Behind the Science: Renfield

Behind the Science: Renfield Renfield turning into a swarm of flies is one of those things that sounds almost funny until you see how Zenescope uses it. He's standing there talking to Liesel, hands over an invitation, and then his body comes apart into insects. Jonathan and Mina have to stand there and process what they just watched. Mina's reaction is pretty much where I'd be too. This is the Renfield from Helsing: The Darkness and the Light and Van Helsing vs. Dracula. I want to keep that clear because I'm talking about what this version actually does, not borrowing abilities from every other Dracula adaptation. When Liesel threatens to stake him, he laughs at the idea that she's mistaken him for a vampire. He calls himself a little fly on the wall, which turns out to be a fairly literal warning. Liesel later knows enough to say he isn't a vampire or human, but knowing what he isn't doesn't make him easy to handle. The shotgun scene makes that pretty clear. Jonathan finds him while trying to rescue Mina, and Renfield starts running his mouth about her being promised to somebody else. Jonathan doesn't wait for the speech to finish. He shoots him in the head, and the head breaks apart into flies while Renfield calls for his master. So aiming at what should be a fatal part of the body isn't giving Jonathan the result he's expecting. The target looks like a man until you damage it, and then it stops behaving like a human body at all. There isn't a real biological explanation for a person turning into a cloud of adult insects. Even setting aside where all that material goes, you'd still have the problem of how those separate animals retain one person's identity and come back together. The comic shows the transformation. It doesn't give us an anatomical explanation, and I don't think making up a bunch of scientific terms improves it. What it does give us is a really unpleasant consequence for anyone trying to fight him. His shape isn't reliable. You can't just assume that injuring the face in front of you has ended the threat. That uncertainty is enough to make the ability useful without pretending we know every limit it has. Then there's what he does to Mina. He cuts his own arm, flies come out of the wound, and he feeds her his blood while talking to her like he's taking care of her. She's already under Dracula's influence. The whole scene is disgusting, partly because he treats it so casually. He's comfortable helping maintain something that has taken her away from the life she wanted. That's why I think Renfield works better than just having another vampire standing behind Dracula. He handles invitations, helps steer people into the trap, and participates in the cruelty with this awful little smile. The flies make him hard to pin down physically. The way he talks while doing all of it makes him somebody you want Jonathan to hit again, even when you've just watched why that might not solve the problem.