It is easy to claim in writing a review that a particular film does not add up to the sum of its parts, but it would be to pay ‘Young Frankenstein’ a huge and justifiable compliment to claim that it works precisely because its parts don’t exactly add up. It’s a monster movie, which pays respectful homage to the Universal films of the 1930s directed by James Whale, with a career-best turn from Gene Wilder as the grandson of Victor Frankenstein who is so keen to distance himself from his controversial ancestor that he changes the pronunciation in his name to ‘Fronkensteen’, and gets himself into a twist each time he belabours the distinction.

In truth, however, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein is really in the same business as his forefather, as a university neurophysiologist specializing in bodily adaptations. When a surprise invitation arrives in the post inviting him to travel from New York to Transylvania in order to visit his crazy ancestor’s castle, Frederick ends up continuing in the tradition of Victor a century earlier and undertaking ‘mad scientist’ experiments, resuscitating corpses and substituting brains from one body into another. There is much here about the way we cannot truly escape our destinies, and ‘Young Frankenstein’ has, in typical Mel Brooks style, refashioned what we would expect from a film in this mould by, at one point, having the Monster appearing on stage and performing a song-and-dance number, ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’, in white tie and tails.

It is the affection that Brooks clearly has for the genre he is parodying that ensures this film works, and in lesser hands the black-and-white gothic mise-en-scène and the ‘Carry On’-style dirty gags would not have blended. This is a prime example of how a serious work of literature can be turned through the eyes of a creative genius into a comic masterpiece, and while ‘Young Frankenstein’ may not exactly come equipped with an independent message of its own, it is the adaptability of a classic story to the bespoke mind of a creative artist working in a different genre that ensures that this is a perfect fit of form and content.