The Twelve Chairs

The Twelve Chairs is a 1970 slapstick comedy film directed by Mel Brooks, starring Frank Langella, Dom DeLuise and Ron Moody . The screenplay was written by Brooks. The film is loosely based on a 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs written by Ilf and Petrov. The novel had been previously filmed as It's in the Bag! (1945) as a starring vehicle for Fred Allen. In the Soviet Union in 1923, Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody), an impoverished aristo... more

The Twelve Chairs is a 1970 slapstick comedy film directed by Mel Brooks, starring Frank Langella, Dom DeLuise and Ron Moody . The screenplay was written by Brooks. The film is loosely based on a 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs written by Ilf and Petrov. The novel had been previously filmed as It's in the Bag! (1945) as a starring vehicle for Fred Allen. In the Soviet Union in 1923, Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov (Ron Moody), an impoverished aristocrat from Imperial Russia, is summoned, along with the village priest, to the deathbed of his mother in law. She reveals, before passing, that a fortune in jewels had been hidden from the Bolsheviks by being sewn into the seat cushion of one of the twelve chairs from the family's dining room set. After hearing the dying woman's Confession, the Russian Orthodox priest (Dom DeLuise), who has arrived to give the Last Rites, decides to leave the Church and attempt to steal the treasure. Shortly thereafter, a homeless con-artist, Ostap Bender,... less