There’s an entire movie where Nicolas Cage plays a man who becomes increasingly convinced that he’s evolving into a vampire. Still, many internet-savvy folks won’t even realise it was Vampire’s Kiss that gave rise to the “You don’t say?” meme.

The actor has voiced his disappointment at his self-proclaimed “memeification” on a number of occasions, but that didn’t prevent him from returning to the world of vampirism by playing the most famous of them all.

The film itself may have been something of a damp squib both critically and commercially, but Cage’s Count Dracula in Renfield was every bit as inspired as it sounded on paper.

Befitting his reputation, though, the Academy Award winner drew upon a myriad of eclectic influences. Nicholas Hoult told CNN that Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate was one of them.

At various other points, Cage cited James Wan’s Malignant, the character of Sadako Yamamura from Japanese horror Ringu, his pet crow Huginn, and even his own father, August Coppola.

While he did manage to put his own distinct spin on one of the most heavily-adapted fictional characters in history, Cage was still drawn towards the classics during his preparations.

As he told Collider, he had “a look at the ones that have been done well” and named Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella, Christopher Lee, and Gary Oldman as the finest, which he then used as “a jumping point”. However, he did steer away from the version that became the definitive cinematic take on Dracula.

Saying that Lugosi “wasn’t my Dracula”, Cage instead declared the first name that comes to his mind when he envisions the Transylvanian native is “Christopher Lee in the Hammer horror films”.

Despite so many great actors having played the part before, the star remained adamant that “there was something I could bring to it”.

In terms of his own personal favourite vampire stories, Lee obviously came out on top based on his personal preferences, but he kept it firmly in the family by adding that “in terms of a movie that really got into the pathos and psyche of Dracula, it’s gotta be Coppola”.

More than three decades after Oldman embodied the role for his uncle, Cage would go on to use his own fangs to chew on the scenery in Renfield, proving that Hollywood really is full of unexpected coincidences.

The elevator pitch of “Nic Cage is Dracula” was one that captured attention from the second it was announced, but that wasn’t anywhere near enough to prevent Chris McKay’s horror comedy from bombing hard at the box office.

Just four months later, André Øvredal’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter would do exactly the same, perhaps indicating that Bram Stoker’s legendary creation doesn’t hold much sway with modern cinemagoing audiences.

Nicolas Cage’s favourite vampire movies:

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)
Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958)
Dracula: Prince of Darkness (Terence Fisher, 1966)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (Peter Sasdy, 1970)
Scars of Dracula (Roy Ward Baker, 1970)
Dracula A.D. 1972 (Alan Gibson, 1972)
The Satanic Rites of Dracula (Alan Gibson, 1973)
Dracula (John Badham, 1979)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)