The Return of the Pink Panther may have been conceived as a rebooting, a jumpstarting of the hibernating Panther franchise, but not even writer-director Blake Edwards could have foreseen just how amazingly popular it would prove. Taking in $100 million at a time when that still meant something (putting Return on par with hallowed things like The Exorcist and Jaws), it was clear the public was hungry the adventures of Inspector Jacques Clouseau, whatever the mediocrity.
Good thing, then, that Return had its start as one of several TV episodes, for a show that never came to be. This means when demand for a fifth (or fourth, if your hatred for Inspector Clouseau borders my own) arose, Edwards was able to quickly purloin another TV script and repurpose it for cinemas. So with an efficient turnaround equivalent to the Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark gap, The Pink Panther Strikes Again was out in less than a year.
Good thing too, then, that Return’s success gave Edwards the confidence to deliver a much more wholly conceived Pink Panther return in its wake. The Return of the Pink Panther played it safe, delivering Peter Sellers’ measured performance as Clouseau, telling a non-comedic and desultory sequel plotline, and otherwise not doing very much. None of that for Strikes Again! No, for even while the series had irreparably lost much of its ‘60s sophistication, it was easing further into the go-for-broke realm of absolute nuttiness. This leaves Strikes Again as the most utterly “Looney Tune” of the series (so far, at least), with an entire plot and tone manufactured to emphasize that aspect. And it is damn funny, bettered franchise-wise only by A Shot in the Dark.
All of that extraneous nonsense concerning Sir Charles Lytton and the Pink Panther diamond from Returns is thankfully gone here – Indeed, Strikes Again does not even feature the Pink Panther diamond, title notwithstanding. It seems The Pink Panther (the series) had reached the rarified heights where its moniker is pure brand name; just as Nick Charles is not the Thin Man, nor is the Monster Frankenstein, Inspector Clouseau is not the Pink Panther. Though it’s hard to blame someone for making the mistake.
Anyway, Strikes Again boils the Pink Panther formula down to its essence: Inspector Clouseau exists, is an inept and catastrophizing boob, and thus a constant source of pain for his former superior, Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom, in his third entry). The plot, as it is, falls out entirely of Dreyfus’ rivalry, taking that backbone from other entries and exaggerating it to comic book levels of absurdity. The result is stupid, stupid humor, but there’s a smart way to do stupid, and Blake Edwards held the patent on that (though his ground was ceding to the newly stupid career of Mel Brooks, and later ZAZ).
Resuming where Returns departed (one advantage of a hasty preproduction), we find poor Dreyfus still confined in a Hopital Psychiatrique (that is, the nuthouse). But his beloved sanity makes a reappearance, as in a meeting with his shrink Dreyfus admits to no longer harboring any sort of ill will towards the hated Clouseau. With this realization, Dreyfus is due up for release, as we all feel very glad for the man.
The entire pre-titles sequence is almost a perfect comedic short film. One following along feels bad for Dreyfus, the only “normal” man in this godforsaken Clouseauian universe…and yet, our sympathies must always lie with Clouseau. Hence, Clouseau’s unwanted arrival on the sanitarium grounds is all we need to no longer desire Dreyfus’ mental rehabilitation. In a lovely slow burn of escalating slapstick foolishness, Clouseau unintentionally and unknowingly breaks down Dreyfus’ calm façade, all while struggling to help his one-time Chief. Perfect pratfalls fall out, made all the better for the carefully-established setup. Dreyfus rages against Clouseau with familiar insanity, as all his efforts at decency fall to naught.
Then cue the animated opening credits, for it is an under-discussed fact of the series that every film possesses an early cartoon. These are always fun, and work as well as anything else to mark the series out as a cartoonish flipside of James Bond.
Titles over, rather than see the makings of Clouseau’s next case, or any of that plot-heavy nonsense, we simply accompany Clouseau back to his Paris flat. Still the focus remains solely on Clouseau’s Roadrunner vs. Dreyfus’ Coyote, with a little Cato (Burt Kwouk) thrown in as formula demands. That Cato sequence follows very closely the outline of its equivalent in Return, as he and Clouseau engage in a boisterous comic martial arts battle throughout the flat, neither one looking particularly like a paragon of human competence. The new wrinkle to this familiar (yet still somehow funny) routine is Dreyfus – for Dreyfus has O.S. flown over the cuckoo’s nest in one final, last ditch effort to assassinate Clouseau. But from his perch in the apartment below, Dreyfus rather takes the fullest brunt of physical humiliation, in another perfectly-pitched piece of foolish filmmaking.
