Let it never be said that Nicolas Cage doesn’t deliver fair value every time he pops up on screen. Challenging indie dramedy, chewy support in an A-picture or straight-up vamping as some devilish variation of himself in everything else, he is as much fun to watch as anybody making movies today.

And here he is in “Renfield,” a bloody-minded and bloody-funny Dracula freed of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” cutting loose in a splatter-comedy that’s fun for the whole family.

Well, if that family is headed by Samuel L. Jackson and oh, Jamie Lee Curtis.

This comic carnage from the director of “The Lego Batman Movie” is bathed in gore and wrapped in the “feels” of self-help speak. And if Cage is free at last/free at last, what are we to make of Nicholas Hoult in the title role? He was stiff enough in the one truly comic role in “The Menu” to make one question his funny bone. But he too is freed in this farce, positively Hugh Grantish as a downtrodden, befuddled underling trapped “in a toxic relationship” with his “master,” something that’s worried him for so many decades he’s sought out a self-help group.

That’s where we meet our voice-over narrator, Robert Montague Renfield, in a DRAAG meeting (“Destructive Relationship” something something “Group,” I think). That’s where he has to listen to others describe what a “monster” this lover, wife, parent or boss might be.

Renfield knows “monsters.”

He isn’t inclined to admit that he eats bugs and serves as “familiar” to his vampire, rounding up victims for him in city after city over the past century, a former lawyer whose life is reduced to “procuring.” In New Orleans, Anne Rice’s favorite vampire haunt, he’s found a shortcut.

All he has to do is hear what “monsters” Caitlyn, Carol and others in the DRAAG group are coping with, track down and anesthesitize them, take them to “The Prince of Darkness” and voila, two problems are solved at once.

But he stumbles into a drug gang situation doing just that, running him afoul of A) gangster Teddy Lobo (Ben Schwartz, bringing his A-game) and B), a traffic cop (Awkwafina, nicely made-up and loaded with F-bombs) out to catch Teddy and assorted corrupt cops (“New Orleans,” remember?) and gangsters led by Teddy’s ruthless mom (the great Shoreh Agdashloo of “The House of Sand and Fog”).

Suddenly, Dracula’s urgent need for the necks of “the innocent,” and not these tattooed thugs Renfield keeps bringing him, doesn’t seem as urgent. Drac wants “nuns” or “tourists” or “a busload of cheer-leaders.” But “Don’t make it a SEXUAL thing.”

It’s just that this is exactly what Renfield does when he sees the brave, righteous and gosh-darned cute Officer Rebecca (Awkwafina) stand up to “toxic” criminals in her life. Renfield will eat a bug (the source of his “power”) and pitch in, maybe make some time with the pretty policewoman and forget all about this control freak who sleeps in a coffin and rules his life.

The manipulations of someone with “narcissistic personality disorder” are trotted out, with Drac degrading Renfield with “I am your only friend…your only SALVATION,” and Renfield needing a self help book (wielded like a vampire-repelling Bible at one point) and bucking up from his sensitive support group leader (Brandon Scott Jones) to stand a chance of breaking free from his co-dependency.

The self-help stuff is a cute hook that isn’t deeply developed here. The story is new-vampire-in-town formulaic and the violence hilariously over the top, with buckets and buckets of guts spilled in bitings, brawls and Slaughterhouse Five, Six and Seven blood-lettings.

But McKay knows where the money is — in Awkwafina’s temper and diminutive, Chaplinesque walk, in Hoult’s semi-lovesick haplessness, and in Cage’s every single close-up. This is Cage at his Nic Cagiest. His fangs are repellently impressive, and he flashes them with flourish after flourish, adding little wide-eyed half-giggles and grand, gruesome gestures that pop an exclamation point on every line.

A delightful touch — McKay has Cage and Hoult act out their “history” in scenes superimposing them on Bela Lugosi’s classic “Dracula” from the Universal Studios horror library.

The jokes are about the nature of the “arrangement,” a job that is horribly messy, dangerous, with “eternal life” as the benefits for “the co-pay is my mortal soul.” There are running gags and we get the impression there is more that could have been made of the ballyhooed “support group” scenes, which have been central to the film’s advertising.

But a little of that stuff goes a long way, and that holds true for the film as well. The middle acts slow things down more than they should. Cage gets things moving again with every appearance, sometimes moving on bat wings.

Splattered geysers of blood, ripped off limbs and the like aside, this is a slight comedy, and McKay has the sense to get in, get gory, get his close-ups and get out of there before 93 minutes have passed. That makes for a vampire comedy everybody can sink their teeth into.

Rating: R for bloody violence, some gore, language throughout and some drug use

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz and Shoreh Agdashloo.

Credits: Directed by Chris McKay, scripted by Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:33

Rating: R for bloody violence, some gore, language throughout and some drug use

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Nicolas Cage, Awkwafina, Ben Schwartz and Shoreh Agdashloo.

Credits: Directed by Chris McKay, scripted by Ryan Ridley and Robert Kirkman. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:33