The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Plot

At a psychiatric hospital, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is largely recovered from his obsession to kill the new Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and is about to be released when Clouseau, arriving to speak on Dreyfus' behalf, drives Dreyfus insane again. Dreyfus promptly escapes from the asylum and once again tries to kill Clouseau by planting a bomb while the Inspector (by periodic arrangement) duels with his manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk). The bomb destroys Clouseau's apartment and injures Cato, but Clouseau himself is unharmed, being lifted from the room by an inflatable disguise. Deciding that a more elaborate plan is needed, Dreyfus enlists an army of criminals to his cause and kidnaps nuclear physicist Professor Hugo Fassbender (Richard Vernon) and the Professor's daughter Margo (Briony McRoberts), forcing the professor to build a "doomsday weapon" in return for his daughter's freedom.

Clouseau travels to England to investigate Fassbender's disappearance, where he wrecks their family home and ineptly interrogates Jarvis (Michael Robbins), Fassbender's cross-dressing butler. Although Jarvis is killed by the kidnappers, to whom he had become a dangerous witness, Clouseau discovers a clue that leads him to the Oktoberfest in Munich, West Germany. Meanwhile, Dreyfus, using Fassbender's invention, dissolves the United Nations headquarters in New York City and blackmails the leaders of the world, including the President of the United States and his Secretary of State (based on Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger), into assassinating Clouseau. However, many of the nations instruct their operatives to kill the other assassins to gain Dreyfus's favor and possibly the Doomsday Machine. As a result of their orders and Clouseau's habitual clumsiness, the assassins all end up killing each other until only the agents of Egypt and Russia remain.

The Egyptian assassin (Omar Sharif) shoots one of Dreyfus' henchmen, mistaking him for Clouseau, but is seduced by the Russian operative Olga Bariosova (Lesley-Anne Down), who makes the same mistake. When the real Clouseau arrives, he is perplexed by Olga's affections but learns from her Dreyfus's location at a castle in Bavaria. Dreyfus is elated at Clouseau's apparent demise, but suffers from a toothache; Clouseau, disguised as an old German dentist, sneaks into the castle - eventually (his entry frustrated by the castle's drawbridge). Not recognized by Dreyfus, Clouseau ends up intoxicating both of them with nitrous oxide. Realising the deception when Clouseau mistakenly pulls the wrong tooth, Dreyfus prepares to use the machine to destroy England. Clouseau, eluding Dreyfus's henchmen, unwittingly foils Dreyfus's plans when a medieval catapult outside the castle launches Clouseau on top of the Doomsday machine. The machine begins to malfunction and begins firing on Dreyfus and the castle itself. As the remaining henchmen, Fassbender and his daughter, and eventually Clouseau himself escape the dissolving castle, Dreyfus plays "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on the castle's pipe organ, while himself disintegrating, until he and the castle vanish.

Returning to Paris, Clouseau is finally reunited with Olga. However, their tryst is interrupted first by Clouseau's apparent inability to remove his clothes without a struggle, and then by Cato, whereupon all three are hurled by the reclining bed into the Seine. Immediately thereafter, a cartoon image of Clouseau begins swimming, unaware that a gigantic version of the Pink Panther character is waiting below him (a reference to the recent film Jaws, made obvious by the thematic music as the movie ends).

Cast

Cast notes

Production

The Pink Panther Strikes Again was rushed into production owing to the success of The Return of the Pink Panther. Blake Edwards had used one of two scripts that he and Frank Waldman had written for a proposed "Pink Panther" TV series as the basis for that film, and he used the other as the starting point for Strikes Again. As a result, it is the only Pink Panther movie which has a storyline (Dreyfus in the insane asylum) that explicitly follows on from the previous film.

The movie was in production from December 1975 to September 1976, with filming taking place from February to June 1976. The strained relationship between Sellers and Blake Edwards had further deteriorated by the time production of Strikes Again was underway. Sellers was mentally and physically in bad shape, and Edwards commented on the actor's mental state: "If you went to an asylum and you described the first inmate you saw, that's what Peter had become. He was certifiable."

The original cut of the film ran for 124 minutes, but it was trimmed down to 103 minutes for theatrical release. Some of the excised footage was later used in Trail of the Pink Panther. Strikes Again was marketed with the tagline Why are the world's chief assassins after Inspector Clouseau? Why not? Everybody else is. Like its predecessor and subsequent sequel, the film was a box office success.

During the film's title sequence, there are references to television's Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the films Batman, King Kong, The Sound of Music (which starred Blake Edwards's wife, Julie Andrews), Dracula AD 1972, Singin' in the Rain, Steamboat Bill Jr., and Sweet Charity, putting the Pink Panther character and the animated persona of Inspector Clouseau into recognizable events from said movies. There is also a reference to Jaws in the end-credits sequence. The scene in which Clouseau impersonates a dentist and the use of laughing gas and pulling the wrong tooth are clearly inspired by Bob Hope in The Paleface (1948).

Richard Williams (later of Roger Rabbit fame) supervised the animation of the opening and closing sequences for the second and final time; original animators DePatie-Freleng Enterprises would return on the next film, but with decidedly Williamesque influences.

Sellers was never happy with the final version of the film and publicly criticized Blake Edwards for misusing his talents. The strain in their relationship is noted in the next Pink Panther movie's opening credits ("Revenge Of The Pink Panther") listing it as a "Sellers-Edwards" production.

Despite being apparently killed off in this film (after committing major crimes), Dreyfus returned in Revenge of the Pink Panther, once again as Chief Inspector.

French comic book writer René Goscinny of Asterix fame was reportedly trying to sue Blake Edwards for plagiarism at the time of his death in 1977 after noticing strong similarities to a script titled "Le Maître du Monde" (The Master of the World) which he had sent Peter Sellers in 1975.

Reception

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote, "If I'm less than totally enthusiastic about 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again,' maybe it was because I've been over this ground with Clouseau many times before," stating that a time would have to come "when inspiration gives way to habit, and I think the 'Pink Panther' series is just about at that point. That's not to say this film isn't funny -- it has moments as good as anything Sellers and Edwards have ever done -- but that it's time for them to move on. They worked together once on the funniest movie either one has ever done, 'The Party.' Now it's time to try something new again."

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the characters of Clouseau and Dreyfus "were made for each other," and further stated, "I'm not sure why Mr. Sellers and Mr. Lom are such a hilarious team, though it may be because each is a fine comic actor with a special talent for portraying the sort of all-consuming, epic self-absorption that makes slapstick farce initially acceptable—instead of alarming—and finally so funny." Canby also enjoyed Clouseau's French accent, and wrote, "Both Mr. Sellers and Mr. Edwards delight in old gags, and part of the joy of 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' is watching the way they spin out what is essentially a single routine".

Awards