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Somebody-- Greg Mank?-- did some musing on the absence of Lugosi in HOUSE OF FRANK (which would account for not using him in the follow-up). According to a press release (fictitious? I hope not) from Universal, there was some big publicity bash in either late '43 or early '44 for THE DEVIL'S BROOD, a party where all the actors were assembled, including Lugosi (The p.r. release also named some obscure actor who nobody'd ever heard of, as if anyone would recognize the name. ANybody remember? Tom? Brunai?)
Certainly Universal knew Lugosi was still alive; he'd just done F MEETS W the year before, and NIGHT MONSTER (crappy part, but top-billed), RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (of which Universal clearly aware of since they legally leaned on Columbia not to release it head to head with SON OF DRACULA; Columbia blinked and held it to '44) and at least 2 or 3 pictures for Monogram. They'd also used Lugosi for publicity on F MEETS W --newspaper interviews, and a plug on the Fred Allen Show on radio-- which would probably belie the conspiracy angle that the studio intentionally tried to torpedo Lugosi's career.

This would be '44-- and I think Lugosi was about to start a tour in ARSENIC & OLD LACE, since the show had finished a 2 year run on Broadway with Karloff (who therefore was finally available for films.) But Lugosi's luck-- he got good notices, comparing his portrayal favorably to Karloff, or better; you can just hear Bela chuckling about THAT one-- was our loss-- Karloff had a two month window of opportunity to work for Universal, which apparently excluded Lugosi from the film schedule-wise; CLIMAX first, HOUSE OF F second, I think.

Carradine had come off (I think) a 7 year contract with Fox and was apparently highly regarded as a film character actor but also for his Hamlet; that, and he had his usual financial difficulties and needed the work. So he was a star asset, had some hoity-toity cache, and could be gotten reasonably (Anyone want to check? I think it was 5 grand for a week's work.).

That done, it was probably a no-brainer to simply pick up most of the primary monster-cast members from H of F to do H of D. The latter-- again, if'n ah'm recollectin' right-- was actually written first, after F MEETS W, as THE WOLF MAN VERSUS DRACULA, presumably with Lugosi in mind, and had a slam-bang gory finish with Talbot biting the heck out of everybody and the Wolfman battling Dracula in theform of a gigantic vampire bat, FMTWM style.