The Pink Panther Strikes Again

The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Blake Edwards
Produced by Blake Edwards
Tony Adams (Associate Producer)
Screenplay by Frank Waldman
Blake Edwards
Starring Peter Sellers
Herbert Lom
Lesley-Anne Down
Burt Kwouk
Leonard Rossiter
Music by Henry Mancini
Cinematography Harry Waxman
Edited by Alan Jones
Distributed by United Artists
Release dates
  • 15 December 1976 (1976-12-15) (US)
  • 22 December 1976 (1976-12-22) (UK)
Running time
 103 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $6 million
Box office $33,833,201[1]

The Pink Panther Strikes Again is the fifth film in The Pink Panther series and picks up where The Return of the Pink Panther leaves off. Released in 1976, Strikes Again is the third entry to include the words Pink Panther in its title, although the story does not involve the Pink Panther diamond.

Unused footage from the film was later included in Trail of the Pink Panther.

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, 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 adviser (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 (an uncredited cameo by 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 a 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 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.[3] 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 film was in production from December 1975 to September 1976, with filming taking place from February to June 1976.[4] The relationship between Sellers and Blake Edwards, never very good, had seriously deteriorated by the time Strikes Again was filmed. Sellers was physically in bad shape, and Edwards said of 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."[3]

The original cut of the film ran for 124 minutes, but it was trimmed down to 103 minutes for theatrical release. Some of the 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).[5]

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 relationships 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.[6]

Awards

American Film Institute Lists

References

  1. ↑ "The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Box Office Information". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
  2. ↑ Allmovie Cast
  3. 1 2 Thames, Stephanie "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (TCM article)
  4. ↑ IMDB Business Data
  5. ↑ Starks, Michael (October 1982). Cocaine fiends and Reefer madness: an illustrated history of drugs in the movies. Cornwall Books. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-8453-4504-7.
  6. ↑ http://content.myschool.lu/nouveaumonde/MP_Pi_Goscinny.pdf
  7. ↑ IMDB Awards
  8. ↑ AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs Nominees
  9. ↑ AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes Nominees
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