The Pink Panther series had at last achieved repeatability through the combination of audience appreciation and creator involvement. Yet there was a problem: 1976’s The Pink Panther Strikes Back had closed the book on Pink Panther artistic exploration, as its’ fantastical comic book tale was surely Pink Panther exaggerated to its grandest logical extreme. It had Jumped the Shark, in the good sense that it negated any potential superior continuation. Any follow-up then cannot help but look lesser in comparison.
In light of this, the only choice writer/director Blake Edwards had with his Revenge of the Pink Panther (which, titularly, sounds just too much like Return of the Pink Panther to avoid confusion) was to pretend as though Strikes Again had never struck (again). The wonderfully ridiculous extremes of that story, and the logical consequences of its events, are abandoned for a “business as usual” caper. At least Revenge has the inspiration to examine the one underexplored notion of Strikes Again:
What if Inspector Clouseau were dead?
That question is of utmost importance to Herbert Lom’s magnificent Inspector Dreyfus. The only problem is he went supervillain, then literally vanished into thin air – a more permanent death than just about any in cinema. But he’s back anyway, ‘cause, well, Revenge is an Alternate Continuity! That means Dreyfus is still alive, and still confined to the nuthouse as in Return’s conclusion. Oh, and since he’d already peaked as the series’ villain, Dreyfus is now relegated to the role of the butt monkey. (Man, I’m in a TV Tropes linkin’ mood today! I am sorry.)
We’ll need a villain in his stead. Let’s go with [spinning the Random Villain Generator] the French Connection! Eh, why not, whatever? It’s just fill-in-the-blanks Mad Libs time, init? Heading this real world organization of murderous heroin smugglers is Robert Webbers…or at least, the character he plays, boring businessman Philippe Douvier. Desiring a continuity crossover with his fellow generic mobster types over in the American Mafia, Douvier seeks to impress them…by killing Clouseau!
Here’s how Peter Sellers’ immortal Inspector Clouseau is brought in, simply because. Eh, again, why not? If Clouseau vs. standard crooks sounds familiar, then the gags which follow shall be even more so. Seeing as this is a Strikes Backless universe, a lot of stuff gets repeated from there, as though Edwards’ Clouseauian inspiration was largely gone. In each, Clouseau improbably survives a massive explosion, has a run-in with a transvestite, ridiculously battles Cato, inadvertently avoids assassination, contends with a malfunctioning inflatable on a costume… Need I go on?
Explosion survival comes first, as Clouseau is targeted in the costume shop of one Auguste Balls (Graham Stark, series regular in a regularly irregular role). That name, Balls, yeah, titter-worthy gags derive from it. And since Balls’ death-by-explosion wouldn’t be funny, he survives too – both he and Clouseau rendered into wildly-smoking bits of human (Balls to the wall). In a series which has steadily eased into the “Looney Tunes” realm, this is expected. So is the fact that the French Connection’s bomb is one of those classic black ball anarchist deals.
Series formula dictates that at this stage Clouseau must return to his flat, once again refurnished after whatever we accept its last damage was. Here he must do battle with manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk) – and for the first time since A Shot in the Dark, Clouseau offers up exposition to justify this cartoonish relationship. The pitched slapstick Cato battle is typically of high quality. It still is here, though the joke is getting pretty abstract now with so many repetitions.
Now we can cue the transvestite scene I know you were all breathlessly anticipating since I briefly mentioned it above. Lured by a decoy phone call from Douvier (which is the traditional signal to end the Cato scene), Clouseau drives towards a forest ambush. But because the Edwardsian universe loves him, hitchhiking and crossdressing in advance is Claude Rouseau (Sue Lloyd, playing a man playing a woman, and edging Edwards ever closer to Victor Victoria). Rouseau is an escaped non-Dreyfus mental patient, which justifies whatever is about to happen. He/she/eh trades clothing with Clouseau, abandons him on the side of the road, then makes her/his/its way to the ambush. So it’s not Clouseau who dies in a fiery blaze, but a flaming drag queen.
Clouseau, for his part, is dragged off in drag by a couple of French policemen even more clueless than he is (I attest Clouseau is surprisingly smart in this entry). So he is hauled back to the loony bin in Rouseau’s deceased stead.
Funeral preparations are made for Clouseau, the central joke of Revenge being the extreme honor France holds for their beloved buffoon. We’re talking media coverage on a par with the late Princess Diana, a state funeral attended by Europe’s highest nobility and papacy, a Chinese whorehouse set up in his honor, the works. And Dreyfus is de-bedded from Bedlam, assigned with the task of hunting down Clouseau’s killers, as the man who knew him most intimately.
“I hated him intimately.”
Yes, Dreyfus, and you also take heaven-sent news of his violent, fire borne demise with surprising grace: “Clouseau is gone and I’m free – forever. Here, have a cigar.” You have very little of the twitchy mania of before, your series utility nearing an end. And you, Dreyfus, have the ignominy of serving little further narrative purpose in Revenge, except to occasionally see Clouseau here and there, and faint upon doing so. For a character that previously went “full retard” in his megalomaniacal doomsday supervillainy, this is underwhelming. Still funny, though.
