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'Trail of the Pinkish Panther' - the Motion picture Content from the guide to life, the universe and everything

'Trail of the Pinkish Panther' - the Film

Created Apr 5, 2012 | Updated Oct 24, 2013

The shield of the Arts and Entertainment faculty of the h2g2 University.

Sometimes if you practice something long enough you miss information technology, even if it was painful.
- Cato

Plot

Is there one?

In Lugash, the Pink Panther is once again stolen¹. Inspector Clouseau is asked to investigate, and he immediately travels to England to visit his prime doubtable, Sir Charles Lytton, who in fact lives in the Southward of French republic. Even so former General and now President Haleesh of Lugash is pleased with the $12 million dollars insurance he has received since the theft of the jewel and his friend the Colonel plots to kill Clouseau. Clouseau catches a aeroplane to Lugash simply information technology never arrives.

Journalist Maria Jouvet decides to investigate Clouseau'southward disappearance. Nearly journalists would probably either join the air/sea search party looking for the missing aircraft and its black box, talk to the Air Traffic Controllers who monitored the plane crash on their radar screens, head to London to interview the people who final saw Clouseau alive and tended the aircraft before its last flying, or investigate the theft of the Pink Panther itself. Jouvet decides instead to interview Clouseau's banana Hercule, who retired from the force ii decades before. She likewise interviews Sir Charles Lytton and his wife, Simone, Clouseau'due south ex-wife, who Clouseau did not realise lived in the south of France. In fact, the only people she interviews who had seen Clouseau since the 1960s are Dreyfus, who reveals zilch, and Cato, who spends the unabridged moving picture in his apartment. Equally none of them had anything to do with his disappearance, unsurprisingly she learns nada.

Despite this Clouseau-like incompetence, the French underworld (who had nothing to do with the disappearance) is worried that Jouvet may discover something. Jouvet, who was happily driving around France in her own automobile, decides for some reason to take a taxi and is kidnapped by the taxi driver. She is taken to the head of the criminal underworld who warns her to stop her investigation. She and so visits Clouseau'south male parent, who talks about his son's early years. Jouvet broadcasts live on television each night that she has been investigating Clouseau'south disappearance, has talked to a few people, hasn't actually come up up with anything, but vaguely hopes that Clouseau is all the same alive.

Bandage

Characters and actors in Bold appeared in other films in the series.

Grapheme	Thespian
Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau	Peter Sellers
Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus	Herbert Lom
Marie Jouvet	Joanna Lumley
Sir Charles Lytton	David Nivenⁱⁱ
Lady Simone Lytton	Capucine
Bruno Langois	Robert Loggia
Professor Auguste Assurance	Harvey Korman
Cato Fong	Burt Kwouk
Hercule Lajoy	Graham Stark
Sergeant François Duval	André Maranne
Clouseau Senior	Richard Mulligan
Denise, Bruno's moll	Denise Crosby
Deputy Commissioner Lasorde	Marne Maitland
Section Director Alec Drummond	Colin Blakely
President Sandover Haleesh	Harold Kasket
Colonel/General Bufoni	Peter Arne
Martha Balls	Liz Smith
Cunny	Danny Schiller
Charwoman	Julie Andrews
Taxi Driver	William Hootkins

As this film was made at the same time as Curse of the Pink Panther, many characters appear in both films, fifty-fifty down to minor characters such equally Taxi Driver.

Joanna Lumley is best known as Purdey in The New Avengers and Sapphire in Sapphire and Steel equally well as appearing in sitcom Absolutely Fabulous and championing Gurkha rights. She would too appear as a different character in Curse of the Pinkish Panther. Rich Little had previously been the voice of the Pink Panther and, equally David Niven had lost his voice due to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, dubbed Niven's lines. Harvey Korman had appeared in the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Denise Crosby, Bing Crosby's granddaughter, was married to Blake Edwards' son Geoffrey Edwards. She is most famous for existence Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Side by side Generation. Marne Maitland was in The Human being with the Golden Gun as Scaramanga'due south gunsmith and had been in Peter Sellers films I'm All Right, Jack and The Bobo. Harold Kasket had been in The Mouse that Roared with Peter Sellers. Peter Arne, who had been Colonel Sharki of the Lugash Hole-and-corner Police, returns as the like Colonel Bufoni, who is promoted to General for suggesting the bump-off of Clouseau.

Liz Smith is possibly most famous for being in The Vicar of Dibley while William Hootkins had as well appeared in science-fiction films, including as Porkins (Red Six) in Star Wars, Munson in Flash Gordon, Major Eaton in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the corrupt Lieutenant Eckhardt in Batman. He was also in Superman Four: The Quest For Peace.

