skellington animated statue (which we hope comes with a Sandy Claws outfit for Christmas).
But what if you don’t need pop culture splattered all over your seasonal decor? Fans of supernatural folklore, witchy classic literature, kooky familiars, sentient pumpkins, and paranormal specters aren’t getting left behind either. Michaels, At Home, and Joann Fabrics have some deeply aesthetic collections of their own out to shop that aren’t IP at all but will make your abode feel supremely haunted. We particularly love the Midnight Moon and Haunted Forest collections at Michaels that harken to some classic monster and A24 atmospheric vibes. Then for those into astrology, traditional Halloween, and graveyard goth, definitely look into the drops at Joann and At Home (but shout out to these awesome Jack Skellington pieces). And lets not forget Lowe’s truly epic aquatic horror line. There’s a huge front yard Kraken that’s already hard to get your hands on, because who doesn’t want to release the Kraken for Halloween?
There’s already something for everyone and picking a theme is going to be so hard this year! Let us know if you’ve managed to secure anything already or if you’re going to wait and show up only to find Christmas aisles in September. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Image: Francois G. Durand/Getty Images (Getty Images)
There’ve been a lot of versions of Dracula running around in pop culture. Within the past decade, he’s been on a boat, ran a hotel, and been incredibly depressed after his wife was murdered, and we eat it up (almost) every time. Folks love themselves some Drac, and you can count Luc Besson among them, because he’s be cooking up a Dracula movie of his own.
Dracula Attacks In Exclusive Clip From The Voyage of the Demeter
Per Variety, the Valerian director will direct an adaptation of the 1897 Bram Stoker novel. Titled Dracula – A Love Tale, the upcoming film is being billed as a “big-budget reimagining” that functions as an origin story for the Prince of Darkness. Caleb Landry Jones, who’s already worked with Besson on 2023’s DogMan, will play 15th century Prince Vladimir, who becomes a vampire after cursing God for the death of his wife. Centuries later in 19th century London, he discovers a woman who looks just like his lost love and makes her the object of his affection obsession.
At present, Jones is only joined by Christoph Waltz, though it’s unclear what role the No Time to Die actor will have in the story. Deadline further reports other “buzzy” cast members are being talked to for key roles, and the film will lean more into the gothic romance elements of the character.
The next few years are going to big for fans of classic horror icons. Along with Universal’s Abigailin April (a reimagining of the studio’s 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter), Robert Eggers has his own Dracula movie in Nosferatu, which is expected to drop sometime this year. Maggie Gyllenhaal is doing a Bride of Frankenstein movie as Guillermo del Toro handles a separate Frankenstein adaptation, and a Wolf Man movie from Leigh Whannell is currently set to launch in October.
Stories, especially beloved stories, have a tendency to bleed past their borders and escape their original bodies. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is among many well-loved works that have long since taken on new shapes, shifting forms constantly. The epistolary tale of vampires has hundreds upon hundreds of adaptations, with one domineering throughline: Stoker’s lasting characterization of the elegant, verbose, vampiric count himself.
Given the breadth and variety of the landscape, it can be difficult, at this point, to iterate on Dracula in a way that feels fresh — which is why Dimension 20’s Coffin Run was, and continues to be, such a delight.
Coffin Run, a Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series, premiered in the summer of 2022. The six-episode run, described on Dropout’s website as “a tale as old as many lifetimes,” was helmed by storyteller and game master Jasmine Bhullar and starred Zac Oyama, Erika Ishii, Isabella Roland, and Carlos Luna. Coffin Run emerged from Bhullar’s love of Stoker’s novel, she told CBR in 2022, as well as comedic source material like Young Frankenstein and What We Do in the Shadows.
The cast of the series shines as archetypical members of Dracula’s retinue, brought together to ferry the Count (who sustains undeath-threatening injuries at the top of the series) home to Castle Dracula in his coffin. Oyama plays Squing, a Nosferatu-like vampire who is Dracula’s “firstborn,” turned as a child and preserved forever. Roland plays Dr. Aleksandr Astrovsky, a brash, invigorated mad scientist figure. Luna plays Wetzel, a young human who lives as Dracula’s plaything in hope of becoming a vampire himself. And Ishii plays May Wong, one of Dracula’s vampire brides, who used to be an actress in New York.