Meanwhile, it doesn’t take long for Clouseau to learn of his own “death,” and use it to his advantage – see, he’s smart. I shall skip over the promised Chinese whorehouse scene, which is what you’d been breathlessly awaiting after having been satisfied with transvestitism. Let us simply say that Edwards’ cultural sensitivity has not improved with time, as he combines Clouseau’s love of the word “yellow” with a set of buck-toothed stereotypes they’d’ve rejected as outdated in the 1890s. This from the man who brought us Mickey Rooney in yellow face?! Say it ain’t so! (That’s to say nothing of klutzy Clouseau concealing his character in a kooky Cantonese coolie costume.)
No, I shall skip over the whorehouse without a single detour, and focus upon Clouseau’s motives. He hopes to bring down the assassins, and realizes this shall be simpler if he remains “dead.” The upshot of this is it sees Clouseau in costume far more often than usual, as this is a routine Edwards and Sellers have been growing increasingly fond of over the years. Some of his new personas featured in Revenge:
- A bearded Italian maestro with no shins.
- A transvestite (inadvertent).
- A man wearing a trench coat who has just escaped from the booby hatch.
- A salty seaman seeking info from a seadog (Alfie Bass) and a sea dog (a mutt).
- Something I didn’t take complete note of, probably a pimp.
- The Godfather.
That last one is Sellers’ take on Clouseau’s take on Brando’s take on an Italian American. Meaning it ultimately has as little to do with The Godfather as the rest has to do with The French Connection. It’s just Sellers saying things even more incomprehensibly than usual, and wearing some sort of experimental fat suit as he infiltrates the Maf-
But I’m getting ahead of the complex narrative. Douvier has arranged a meeting with his violent Italian buddies, over in Hong Kong for a change of setting. Clouseau manages to track them all there, using his bumbling imbecility…no, using genuine intellect and cleverness. There is of course some help in the form of a beautiful female – Simone (Dyan Cannon, Alice of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), Douvier’s former mistress who is upset at him for having a wife (this being before the French Mistresses’ Rights Movement). Clouseau saves her life by falling down (seen it), she then falls for him (seen it).
Okay, so the bit where Clouseau ends up in bed with a beautiful woman is old hat, the joke being the same here as ever: Clouseau, like Sellers, is hardly the sort of man who warrants such feminine affection. The series is repeating itself, as I too am repeating myself by pointing out that the series is repeating itself.
Then it’s off to Hong Kong, with Simone and Cato in tow. It's nice to see Cato in an expanded role. Even he gets a disguise – if you think reading glasses could fool anyone, and apparently Clark Kent does. Thus Cato stumbles through a series of “Mister Magoo” pratfalls, as meanwhile Clouseau resolvwa the plotline and foils the villains using genuine tact. It’s odd at this stage that Cato has become e’er more foolish, and Clouseau less so. At least it keeps Edwards away from creating racial humor out of the Hong Kong population at large.
It all concludes with an overwhelming number of interested parties converging on the docks, and thence into a fireworks warehouse. No points for guessing what happens there. That is, especially considering this is the director of The Great Race, thus the man responsible for the greatest pie fight on all seven continents. A fireworks inferno is another of the classic silent finales, so Edwards can now check that one off his list. Things reach what ought to be a comic fever pitch, but which feels strangely strained instead. Chaos reigns, without a specific point, and Clouseau emerges triumphant – and alive. And we don’t even get to see how Dreyfus reacts to this! (Or I forgot it.)
Way too much of the humor in Revenge of the Pink Panther is watered down from repetition – yeah, yeah, we got it, tired jokes! The other problem is a common enough one for Edwards. He takes his time with the gags, in a post-Mel Brooks era which now craves swifter satire. This classicalist approach works when the setup is leading to something, as it is in the best of the Pink Panther films. When there is not a cumulative gag, however (like with Revenge), the time in between punchlines is merely dead space.
Clouseau, Cato and Dreyfus remain the only funny characters in this series, meaning whenever the focus isn’t upon them, we’re just awaiting their return (or revenge, I guess). By making the ostensible plot about the French Connection, Edwards minimizes his stars’ presence. The stuff with Douvier and his mistress is tiresome, the sort of flat semi-drama you often get from comedies when they’re failing to deliver the funny stuff. At least there’s never been any attempt to negate the central Clouseauian conceit with needlessly heartwarming piffle.
I’ve gone a whole film without saying this, but Revenge was Sellers’ swansong for his Clouseau role – though no one knew it at the time. Still, it was apparent his health was failing, and had been for most of the ‘70s Panther resurgence. This necessitated more and more stunt double use in each new film, until Sellers’ invaluable physical performances began to suffer. (His Clouseau in Revenge is a little like Roger Moore in his later James Bond adventures – which I feel is a bit of a prophetic statement.) But that’s getting ahead of the story, and the post-Sellers Pink Panther story is a truly bizarre tale best left for another day.
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. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976))
• 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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