Robert Loggia had been in Revenge of the Pink Panther and returns equally a virtually-identical Mafia character. This raises the question why he could not have been the aforementioned character. For some reason, the recurring graphic symbol of François has changed his surname from Chevalier to Duval.

The Making of Trail of the Pink Panther

The making of Trail of the Pink Panther began with a Peter Sellers follow-up project. Having made the film he had actively pursued for seven years, Existence There, Sellers realised that filming the popular Pink Panther films allowed him the freedom to pursue more creative endeavours. Accepting the inevitable, he chose to become more than involved in the making of the next Pink Panther film, to exist called Romance of the Pink Panther. It was to exist a competition with Blake Edwards to see who could make the most successful motion-picture show with a like plot, Sellers' Romance of the Pinkish Panther versus Edwards' Rough Cut.

Romance of the Pinkish Panther - Unmade

Having fallen out with Blake Edwards and vowed once again never to work with him, Peter Sellers decided he would have more of a creative role in the side by side Pinkish Panther film. He began co-writing the script with Jim Moloney, with whom he had co-written The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu, his terminal picture. He would be paid $three,000,000 plus at to the lowest degree 10% gross, with $1,000,000 in advance. His fourth married woman, Lynne Frederick, would be executive producer. He had arranged for Sidney Poitier to direct, replacing Blake Edwards, who would still earn over $1 million to allow the use of the grapheme. The script was in development, with shooting unlikely to begin earlier early on 1981. The basic idea was that Inspector Clouseau would fall in honey with a Countess who would subsequently be revealed to be a precious stone thief, with Not The Nine O'Clock News and Superman III's Pamela Stephenson plain considered to play the beloved interest. In that location were fifty-fifty proposals that Inspector Clouseau might plow to a life of law-breaking for dearest. Nonetheless before the script was finalised, before long after the second draft had been written, Peter Sellers died of a center-assault on 24 July, 1980, a calendar week before he was due to undergo heart surgery.

Rough Cut

Following Revenge of the Pinkish Panther, Blake Edwards was involved in creating his own film like to The Pink Panther but without Peter Sellers, with Pink Panther stars David Niven in the Clouseau-similar office and Lesley-Ann Downwardly as the love interest. This film, similar The Pink Panther, would be named after jewellery. Rough Cutting was intended to exist well-nigh stolen uncut diamonds with a Clouseau-like detective after a precious stone thief similar to The Phantom. Afterward one humiliation besides many, the detective joins the thief in pulling off a heist. The terminate, with a celebration onboard a yacht, would later be re-used to conclude Curse of the Pink Panther. In the end Edwards left, and the picture was instead directed by Don Seigel and released in 1980.

Trail of the Pink Panther

In 1980 United Artists, who owned the rights to the Pink Panther films, made Heaven's Gate, a film which cost $44 one thousand thousand and made only $3million. In response, United Artists' possessor, Transamerica, sold United Artists to MGM, forming MGM/UA in 1981. Even though Peter Sellers had died, MGM was keen to continue with United Artists' most profitable series which they now owned the rights to. They contacted Dudley Moore asking him to play Inspector Clouseau in a moving picture based on the script that Peter Sellers had been working on at the time of his death. Dudley Moore refused unless Blake Edwards, with whom he had worked on 10, was involved.

Blake Edwards was initially busy making his pop 1982 flick Victor/Victoria ³. He besides believed that only Peter Sellers could play Inspector Clouseau. Nether force per unit area from MGM/UA to make 2 films on a very small budget, Blake Edwards came up with the idea of using deleted scenes from The Pink Panther Strikes Once again equally the basis for a new motion-picture show, with new linking scenes.

These scenes were loosely tied together with a 'plot' in which the Pink Panther diamond is over again stolen, and Clouseau is asked to investigate, but does not make it in Lugash. Following this, Joanna Lumley plays an investigative reporter who talks to diverse Pink Panther characters near Inspector Clouseau for a chip.

Essentially this is a clip show. For the most role, the scenes that had been deleted out of The Pink Panther Strikes Over again were not upward to the standard of the remainder of that film, and seeing them out of context in a vague try to make a different plot out of them fails to work. Although Blake Edwards defended the film 'To Peter Sellers, the one and only Inspector Clouseau'⁴, Sellers' widow sued MGM on the grounds that the film damaged Sellers' reputation. She attempted to bring out an injunction to prevent the film from beingness released, just instead in 1985 was awarded almost $1 million dollars in damages, 3.xv% of the motion-picture show'southward profits and ane.36% of gross receipts when the judges ruled that MGM had breached the 1958 Performers Protection Human activity.

