Trail of the Pink Panther * (1982, Peter Sellers, David Niven, Herbert Lom, Richard Mulligan, Joanna Lumley, Capucine, Robert Loggia, Burt Kwouk) – Classic Movie Review 8870

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) follows Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), which is the final Pink Panther film for Peter Sellers, as Trail of the Pink Panther was made posthumously using outtakes and deleted scenes of him.

After the trail had gone cold with the death of Peter Sellers on 24 July 1980, aged only 54, director Blake Edwards carved out another Pink Panther film, about a TV reporter, Marie Jouvet (Joanna Lumley), seeking out people who knew Inspector Clouseau  after his mysterious disappearance.

Edwards films new footage (without Sellers of course, who features only in archive footage) and digs up previously unshown material, deleted scenes coming from The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), and old footage coming from all the previous Pink Panther movies. But you wish he hadn’t.

Maybe it was meant as a tribute to Sellers. And it is dedicated to him, and was marketed as a tribute to him. The dedication states: ‘To Peter . . . the one and only Inspector Clouseau.’ But Trail of the Pink Panther is a threadbare and embarrassing experience that almost looks like exploitation. It was shot together with Curse of the Pink Panther (1983).

The courts agreed with some film critics: they said that this insults the memory of the star. Sellers’s widow Lynne Frederick sued the film-makers and received $1,475,000.

Also in the cast are Herbert Lom, David Niven, Richard Mulligan, Capucine, Robert Loggia, Harvey Korman (archive footage), Burt Kwouk, Graham Stark, Leonard Rossiter (archive footage), Peter Arne, Ronald Fraser, Marne Maitland, Dudley Sutton, Daniel Peacock, Arthur Howard, Harold Berens, Harold Kasket, André Maranne, Denise Crosby, William Hootkins, Liz Smith and Danny Schiller.

It is written by Blake Edwards and Geoffrey Edwards, from a story by Blake Edwards. The extra screenplay credits for Frank Waldman and Tom Waldman are for using the deleted scenes from The Pink Panther Strikes Again.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8870

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