Image: Dropout
Coffin Run unfolds as a love letter to Dracula, both the form of the novel and the vampire himself. The story roots itself in Stoker’s work from the start, anchoring the narrative in the epistolary form. It’s letters all the way down, really (and not just inside Squing, who has a tendency to eat them). The series opens on Dracula himself standing over a writing desk, penning a letter to Squing. The letter takes a journey across the sea before it arrives at the Gold Crona Inn — much like Jonathan Harker at the outset of Dracula. From there, letters guide the narrative, arriving for the players at key moments.
Letters, as a kind of delivery system for the story, are adeptly wielded by Bhullar — because of the fickle nature of their author, Dracula, when heartfelt sentiments are poured out in the letters there’s a lingering sense of unease, perpetuated by the arrival of letters that reveal that the Count’s feelings for his coffin-bearing friends and family might not be what they seem. Wetzel, for example, becomes disillusioned with the Count as the series goes on, slowly beginning to distrust him, while May realizes that her own adoration for Dracula may be more one-sided.
Materially, Coffin Run pays beautiful homage to the Gothic lushness of Dracula. When players are handed letters, they receive actual letters at the table, passed along with a glowing candlestick. In the final fight, Dracula’s vitality is measured by vials of “blood” poured into a crystal goblet by Bhullar and then consumed as the vampire comes back to himself. Black-and-white film adaptations get a nod in the grayscale miniatures and the monochromatic set. The special effects all come together to create a world that feels incredibly familiar to horror fans as well as uniquely new — Rick Perry, production designer and creative producer for Dropout, gets heaps of nods throughout the series for his work on the sets and miniatures, as do the crew in a talkback episode post-series.
Image: Dropout
From the Scooby-Doo-like title sequence to the performances, the crew and cast of Coffin Run perfectly hone in on the comedic influences Bhullar cited for the series, as well as the inherent ironies of the source material. May, the classically gorgeous vampire bride, is played by Ishii with a gleeful, over-the-top accent, as is Roland’s Dr. Astrovsky. Squing, as Dracula’s firstborn, is constantly baffled by modern technology, referring to the train that delivers Dracula’s coffin as a “metal tube.” Seemingly, his lack of understanding stems from apathy, rather than access. Castle Dracula, when the story eventually arrives there, is similarly frozen in time, preserved by caretakers who eventually end up ceding the castle to antiquers and “Lairbnb” opportunists.
So much of vampiric representation in pop culture is rooted in Dracula’s particular brand of allure. Even Dungeons & Dragons has its own storied distillation of Stoker’s Transylvania and the titular count in the enigmatic Strahd von Zarovich and the land of Ravenloft. The cast and crew of Coffin Run do a fantastic job of preserving the larger-than-life presence of Dracula in the story, from adding a silhouetted batwing shadow over Bhullar when she speaks to characters as Dracula to character arcs that nod at the ubiquity of the Count and his story. In discussing his place with Dracula at the end of the tale, Wetzel says, “It’s like everyone in [Castle Dracula], they’re just gonna be in there for a while, you know? It’s like the same thing over and over again. Same stuff.”
No adaptation is perfect — with Dracula in the public domain and vampires back in the zeitgeist (hello, Interview with the Vampire, and the resurgence of Twilight, and a million other fanged options), there will likely be hundreds more distillations in the future. Coffin Run takes a pile of well-known, over-offered ingredients — Dracula, the undying bogs of Transylvania, letters, a carriage ride through wolf-stalked trees — and makes something wonderfully new from them.
At the very least, it’s worth sinking your teeth into.
Castlevania: Nocturne, the sequel series to Konami’s popular animated vampire saga, Castlevania, recaptures the magic that its predecessor brought to the dance back in 2017. A tightly written show with multifaceted heroes and villains, outstanding action sequences, and imaginative monster designs, its meticulously constructed dialogue will have you hanging off of every word. Simply put, Castlevania: Nocturne makes sure that nearly every scene in its eight-episode season is equal parts purposeful, engaging, and beginner-friendly to viewers who may have missed the original series.