As always, the Cato sequence concludes mid-duel with a phone call, this time to warn Clouseau of Dreyfus’ escape. What follows makes sense, from a certain skewed perspective (if you’ve been following the series): To escape Dreyfus’ detection, Clouseau oh so naturally dons an inflatable Quasimodo costume – This builds to its logical extreme Clouseau’s more grounded obsession with disguises in Return. And as Dreyfus preps a bomb, Clouseau’s hump (or “hieump”) inflates out of control, apparently with helium considering it causes Clouseau to float up out of his bedroom into the nighttime Paris skies (and even over Notre Dame, natch). And then…
ASPLODE! Clouseau’s flat goes fwoosh!
Now…you gotta accept a lot of cartoonish nonsense for Strikes Again to work. This bit is your litmus test. Clouseau survives, due to a bizarre accumulation of events, and due to our ignoring the properties of inflatabilia, etc. Oh, but Cato too survives, never mind he was caught in the blast’s dead center! (If a death ain’t funny, no one dies; the Pink Panther maxim) And by film’s end, even the apartment building has somehow restored itself, like Daffy’s replacement bills in between shotgun blasts. Like it or no, you cannot claim that The Pink Panther Strikes Again lacks for a commitment to its tone.
Okay, having gotten the expected Cato sequence out of the way, Edwards can commence with new plot. Still it falls out from Dreyfus’ anti-Clouseauian mania, as he…
Well, Dreyfus was once relatable. But as Clouseau became hero in A Shot in the Dark, Dreyfus took the put-upon role Clouseau “enjoyed” in the original Pink Panther. Thus shat upon, Dreyfus progressed from a passive aggressive placemat to a serial killer to an asylum inmate, and now all the way to – Comic Book Supervillain! Oh yes! Dreyfus amasses an army of criminal mooks with utmost efficiency, then goes about kidnapping mad scientist Hugo Fassbender (Richard Vernon – like Kwouk, another Goldfinger veteran). All this as part of a roundabout scheme to de-Clouseauify the world, at any cost necessary.
For now, though, Clouseau responds to the Fassbender estate to investigate as though he were simply in another of his murder mystery pastiches. So the whole staff is assembled in the drawing room (or “rieum”), as Clouseau does the old lecture-and-spiel. Showing Inspector Clouseau how it’s done, here Edwards and Sellers introduce essentially random humor to exacerbate the situation, especially the notion that nice things must be comically destroyed simply because. But even when Strikes Again is at its full tilt zaniest – and we’re about 0.037887% there – it is always carefully made, with no flailing. So Clouseau encounters parallel bars, a suit of armor, a fireplace, a piano, and all this awkwardness follows out logically.
Amongst Fassbender’s staff is a Fass-bender – that is, the butler Jarvis (Michael Robbins), who does as Michael Palin’s lumberjack with his time off: he puts on women’s clothing and hangs around in bars. Or more like Will Forte in “30 Rock,” really, in that Jarvis doesn’t merely cross dress, he performs in such a state. (It’s the germ of Edwards’ later Victor Victoria, but with a dude.) And while Clouseau’s reaction to this sudden rampant homosexuality is funny (in a room pinker than you’d think even a PINK Panther could manage), a lot of the humor comes from the idea, from the other actors – you know, elements Edwards refused to include in Return.
Meanwhile, Clouseau also has a new Superintendent (called “the Superintendant” – Leonard Rossiter), to suffer at his hands in the fashion of Dreyfus, 1964 version. Of greatest note, Superintendant gets himself an ass full of buckshot.
But that’s just a repeat of before, when the real Dreyfus is off achieving far greater acts of comic ridiculousness. Going “full retard” in his Universal-style supervillainy, Dreyfus has acquired himself a haunted, lightning-wrought castle in deepest Bavaria (oh yes!). All the while sitting in the dark playing with his organ…er, I mean, noodling with his instrument…er, I mean, recalling Lom’s own 1962 Phantom of the Opera for Hammer Horror. All the while giggling in a lunatic manner, as is Dreyfus’ wont.