Peter Sellers had known that Blake Edwards kept deleted scenes, and had previously said:

The only time that yous're really happy is the fourth dimension that you're doing, not when the moving-picture show comes out, when you lot're preparing the motion-picture show, only the time that you're doing the have. Y'all do it, that moment comes out in you lot, and you've done information technology – that's why Blake keeps his outtakes - that'south when the full feeling of achievement comes out.

The screenplay credits list not only Blake and his son Geoffrey Edwards, who wrote the picture, but also brothers Frank and Tom Waldman. This was for the deleted scenes and clips from previous films used, the Waldmans contributed no new scenes to this moving picture. Curiously Maurice Richlin and William Blatty, who co-wrote The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark respectively with Blake Edwards, receive no credit.

The Deleted Scenes' Origins

All the scenes containing Peter Sellers in the first 37 minutes were deleted from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. The following is a listing of where the Strikes Again scenes originally belonged (numbers) in the order they appeared in Trail:

two. The get-go sequence following the credits, where Clouseau visits Professor Auguste Balls, took place following the opening credits to The Pink Panther Strikes Once again.
5. The get-go scene of Clouseau in his office reading a newspaper while lighting a piping followed Tournier the Depository financial institution Robber'due south escape from prison house. The newspaper headline originally described Tournier'southward escape, not the theft of the Pink Panther.
6. The cigar lighting scene which ends with Clouseau beingness soaked by a sprinkler takes identify later François informs Clouseau that Tournier has robbed a banking concern and escaped with millions. The Commissioner'southward line 'I wish to hash out the bank robbery' has been over-dubbed to 'Pink Panther robbery'.
3. The following scene which takes place exterior, where Clouseau trips over a dog and is stalked by an unseen figure in a auto takes place immediately after the Balls scene. The reason Clouseau is remarkably dry out is because in The Pinkish Panther Strikes Again, this scene took place earlier he was soaked with the sprinkler. Clouseau carries the Balls' Quasimodo disguise he had bought. The unseen presence in the car is Dreyfus, who had merely escaped. This scene leads to:
4. The Lift and outside Clouseau' Apartment scene. A version of this is seen after the opening credits of The Pink Panther Strikes Over again, where a shorter trip the light fantastic toe routine and ripping of trousers takes place. This version has more involvement with the lift, more singing and dancing, and Clouseau drops more of his shopping.
1. The scene of François taking Clouseau to the airport was originally François driving Clouseau to visit Dreyfus in the mental home at the showtime of The Pink Panther Strikes Again. A new explosion at an airdrome was filmed, nonetheless the original explosion at the mental infirmary tin be seen in the trailer for The Pink Panther Strikes Once again, contained as an extra on DVD.
seven. The scene where Scotland Yard discusses Clouseau's arrival in disguise and the scenes of Clouseau on the plane and landing at the airport all took place equally seen following the Fassbender kidnapping. The airport inflow scene explains why Clouseau calls Drummond 'Scotland Yard' in The Pinkish Panther Strikes Once again.
8. The hotel scenes took place afterward Clouseau was arrested in The Pinkish Panther Strikes Again post-obit his first visit to the Queen of Hearts society. The phone phone call and 'massage' was from Jarvis, telling Clouseau to come to the club every bit he had data for him regarding the Fassbender kidnapping. Peter Sellers directing the taxi to the order have been dubbed over by Rich Lilliputian directing the taxi to the aerodrome.

Music

Instead of a new soundtrack album, a greatest hits compilation with the best music from the previous films was released. Appropriate, really.

Soundtrack

' The Trail of the Pinkish Panther'
'The Greatest Gift'
'Hong Kong Fireworks'
'A Shot in the Night'
'Simone'
'It Had Amend Be Tonight'
'The Piece of cake Life in Paris'
'Come up to Me'
'Bier Fest Polka'
'Later the Shower'
'Inspector Clouseau Theme'
'Return of the Pinkish Panther'

Review

Trail of the Pinkish Panther is at centre a compilation clip film. It was not the first such flick to exist a compilation prune evidence, with another case being 1979'south That's Acquit On, inspired by MGM'south That's Entertainment series. In the days before video cassette players, other than hoping your favourite picture show would exist broadcast on television reasonably often, compilation films were the merely mode of watching your favourite picture show moments. This pic was made in 1982, at a time when most homes even so did not accept video players. For the early 1980s it is excusable merely is not a moving picture which would piece of work today, in the era of moving picture boxsets and deleted scenes expected as standard.