A Saucy Romance Game Where You Play As Dracula
The show,which takes place 300 years after Castlevania and loosely adapts the PC Engine classic Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, is set during the height of the French Revolution in 1792, and follows Richter Belmont, a descendant of Trevor Belmont and Sypha Belnades, who, alongside his adoptive sister Maria Renard, fight to stop a tyrannical “Vampire Messiah.” The pair have the cards stacked against them because the big bad, Erzsebeth Báthory—who’s based on the folklore surrounding a real-life historical figure—has allied herself with counter-revolutionary aristocrats and key political figures around the world, and plans on using her ungodly powers to blot out the sun so vampires can terrorize the world at their leisure. Suffice it to say, this generation of vampire hunters has one hell of a task ahead of them and the show doesn’t shy away from showcasing them being out of their depth.
Rather than setting up Maria and Richter to be hyper-capable carbon copies of their predecessors, as popular generation-spanning anime like Naruto are wont to do, the show instead opts to underscore how their inexperience puts them on the backfoot during nearly every deadly encounter in the show. Unlike Sypha and Trevor, who we meet as fully realized adults in the midst of their epic and perilous quest, Maria, Richter, and their newfound allies Annette and Edouard possess a youthful eagerness to rush into the fray headfirst without a tangible plan, and it backfires. After all, Richter is only 19 years old and hasn’t been tasked with saving the world as often as his ancestors have, so it’s to be expected that he’ll have some growing pains as a hero.
Nocturne’s greatest strength is how it allows its heroes to be vulnerable. While Trevor’s sardonic swagger in Castlevania comes as a result of him weathering years of failure and pyrrhic victories, Richter’s haughtiness derives from his fear that he won’t be strong enough to save the ones he loves. Basically, Richter is the embodiment of the Mike Tyson quote, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” His metaphorical sucker punch comes in the form of Olrox, a charismatic Aztec vampire who murdered his mother when he was a boy, traumatizing him to the point that he can no longer use magic and freezes up in fear or flees whenever Olrox makes a sudden appearance.
Image: Netflix
Richter’s cowardice never comes off as grating, but instead humanizes him by making him a fallible hero who still has a lot to learn before he can face Erzsebeth or Olrox. Personally, I found it beautiful that Nocturne’s hard-knocks coming-of-age tale for Richter let him cry on multiple occasions as he worked through his trauma, something anime protagonists are rarely allowed to do. Rest assured, Richter inevitably comes out the other end as the hero that fans of the Castlevania games have come to love, and he does so in a gratifying way that pays off toward the midway point of the season.
Nocturne isn’t afraid of letting its side characters bask in the limelight, too
Much like how Castlevania transformed Isaac the forge master into the most compelling character in the show, so too does Nocturne with Annette and Edouard, newfound allies of Richter and Maria’s. While the French Revolution provides set dressing for Richter and Maria’s fight against Erzsebeth and her cronies, the show also weaves in the Haitian Revolution, letting its Black characters partake and triumph in their own revolutionary struggle.
In episode three, Freedom Is Sweeter, written by Zodwa Nyoni, we learn that Annetteescaped from slavery in Haiti, where the slave trade was under the vampiric rule of Erzsebeth and her French regime, and partook in the Haitian Revolution using Creole incantations to aid Saint-Domingue ’s freedom fighters. It’s in this episode that we also discover how she and Edouard, a talented opera singer who initially felt at odds with the show’s grimdark premise, used his status as a commodity and a free man to aid Annette in her escape from a slave plantation after the brutal death of her mother. This episode is a clear standout this season, brilliantly meshing real-life events with Castlevania’s fantastical lore. Nocturne does something rare and extraordinary by making these Black characters, who in the hands of another anime might have been fridged to motivate its Caucasian heroes, the emotional lifeblood of the series, even as it establishes the pair as effective narrative foils to Maria and Richter.
Castlevania: Nocturne’s first season lays the groundwork for a series that has the potential to eclipse the greatness of its predecessor while raising the bar for video game adaptations in the process.
