UGH!! A real dumb boring version

Well, I really enjoy it. I think it's kind of a given that characters will do stupid things in horror movies. The stories often depend on it as there wouldn't be a movie without it. I'm used to it by now. Fortunately the beautiful scenery, cinematography, acting, color, etc., were good enough to make up for some illogical character decisions.

There's also the possibility that they're just not smart people. Helen was always the voice of reason yet they always brushed her off and thought of her as paranoid. You'd be surprised at how naive some people are. It might not be as laughable as you think.

I wholeheartedly disagree with your opinion of the film. I personally believe that Dracula Prince of Darkness is the best Hammer Dracula film ever made. I mean sure, you can argue that it's predictable and lacks meaningful dialog but you really can't judge a movie like this by Oscar standards. It's a b grade 1960's Dracula, resurrection / horror film. Considering that the first Hammer Dracula film, Horror of Dracula 1958, was actually based on Stokers 1897 book, Dracula, I can't imagine how they could have possibly come up with a better story than Prince of Darkness to resurrect Dracula.

I was very disappointing by Hammers second Dracula attempt without Christopher Lee, Brides of Dracula, because the film featured neither Dracula nor his brides, so to me, it will always be a let down and a pseudo sequel... I believe that Christopher Lee was paid something like 1000 pounds back then to star in Horror of Dracula, which would be like approx 10,000 pounds today, but considering that the film grossed 20 million dollars back then, which would be like 200 million dollars today (not bad at all for a b grade horror film...), Christopher Lee wanted a substantial increase in his salary to do a sequel, especially because he was also not too keen on bi-passing Stoker either.

Hammer on the other hand always wanted to make films on a small budget and they could not come to an agreement with Christopher Lee, which is why he did not appear in their second Dracula outing, Brides of Dracula, and that is, according to Hammer, why Lee had no dialog in Prince of Darkness, simply because they did not want to pay him as much as he wanted. It actually took 8 years for Hammer to convince Lee to reappear as Dracula for the second time in Prince of Darkness. They had to change the script of Brides at the last minute after negotiations broke down with Lee. In regards to his dialog in Prince of Darkness, Lee always says that the dialog was so outrageously ridiculous that he refused to recite it.

In any case it's a true horror classic that horror fans, especially vampire / Dracula fans, should NOT miss for any reason.