Casey62 wrote:
I always considered DRACULA as a film that invites me to imagine 'what's going on behind the curtain'. It's part of its mystique for me.

Me, too.  We can't help being influenced by the thousands of other vampire movies that followed when we think about this stuff, but I have little doubt that the first talking Dracula movie was meant to be mysterious and somewhat opaque, the better to suggest the supernatural.  Whether that was Browning's doing or the studio's, I guess we'll never know for sure.