Comedy films aren’t supposed to make you sad. Sometimes they do, although usually due to circumstances beyond filmmakers’ control. One such example can be found in Revenge of the Pink Panther, a 1978 film directed by Blake Edwards, also known as the last instalment of the Pink Panther film series made before the premature death of its iconic star Peter Sellers.
Sellers returns in the role of Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau, a French police detective who became a famous national hero despite being totally incompetent. The plot begins with Douvier (played by Robert Webber), a powerful and influential French businessman and international criminal who dreams of restoring the infamous French Connection. This plan is rejected by his partners in the American Mafia, because they consider him too weak. In order to gain their trust, he decides to set up the assassination of Clouseau. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Clouseau is finally killed in an ambush. Or, to be precise, that is what everyone thinks because Clouseau had the good fortune of having his clothes and car taken by a transvestite robber (played by Sue Lloyd) who became the real victim of the ambush. Clouseau decides to go deep undercover and, with the help of his trusted manservant Cato Fong (played by Burt Kwouk), find the people behind the investigation. The investigation of Clouseau’s murder is at the same time led by Chief Inspector Dreyfus (played by Herbert Lom), his former superior who had just been released from a psychiatric hospital. While investigating, Clouseau inadvertently saves the life of Douvier’s former secretary and mistress Simone LeGree (played by Dyan Cannon), who, in return, agrees to help him set up Douvier during the heroin deal in Hong Kong.
Sellers was in very bad physical and mental shape during the production and, despite his undisputed talents, this shows in the film. Many slapstick gags are repetitive and made with the use of stuntmen, while the quality of humour, apart from a couple of interesting scenes, is lower compared with previous instalments. It seems that everyone else was tired during the production, including director Edwards, who again had problems with pacing in the first part of the film and whose grand finale (that takes place in a firecracker warehouse) looks uninspired. The same can be said of Herbert Lom, whose character returned (and thus defied the continuity set in the previous film) only to be strangely restrained in comparison with the lunatic behaviour shown in the previous films. Dyan Cannon, who, according to her testimony, had a great time on the set, is tragically underused and serves mostly as eye candy. She and Robert Webber, despite presumably playing French characters, speak with an American accent, which shows laziness on the part of the scriptwriters. Even the otherwise dependable composer Henry Mancini delivers a subpar soundtrack. On the other hand, it would be unfair to say that Revenge of the Pink Panther isn’t entertaining. There are some good scenes, like the one in which Clouseau finds his apartment transformed into a Chinese brothel, and viewers would enjoy the film in general, especially if they haven’t seen the previous instalments. However, it is hard to fight the impression that Sellers’ Clouseau deserved a much better swan song.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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