Sitting in the Dark

Frankenstein is one of our own Ray DeLancey’s favorite classic monsters. And as our resident scholar, he jumps to the front of the class to take Pete Wright and Kyle Olson to school.

We start with Edison’s own “Frankenstein,” the first cinematic adaptation from 1910, which you can watch yourself right now on YouTube here. Don’t worry; it’s not even 15 minutes long.

From there, we head to 1931 and 1935 and dive into Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. If you’ve never seen them, we recommend you take them back-to-back; they’re short and indeed do screen as two small parts of a greater whole.

This brings us Karloff, the standard bearer of the monster icon, and he’s fantastic. But Ray has the goods on what it took the man to create the monster on screen. It involves dental implants. Not kidding.

What about later installations of the monster on film? Fear not! We’ll be back with more later this in this SitD season. Thanks for listening, and if you know any horror or classic monster fans who might appreciate it, we hope you’ll pass the show along!
  • (00:00) - Sitting in the Dark • Frankenstein Part I
  • (03:22) - The Young Frankenstein Connections
  • (04:41) - None More Goth than Shelley
  • (08:56) - Frankenstein (1910)
  • (25:30) - Frankenstein (1931)
  • (57:08) - The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

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What is Sitting in the Dark?

Sitting in the Dark is a podcast about horror, but not the kind that hides in a single shadow. Each month, hosts Tommy Metz III, Kynan Dias, and Pete Wright pick a theme — an idea, a trope, a nightmare that keeps winding back — and explore it through three films that share its DNA. Sometimes the connections are obvious, sometimes they’re unexpected, and sometimes they lead you deeper into the maze than you expected to go.

One month might bring The Drac Pack, three wildly different takes on cinema’s most famous vampire. Another, a journey through The Bride, the Boy, and the Firetruck, unpacking coded queer horror across decades. We’ve explored maternal terror in Mommy Acts This Way Because She Loves You, broken into the home-invasion subgenre, tiptoed through haunted houses, and stared down both classic monsters and blockbuster franchises.

What ties it all together is a love of horror as a labyrinth — a twisting path where every turn reveals something new about our fears, desires, and cultural obsessions. With smart conversation, dark humor, and a willingness to look behind the curtain (or under the bed), Sitting in the Dark invites you to settle in, turn down the lights, and find out what connects the nightmares.