Bela, Browning and Bram together for the first time in a film that very definitely shows its age but still has the capacity to chill, particularly in the early scenes with Dwight Frye in Transylvania. There are some great sets, the Transylvania castle (dripping in cobwebs) and the British castle (a similar mess - Dracula doesn't go much into house keeping), plus an English surgery, the scenes of Dracula's brides approaching Frye silently, the undeniable sexual undercurrent of Dracula's actions. There are also two iconic performances - Lugosi's intense title character and Dwight Frye's flamboyant Renfield.The major debit is Todd Browning's direction, which is mostly static with some atrocious editing - watch the awkward way he cuts to Lugosi's close ups (or anyone's close ups), with lots of awful moments where there is a cut, a pause, then an actor flings back their arm or something. The middle third (or rather, last three-fifths and four-fifths) is as if the filmmakers give up on turning the story into a film and just have the filmed version of the play, complete with comic servants and most of the action taking place off screen (even the finale Dracula is killed off screen).
Also there is a major story flaw - why is Dracula going to England and going through all this trouble? (It could have been easily fixed by showing he's in love with Mina but we never get that). But its still full of effective moments - Dracula commenting that there are worse things than being dead (giving an insight into the loneliness of his life), Helen Chandler is very pretty, David Manners a decent enough male juvenile, Edward Van Sloan a sturdy Van Helsing (though no Peter Cushing), all the sexual subtext (sometimes its basically text - see how keen Frances Dade is on Lugosi), and an overall atmosphere of genuine creepiness.
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