Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s loving pastiche of the old Universal Studios series of monster movies, some of which was shot using the original Hollywood props from the 1930s. While the critics were often sniffy on its release, the film has gone on to be considered a classic in its own right, being recognised by the American Film Institute in its millennium list of the top 100 comedies of the preceding century.

Brooks and Wilder bring a typically anarchic spin to the script and are ably supported by a troop of quality actors clearly having a lot of fun, including Marty Feldman as Igor (“Hump? What hump?”), Cloris Leachman (cue neighing horses), Madeline Kahn (“Taffeta, darling”) and Kenneth Mars (“A riot is an ugly thing”). As the monster, Peter Boyle famously gets to perform Putting on the Ritz, while Gene Hackman makes a cameo appearance as a blind hermit.

For all its knockabout humour, what sticks in the memory is the quality of the photography and mise en scene, which carried through into Brooks’s vision as a producer of David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man. This is ultimately a respectful homage to Universal’s Frankenstein franchise, but perhaps more a love letter to an earlier age when making a movie was meant to be fun.