As far every bit films fabricated out of deleted scenes go, the start 37 minutes of this moving-picture show are inventive and overall work well. Truthful, the scenes starring Sellers are ho-hum in pace, the reason why they were edited out of The Pink Panther Strikes Again, only still are entertaining, humorous and keep the viewers' attention. After 37 minutes the concluding scene starring Clouseau has been shown and the motion picture'southward focus transfers to Maria Jouvet. At this bespeak the pace goes from tedious to stopped, equally Jouvet talks to people and not a lot actually happens.

The jokes following Sellers' deviation are non particularly funny. Dreyfus' attempts to have his blood force per unit area often result in disaster and his a dream about a pond pool full of jelly is a set-upwards that does non actually pay-off, nor does his quoting song lyrics. A pre-Star Trek Denise Crosby wonders whether her bum looks big in a skimpy bikini set and in an exotic negligee⁵. Equally far as plots go, these themes are not quite in the aforementioned league equally all the globe's top assassins trying to impale Clouseau.

The character of Clouseau's male parent, a wine maker in Château Clouseau à Lamarque who has naked women in his vats and cannot remember anything after 4pm, and Clouseau's Nana who needs to exist guided effectually the house like a sheepdog also do not really work.

Joanna Lumley's Jouvet never really comes across as a competent journalist, just is not an incompetent accident-decumbent replacement for Clouseau either. She does at one point clothing a Clouseau-like coat when breaking into the Clouseau residence. Cato, naturally, defends his home, setting upward the hope of an epic Cato v. Jouvet battle. The audience is sadly robbed of this when Jouvet but hits Cato over the head with a frying pan. This activity serves to demean all the previous Clouseau five Cato fights, highlights of each Pink Panther film since A Shot in the Nighttime.

In that location are some contradictions with previous films. Some should exist forgiven. Clouseau meets Section Manager Alec Drummond for the first fourth dimension even though the flick is set afterwards The Pink Panther Strikes Again in which this character appeared, merely with the expiry of Peter Sellers, this obviously could not be inverse. However there are several other scenes which contradict previous films pointlessly which could easily have been corrected. Sir Charles Lytton claims to have married Simone in 1970; The Render of the Pink Panther's Lady Claudine Lytton is not mentioned. When a clip pretending to be from The Pinkish Panther is shown, Lytton is seen hurting his leg in a skiing accident, not when Princess Dala's dog was 'kidnapped' as actually happened in that pic. Lytton also says that he'll never forget the old man crossing street in the scene shown at the climax of The Pink Panther. In that scene he was decorated driving his car around town, trying to escape from Clouseau and the police who were chasing him, not watching the old man every bit the audience was. In some other in-joke, Hercule, who features in A Shot in the Night, lives onboard a boat named the Moth, named subsequently the 'Meuth' scene in that film. Hercule was not actually present in the room at the time when Clouseau said 'Meuth', but was instead in the basement preparing to plough the lights off.

Edwards uses the graphic symbol of Lytton to vocalism Edwards' own theories regarding Inspector Clouseau which he would quote whenever asked. Namely, 'Men like Clouseau never die, they are indestructible' and that Clouseau 'Epitomised the 11th commandment "Thou shalt non give up"'.

The montage of Clouseau's early life consists of scenes out of other films, notably Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns and The Bridge on the River Kwai. It as well states that Clouseau tried to commit suicide as a teenager, a very dark statement with nothing in whatsoever other film in the serial to indicate that Clouseau has ever been suicidal.

This is non the worst picture show in the earth, and at that place are things worth watching in one case. These are the music, the showtime 37 minutes and the end credits. As a eulogy it is pretty poor. The film's attitude to Peter Sellers' retention and the audience tin can peradventure all-time be summed upward by two of the images contained within it: Dreyfus sticking his centre finger up at the audition and the blithe Inspector urinating during the opening credits, symbolising that this motion-picture show is really extracting the urine.

Blithe Credit Sequence

Dissimilar previous credits, these were animated by Arthur Leonardi of Marvel Productions Ltd 'based on Depatie-Frelang characters'. The Inspector is like to his portrayal in the credits to Revenge of the Pinkish Panther, but curiously with a behemothic chin. The credits also are not quite as inventive as previous films.

