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I distinctly recall a discussion from a couple of years ago where it was more or less agreed on that EL CONDE DRACULA (as we called it then) was indeed a fullframe open matte shoot, but may have been cropped for theatrical presentation. There are abundant examples of advertisement art from all sorts of theatrical runs in many countries (the Divisa DVD itself uses a Spanish poster design for the cover: I have one of the originals :-] ) but I do not doubt that TV screenings were a planned use due to the toned down nature of the film plus the presence of so many recognizeable stars esp. Christopher Lee, language presentations and the fullscreen original shoot ratio.

I still remember seeing this on Monster Movie Matinee & Eivom (our local weekend creature feature hours in the pre-infommercial age of local programming) usually paired up with DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, and while as a kid I could not distinguish between the origins of the 2 films as Britsh vs. Spanish/Italian/German/Liechtensteinian, me and my friends were aware that they were very different films. One you would watch from a vantage point of "fun" like a cartoon and the other was more a meditation on the idea of the Dracula story as a movie. The scene that always made the biggest impression on me as a kid was when Herbert Lom scratches the cross on the floor with the fire poker to ward off Dracula, and of course the ending where Christopher Lee gets lit on fire. I also recall Jonathan Harker carrying a box of matches and lighting the candelabra as being rather impressive and used to annoy my parents by insisting on carrying matches all the time in case I ever needed to light up a candle (WEB OF THE SPIDER's use of matches and candles also contributed to the fetish, no doubt).

It was weird re-encoutering the film as an "adult" in the 1990s when I got my own VCR and started accumulating movies to watch. This was one of the first pre-records I ever bought and it was only when seeing it side by side with tapes of the Hammer Draculas that I started to realize just *HOW* different of an approach to making a Dracula movie it is, and then only later still (probably thanks in part to finding this forum) did I realize they were from different filmmaking traditions. The Hammer approach is more plot or action driven, using Dracula like the bad guy in a western, who is then injected into the film at various points to drive the plot by doing things that effect the people involved. Franco's approach is more Spanish, where Dracula is the focus of the story and the other characters in the film are held at bay by his powers.

If you go to that IMDb link and follow it to the main details page they also have two trivia posts about the film that are of interest (which are probably old news to the regulars of this wing, but whatever). The first of which is that Herbert Lom and Christopher Lee were never on the set at the same time -- over the shoulder doubles were used for their scene facing off over Mina. The other is that Klaus Kinski refused to read the script for a Dracula film and was given one that had a different title to sort of con him into appearing in the film. My favorite goof from the movie is one I still recall as a kid: The split palm trees in front of Carfax Abbey or whatever house it is that Dracula is inhabiting. I remember even noting as a kid that those should have been pine trees or something less equatoreal in nature. My favorite scene as an adult is easily the one where the "heroes" stumble into the room with all the stuffed animals (PSYCHO reference??) and Dracula makes them hallucinate the things coming to life. And the scene I look forward to seeing on the Dark Sky DVD is the one where Dracula's wolves convince Harker into boarding the coach. It will be nice to see them rather than just hearing them snarl.