Amazon.com video review:
The fourth Pink Panther film with Peter Sellers and directed
by Blake Edwards is easily the most over-the-top, but it's still
pretty entertaining. The story finds Clouseau's former boss (Herbert
Lom) totally insane after years of enduring the bumbling detective,
and sequestered in a castle with a death-ray gun. Clouseau has to stop
him from using the weapon on the world, and his efforts to do so make
for some choice, Edwards-style slapstick. The quotient of destruction
(a Clouseau staple) is higher than average, but there is also real
wit--particularly in a final scene where Lom re-creates his most famous
role as the monster from the 1962 Phantom of the
Opera. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com video review:
Although A Shot in the Dark is often cited as the best of the
Pink
Panther comedies starring Peter Sellers, the fifth film in the
series--The Pink Panther Strikes Back--is a close runner-up.
Combining
a James Bond-ish plot with Sellers's trademark lunacy as Inspector Clouseau,
the film finds Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) driven insane by
Clouseau's incompetence, threatening global destruction unless Clouseau is
eliminated once and for all. Of course, the bumbling Clouseau leads a kind
of charmed life, emerging relatively unscathed (and completely oblivious)
from a phalanx of 26 unlucky assassins! Along the way, Sellers dons a
variety of costumes and hilarious accents, and his improvisational style is
given free reign. Karate showdowns with his valet, Cato (Bert Kwouk), once
again keep Clouseau on his toes, and lovely Lesley-Anne Down plays a
would-be assassin who finds Clouseau amorously irresistible. Highlights
include the memorable "Does your dog bite?" scene between Clouseau and a
goofy innkeeper, and a dental extraction scene in which Sellers and Lom
reached the peak of their on-screen comedic antagonism. For good ol'
fashioned slapstick comedy, they don't get much funnier than this.
--Jeff
Shannon