Fassbender is bound (fast) before Dreyfus, who has this ultimatum: Build for me a doomsday device (oh YES!), with which we may destroy Clouseau! Mwah hah hah hah HAH! And also…“conquer the world.” (Of course!) See how ridiculous Strikes Again gets, and we aren’t even to the unbelievable stuff yet!
It’s almost as though Edwards wanted to make a balls-to-the-wall comic book parody, or something, and saw the expediency of slapping Inspector Clouseau into it. It’s like how A Shot in the Dark was initially a Clouseauless enterprise, which is why it too feels so inspired.
Take Dreyfus’ next step: Holding the world for ransom (oh yes!). Outdoing Dr. Evil just as Clouseau does Austin Powers, Dreyfus broadcasts his own bug-eyed face allover worldwide television – getting the attention of even President Ersatz Ford (Dick Crockett – Edwards’ occasional executive producer). As a further example of how wide reaching the non-Clouseau kookiness of Strikes Again strikes, here we have about the crudest caricature of this particular president I’ve yet seen. Basically, Ford thinks about football 90% of the time. (Talk in his sleep: “Put me in, coach.”) Makes ya miss the good ol’ days, when that was all political humor needed.
Forgetting Ford, this is Dreyfus’ demand: If Clouseau does not die, he shall destroy the Earth. And as a demonstration, in one week’s time Dreyfus shall erase the UN Building in New York (oh yes!). Not “destroy,” mind you, “erase.”
This is done in a special effects moment recalling Godzilla efforts of that decade. A red, German-mounted glowing laser wipes out the UN like a Photoshop effect. Yeah, we’re getting pretty wakka-wakka here. Are you still with this movie? Good!
Back on the Clouseau front (you thought they’d forgotten about their star?), he’s found a clue (or “clieueueueueueueueu”) leading him to the Munich Oktoberfest – continuing this series’ bizarre fixation with the Hinterlands. But not only is Clouseau there. So are 24 of the world’s greatest assassins, on the behalf of every major world government, each hoping to act out Dreyfus’ wishes and frag the foolish Frenchman.
By now, it’s already a common Pink Panther fixture for a killer (almost always Dreyfus himself) to try offing Clouseau, only to inadvertently murder some other person instead. Simply repeating that same routine would be bland; that’d be the Return of the Pink Panther approach. So The Pink Panther Strikes Again instead exaggerates, in its characteristic way, and takes this same notion to its logical extreme. So rather than one killer, and a few deaths, we have dozens and dozens and dozens (oh yeeeeeees!), all without Clouseau ever realizing.
“Compared to Clouseau, this doomsday machine is a…a water pistol.”
In all the tales of inadvertently successful buffoon spies before and hence, this goes the furthest with the basic premise, almost becoming a parody of the form.
It all comes down to Egypt, which is fielding Omar Sharif, and Russia, which is fielding…
OH YES!
That’s Lesley-Anne Down as Olga Bariosova, the country’s greatest sex assassin. Isn’t it kinda late for the desultory, one-off love interest? Indeed. Which is why Olga appears for mostly just the one scene, long enough for a first-rate ravishing from Omar Sharif, whom she thinks is Clouseau (don’t ask). It compounds, so that she falls in love with Clouseau when he does arrive, when really Clouseau has done nothing at all. Compare that to all similar love interests, who must sacrifice dignity to fall for the klutzy lead. See, parody of the form?
That’s pretty much it for Olga, who goes her way once her joke is over. The assassination routine is kaput, as Omar has killed one of Dreyfus’ own goons in a Clouseau costume, a compounding of several weird mistakes, as everyone now believes Clouseau is dead. Word makes it all the way back to Dreyfus in his castle lair. Again, it’s the logical extreme of the “Dreyfus wants Clouseau dead” plotline, to see what he’d do if he won (just as what would happen if the Coyote ever did catch the Roadrunner, or Ahab the White Whale, or if Sonny got his Cocoa Puffs). Here’s how Dreyfus takes the welcome – yet false – news: “He’s dead! Hurray, I’m freeeeeeee! Hah hah hah hah hah!”
Then Dreyfus gets a toothache.
