Interesting cast trivia
Despite the film being a horror classic, it didn't do much good for the creators:
Bela Lugosi enjoyed making the film and playing the character, though he later referred to it as a "blessing and a curse" and disliked the typecasting that occurred after the film. He spent his later years making B-films (at best) and battling drug addiction.
Director Tod Browning did not enjoy making the film, since his original choice for the film, Lon Chaney, had died, and the film was being made on a much lower budget than he wanted. The cast complained about Browning being a hands-off director, and showing no enthusiasm for the project whatsoever.
Dwight Frye (Renfield) was also typecast as crazy loons after the film, and he was not happy about it. His career never recovered, and he died of a heart attack in 1943 at the age of 44.
Helen Chandler (Mina) wanted to play Alice in a film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and wasn't happy being stuck in a horror picture instead. Her career never got off the ground, and she battled alcoholism only a few years later, and nearly burned to death in a fire 15 years before her death at age 59.
David Manners (John) didn't have it as bad as his co-stars, but he disliked being a Hollywood actor and making Dracula, and in an interview shortly before he died in 1998, claimed to have never seen the finished film.