The Twelve Chairs

Actors:  Mel Brooks, Frank Langella, Ron Moody, Dom DeLuise

Rating:  7 out of 10.  This was the only Mel Brooks movie I had never seen and while it’s a bit dated (especially with all the USSR jokes) it still has Brooks’ manic humor underlying all the dialogue.  A couple of dispossessed Russian noblemen are competing with a corrupt priest to find a chair where a fortune in jewels was hidden.   This doesn’t have the hilarious one liners most of his later work but has a more subtle comment on the human condition and greed.  Frank Langella looks impossibly young here, it’s almost as if he voicing over a young actor.  It was interesting seeing this early Brooks’ effort before he was freed up to be himself in the later, funnier ones.  

MVP:  Dom Delouise as the Russian priest trying to steal the jewels – best line in the entire movie – “God, you’re so strict!”