The credits brainstorm with the dedication, 'To PETER the one and but Inspector Clouseau'⁶

The Inspector arrives on screen, while the camera zooms in to his eye. The Inspector chases afterwards the Panther, just to run from a bomb which explodes him, leaving simply his hat. The Panther puts the Inspector'south lid on, and then the Inspector and the Panther'due south heads both turn into Pacman, and they chase each other. The animator draws the Inspector with a female person torso and, a hair appears on the top of the screen, as if the projector had something in forepart of the lens. The Panther plays serpent charming music, hypnotising the Inspector, who floats abroad on a musical annotation before existence caught in muzzle. The Panther pulls the thread, which becomes a game of cat's cradle for the Panther. After the game of cat'southward cradle becoming a tight-rope which the Inspector is catapulted off, the Pacman theme returns. The Inspector has a hole sawn around him and falls downward, photographs are taken of him, blinding him and communicable him in a giant book.

On top of the book the Inspector bizarrely appears to urinate the words 'story past Blake Edwards'. The Inspector is revealed to be carrying a siphon, then it may not take been urine. The Inspector crawls out from beneath the volume, is covered in paint before being chased once again by a Panther Pacman head. The Inspector grabs a remote command only to be eaten by the Panther Pacman.

Connections with other films

Disguises:
All films in the series feature disguises:

Clouseau goes to Balls for final fitting of his Quasimodo Outfit.
On the aeroplane, Clouseau is disguised as an injured man, Andre Botot, mustard salesman from Dijon, in a full body cast of plaster.
Clouseau's father reveals that Jacques wanted to be a policeman growing up and, at the age of 8 dressed up equally a cowboy.

Clouseau Clumsiness:

Clouseau tries to lite a piping, sets a newspaper on fire, which he puts in his bin. His attempt to smother the fire with his carpet sets his 'reum' debark, and when he tries to get some air, he falls out of the window.
Clouseau tries smoking a cigar and leaves a lighter on in a drawer, similar to how he puts a lit lighter in his pocket in A Shot in the Nighttime.
Clouseau drops cigars on the floor similar to how he dropped cigarettes in A Shot In The Dark.
Clouseau gets trapped in a lift, similar to his experiences with a revolving door in The Return of the Pinkish Panther.
Clouseau explodes his motorcar past playing with a pop out lighter.
When flying in an aeroplane, he gets trapped in a toilet as his leg is in plaster.
When he arrives in London he falls down the aeroplane steps, like to a scene in Inspector Clouseau.
Clouseau, in his London hotel room, falls out the window three times while on the phone. He had floated out a window whilst on a telephone in The Pinkish Panther Strikes Once more.

Dreadful Dreyfus:
Dreyfus remains accident decumbent:

Dreyfus puts his middle finger in ink and sticks it up to the camera.
Dreyfus again has loftier blood pressure, which leads to him falling out a window and exploding the blood pressure level cast.
Dreyfus jumps into a swimming pool, landing on the pool's cover. This follows a dream in which he had been given 3,000lb of jelly^seven which he put in his pool.
Dreyfus slips on lather and falls down stairs.

Lugash has had another anemic coup, followed by the theft of the Pink Panther.
Clouseau hails a taxi with the words, 'To the airport, my practiced man, and drive similar current of air' but mistakenly gets into a dissimilar cab. He had had taxi issues in The Return of the Pink Panther and a similar situation with a constabulary car in A Shot in the Dark.
It is confirmed that Clouseau fought in Resistance, first mentioned in The Pinkish Panther Strikes Once more.

ⁱThe Purple Museum of Lugash has apparently suffered budget cuts since the final time the Pinkish Panther was stolen, striking its security quite severely. The guards, sensor beams and weight detector seen in The Return of the Pink Panther all seem to have gone. ²Voice past Rich Little. ³A picture showing many similarities with the Pink Panther films. It co-stars Graham Stark and Peter Arne, who was in Return, Expletive and Trail. Herb Tanney, who was in Render, Strikes Once more, Revenge, Curse and Son, plays a bumbling French detective/investigator. Like A Shot In The Dark, it is set in Paris and like Revenge, involves the principle character cross-dressing and being in disguise. ⁴This did not stop Edwards from casting other actors to play Clouseau at dissimilar ages in his life. ⁵It doesn't. ⁶Although four other actors play Clouseau, including stunt co-ordinator Joe Donne, Lucca Mezzonfanti plays the 8 yr erstwhile Clouseau, Daniel Peacock is the 18 year old Clouseau and Daniel Farrell is the Clouseau in the French Resistance during the Second World War. ^viiKnown in America equally jello, not to be dislocated with jam.