Clouseau, for all his apparent incompetence, has still managed to find the clieueueueueueueueu leading him to Bavaria, and to Castle Dreyfus. This is the weird superpower of Inspector Clouseau, that his triumphs come of his own sloppy foolishness – a power granted wholly of a universe manufactured (by a writer, or God) to favor Clouseau in all cases, and to disfavor all who oppose him. So in the same stumbling, clumsy, bumbling, incompetent, nitwittish, nincompoopic, moronic, idiotic manner, Clouseau has now made his way directly to Dreyfus’ drawbridge.
But while the central non-slapstick (that is, narrative) joke of the Pink Panther series is Clouseau’s unlikely triumph, there is still room for Clouseau to look the fool, feel the fool, and become the butt of the joke for our amusement. This is him vs. the drawbridge, a man vs. machine scenario in the Buster Keaton mold, and the (yes) natural extension of smaller such routines in Return. Pretty much imagine a Chuck Jones cartoon about all the wrong ways to enter a castle, and you’ve got this sequence.
The only problem is that it’s live action, with the language of live action cinema. That means only what Sellers (and his stunt double) can accomplish, with plenty of coverage in between the gags. Again and again, Edwards’ chief fault is his slowness and patience with humor, even though it sometimes aids him – as in this film’s opening.
And because it’s funnier this way, Clouseau does not enter the castle.
For it turns out Dreyfus’ toothache was a gift from a vengeful god, a god intent upon granting Clouseau access at Dreyfus’ expense. For he enters in his latest disguise, as a Teutonic tooth tickler, and proceeds to run Dreyfus through a proto-“Is it safe?” routine.
We’re getting pretty abstract at this point. An insane ex-Commissioner for the Sûreté ransoming the world with an erasure ray from inside a haunted German castle, treated for a toothache by a fantastically unable detective clad in an actively-melting wax nose, while both men guffaw endlessly due to the leaking laughing gas. But even with so many bizarre elements, credit goes to Blake Edwards for having the skill to make it seem clear. And credit to Sellers and Lom and their under-celebrated comic chemistry, for selling this obtuse scene.
But even once Dreyfus has had the wrong tooth pulled (where slapstick comedy meets torture pornography), he is not defeated. That takes one final comic set piece, with all of England at stake. I’ll leave the outcome to this unstated – Does Inspector Clouseau stop the madman and save the world? Well, whattaya think?! Clouseau’s been the hero since 1964; let’s just say Dreyfus’ comeuppance is as (il)logical as anything in this film. (I have it on good word Dreyfus returns in the sequel; I’d love to see ‘em justify that.)
If The Pink Panther Strikes Again is a comedic success (and it is), it is against all odds. Not just the challenge of being the fifth film in a long-running comedy franchise, repeating jokes when they ought to have lost their humor long ago. No, I mean the challenge presented by Sellers himself. Oh, he is as great as ever here (even if the Clouseau role offers no freedom). No, it’s just that Sellers ought to have been in that Hopital Psychiatrique, not Dreyfus. As least, that’s Edwards’ admition: “If you went to an asylum and you described the first inmate you saw, that’s what Peter had become. He was certifiable.”
Edwards and Sellers had always enjoyed an uneasy partnership, which is perhaps one of the things being referenced in the Dreyfus/Clouseau rivalry. And yet they spun silk together, yielding sublime comedy even when arguing beforehand about comedic theory.
"We clicked on comedy, and we were lucky we found each other, because we both had so much respect for it. We also had an ability to come up with funny things and great situations that had to be explored. But in that exploration there would oftentimes be disagreement...But I couldn't resist those moments when we jelled."
Edwards is too hard on himself. For all of Sellers’ talent, he was singularly unable to handle it; he’s the polar opposite of his blindly lucky Clouseau character. Sellers always second-guessed his own fame, as he was ever obsessed with reaching leading man status. Never mind he was the first male to make the cover of Playboy, Sellers’ self-doubt was seriously damaging to his health. The man had a history of heart problems, owing to an over-rapid weight loss regimen just prior to film work. As good as The Pink Panther Strikes Again is, in its childlike and silly way, one sees the first hints of Sellers’ ill health. And while his Pink Panther work would continue, trouble was brewing.
Fin.
Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 4 The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)
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