Generally regarded as the film that kickstarted the horror genre in Hollywood.
After playing Renfield, Dwight Frye would find himself typecast. He found himself restricted to playing eccentric or jittery characters that had a manic edge to them or criminal lunatic types.
In the scene where Dracula and Renfield are traveling to London by boat, the footage shown is borrowed from a Universal Pictures silent film called The Storm Breaker (1925). Silent films were projected at a different frames-per-second speed from that later adopted for sound films, accounting for the jerky movements and quicker-than-normal action of these shots.
The original release featured an epilogue with Edward Van Sloan talking to the audience about what they have just seen. This was removed for the 1936 re-release and is now assumed to be lost. The later Frankenstein (1931) similarly copied this model by featuring a prologue.
Among the living creatures seen in Dracula's castle in Transylvania are opossums, armadillos, and an insect known as a Jerusalem Cricket (Stenopalmatus fuscus). This insect was common in Southern California, which may explain its cameo in the film. The inclusion of armadillos was due to the fact that armadillos had occasionally been seen digging in graveyards, which led to the mistaken belief that they would dig their way into coffins and eat the cadavers.