SOURCE: "Frankenstein: 'What Changes Darkness Into Light?'," in Horror Films, Monarch Press, 1976, pp. 11-32.

In the following excerpt, Dillard explores the symbolism of light and fire in Whale's Frankenstein.

Frankenstein is, according to the horror-film historian Carlos Clarens, "the most famous horror movie of all time," and, as John Baxter says in Hollywood in the Thirties, "deservedly so." Frances Marion in her autobiographical Off With Their Heads! recalls the "curious fact" that even in Hollywood "scarcely anyone old or young in the audience viewed the picture without some nerve-tingling reaction" when it was first shown in 1931. And the film still retains most of its impact, despite the familiarity of the monster's features even to those who are seeing it for the first time. Ivan Butler reports that the "first sight of Karloff … still manages to shock," and it has been my experience with recent showings of the...