According to the Universal Film Script series entry for "House of Dracula", the film grew out of an earlier script, "The Wolf Man vs. Dracula", a proposed follow-up to Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in which Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) would do battle with Dracula (Bela Lugosi, to be doubled by a "giant bat". At the climax, villagers attack the house and the Wolf Man kills a large number of them. The Hays Office flat-out rejected the script as too violent, so a more toned-down version was written, and eventually became this rather tame film (although Lionel Atwill does get electrocuted again, this time by Dr. Edelmann.)
Actor Glenn Strange suffered greatly during the time it to shoot the scene in which the Frankenstein Monster is discovered in quicksand. After sitting for three hours in the makeup chair each morning, having his makeup applied by Jack P. Pierce, Strange would spend the rest of the day buried in cold liquid mud (which doubled for the quicksand). "Then everybody else went out for lunch," Strange recalled. "By the time they came back, I was so cold, I could barely feel my legs." Strange's co-star, Lon Chaney Jr., suggested that Strange use alcohol to keep himself warm. Throughout the day, Chaney passed a bottle of whiskey to Strange in between takes. By the end of the day, Strange recalled, he was so drunk he could barely dress himself after removing his monster makeup and costume.
Last of Universal's original FRANKENSTEIN series of seven films, except for 1948'S "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, " shot from September 21-October 25, 1945, released December 7.
Lon Chaney completed his pact with Universal with this feature, beginning in December 1940, with "Man Made Monster. " John Carradine would go on to play Dracula on stage, once on television (in a 1956 episode of "Matinee Theatre") , and in three more features, "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" (1965) , "The Vampire Girls" (1967, aka "Las Vampiras") , and "Nocturna" (1978) .
Part of the SON OF SHOCK package of 21 titles released to television in 1958, which followed the original SHOCK THEATER release of 52 features one year earlier.
This is the only film in which Lon Chaney Jr.'s character Lawrence Talbot sports a mustache.