Revenge of the Pink Panther ** (1978, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk, Dyan Cannon) – Classic Movie Review 8871

Director Blake Edwards’s 1978 comedy Revenge of the Pink Panther is only mildly amusing. Peter Sellers’s last hurrah as Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau has virtually no story and is really no more than just a series of pretty weary gags. It is Sellers’s fifth and final Pink Panther movie, though, eerily, the series carried on without him.

Robert Webber plays Philippe Douvier, a drug boss trying, apparently successfully, to kill Clouseau, who then goes undercover with Cato to find out who tried to kill him.

Herbert Lom (as Inspector Dreyfuss), Bert Kwouk (as Cato), Dyan Cannon (as Simone Legree), and the finale are the funniest aspects here in a series that had already run its course. However, it won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Comedy.

It is the last film of character actor Michael Ward (playing Real Estate Agent), who had to retire through ill health after a stroke, and died on 8 November 1997. His first film was An Ideal Husband in 1947. He appeared in five Carry On films and four Norman Wisdom comedies, among his 70 movies.

The posthumous Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) followed, with Sellers in deleted scenes and archive footage only.

Also in the cast are Robert Loggia, Graham Stark, Paul Stewart, Ferdy Mayne, André Maranne, Tony Beckley, Alfie Bass, Sue Lloyd, Danny Schiller, Douglas Wilmer, Charles Augins, John Wyman, Elizabeth Welch, Valerie Leon, John Clive, Henry McGee, Andrew Sachs, Julian Orchard, John Newbury, Maria Charles, Frank Williams, Rita Webb, John Bluthal, David Lodge and Adrienne Corri.

It is written by Blake Edwards, Ron Clark and Frank Waldman, 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.

It follows The Pink Panther (1963), A Shot in the Dark (1964), The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8871

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