Screen icon Nicolas Cage says he now regrets one of his most memorable ― and, perhaps, most unsettling ― scenes.
It’s that time he ate a cockroach for the 1988 cult classic “Vampire’s Kiss.”
Cage plays Dracula in the new film “Renfield,” where insect-eating also features prominently.
Nicholas Hoult, who plays the title role of Dracula’s familiar, eats bugs throughout the movie.
“I had crickets that were actually quite yummy,” he said. “They were like salt and vinegar flavored or like barbecue-smoky flavored. They were fine. The potato bug didn’t dry out so good and that tasted every bit of bug.”
On November 7, 1943, Dwight Frye—a “tired and bloated” graveyard shift employee at Douglas Aircraft—boarded a bus home from the glittering Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, where he had just taken his wife and son to see Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. The bus hadn’t even pulled away from the curb, his son later recalled, “when my Dad fell right in the middle of the aisle.” It’s doubtful that anyone on board realized the weary man who had collapsed in front of them was a horror movie legend. Once upon a time, Frye was known as the “man of a thousand deaths”—someone whose portrayals of “half-wits, lunatics and moon-maddened neurotics” caused even hardened film critics like Pauline Kael to find themselves “suddenly squealing and shrieking.”
His iconic role as the fly-eating Renfield in Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Dracula—a part reimagined by Nicholas Hoult in Universal’s Renfield, out Friday—cemented his place in the pantheon of pop culture. For Frye, though, the role was a dream job that led to a decade-long nightmare.
Dwight lliff Frye was born on February 22, 1889, in Salina, Kansas. According to the authorized biography Dwight Frye’s Last Laugh (cowritten by Gregory William Mank,James T. Coughlin, and Frye’s son, Dwight D. Frye), his parents were upright farmers and devout Christian Scientists who coddled their precocious only child.
The Frye family soon moved to Denver, Colorado, where the young Dwight, a piano prodigy, became known as a handsome musical genius. He joined a musical comedy troupe and toured the country on the Pantages vaudeville circuit before being discovered by Broadway producer-director Brock Pemberton.
Courtesy of Everett Collection
By 1922, the intense, charming Frye debuted on Broadway in the farce The Plot Thickens, playing a bumbling robber. He would play a variety of Broadway roles over the next few months. In 1932, a heady Frye sent a telegram to his parents: “Have Signed Five Year Contract With Pemberton Everything Going Fine Letter Explaining No More Worry Dreams Coming True My Love.”
True stardom came to Frye in 1925 through the Broadway drama A Man’s Man, in which he played a weak, striving young husband. In this role, Frye displayed the intensity that would later make him so perfect as demented horror characters—and help typecast him for life.
“I thought Dwight was … odd, strange,” his costar Josephine Hutchinson recalls in Dwight Frye’s Last Laugh. “He was so imbued with working on his part that he wasn’t very communicative to his fellow players. When he was in the theatre, all he thought about was his performance. Now, all these years later, I realize: Dwight really was the original ‘Method’ actor.”
For a time, everything seemed to be straight out of a fairy tale. In 1928, Frye married his wife Laura, a kind, gentle actress whom he had originally worked with out West. He was lauded as a “future [blonde] John Barrymore,” receiving rave reviews as he performed alongside rising luminaries Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, Humphrey Bogart, and Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi.
But like many young Broadway stars, Frye wanted more. In 1929, he and Laura moved to Hollywood, which was desperately in need of theatrically-trained voices for the new talkies. That year, he starred in Rope’s End at the Vine Street Theater in Los Angeles, playing a young murderer in a play inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case.
It may have been the wrong choice, and Frye seemed to know it. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, an argumentative Frye fought against being typed as a “troubled weakling.”
“I am a character man,” he told the paper. “There seems to be an impression I do one type of thing. I don’t and I haven’t. One of my first successes was in comedy…. I don’t like specialization. I have no interest in anything but character work, and I have made it a point to vary my roles as much as possible.”
Work in movies came quickly. After turns in the James Cagney film The Doorway to Hell and The Maltese Falcon, he started work on Dracula.
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