The Pink Panther Film Collection
(The Pink Panther / A Shot in the
Dark / Strikes Again / Revenge of /
Trail of) starring Peter Sellers,
Herbert Lom, David Niven, Elke
Sommer, Henry Mancini
Still Laughing !
Cue the Henry Mancini music and watch out for Cato--the gist of the Pink
Panther series has been gathered in a six-disc boxed set. At the center of
it is Peter Sellerss incarnation of inspector Jacques Clouseau, a
hopelessly bumbling detective with a genius for resting his hands in the
wrong place (on the surface of a spinning globe, for instance) and
mangling the English language. Writer-director Blake Edwards cast
Peter Ustinov as Clouseau in The Pink Panther, but Ustinov dropped out
just before shooting began. Edwards (who recounts this story in a spotty

commentary track included here) and Sellers bonded over their affection
for Laurel and Hardy, and immediately transformed the character of
Clouseau into a walking sight gag. The first film has a delicious swinging
sixties vibe, while jewel thief David Niven, Claudia Cardinale, and
Capucine occupy as much screen time as Sellers. Sellers really hits his
stride in A Shot in the Dark, an elegantly funny tale of Clouseau sleuthing
out a murder investigation. This one introduced Herbert Lom, as the
increasingly frazzled Inspector Dreyfus, and Burt Kwouk, as Clouseaus
houseboy-nemesis Cato. Sellers and Edwards, whose relationship was
stormy, put Clouseau aside for over 10 years, until a trilogy of mid-1970s
comedies restored the character to commercial (and dare we say cultural)
primacy. Unfortunately, the very funny comeback picture, Return of
the Pink Panther, is absent from this set due to rights issues with the
studios involved. The Pink Panther Strikes Again has Dreyfus going
bananas and targeting Clouseau; Revenge of the Pink Panther puts
Clouseau in a hilarious series of disguises, climaxing in a wonderfully
mounted sequence in Hong Kong. (Throughout the series, the calm,
classical staging of gags by Blake Edwards reminds you of what a lost art
this has become.) Trail of the Pink Panther looks better now than it did
when originally released in 1982, shortly after Sellerss death; its a batch of
unused Sellers routines from previous pictures, strung together with a
loose plot. In other words, its a deleted scenes extra, and quite funny at
times. Subsequent efforts Curse of the Pink Panther and Son of the
Pink Panther are neither included nor mentioned. A half-hour documentary
gives pleasant memories from Edwards, but feels incomplete. The cartoon
Panther gets his own 11-minute mini-doc, plus six cartoon shorts including
the Oscar-winning The Pink Phink. --Robert Horton
Personal Review: The Pink Panther Film Collection (The Pink
Panther / A Shot in the Dark / Strikes Again / Revenge of / Trail
of) starring Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, David Niven, Elke
Sommer, Henry Mancini
I had forgotten how funny these movies were and how marvelously inept
and arrogant the inspector was. I think I laughed as hard at the chase
scene in the Pink Panther as I did when I first saw it. I am sharing this
collection with people who are not old enough to have seen them when
they came out. They find them as hilarious as I do.
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The Pink Panther Film Collection (The Pink Panther / A Shot in the Dark / Strikes
Again / Revenge of / Trail of) starring Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, David Niven, Elke
Sommer, Henry Mancini 5 Star Customer Reviews and Lowest Price!