Trail of the Pink Panther

Trail Of the Pink Panther is one of the strangest motion pictures ever made. Few movies (Game Of Death II and Plan 9 From Outer Space are perhaps the only other examples) have the dubious honour of featuring a star who died before shooting even BEGAN. As a tribute to the late great Peter Sellers, Trail is something of a failure...as an

exercise in creative editing, it is however a masterwork. Trail is a game of two halves...the Sellers half and the awful half. As is well-known, deleted scenes from the three previous Pink Panther movies (Return, Strikes Back, Revenge) were cobbled together to fake a new appearance by Sellers in this flick. To be honest, this snow job is executed with considerable skill...one could almost believe that Sellers had died midway through production. [In fact, this was almost the case; Sellers died mere weeks before shooting was due to begin on Romance Of The Pink Panther. To be made without the involvement of Blake Edwards in any manner, Romance would almost certainly have turned out to be an even bigger disaster than Trail eventually became.] I said you could almost believe it; because when the outtakes run dry, the movie loses any point or direction and wanders aimlessly for 40-odd minutes. Joanna Lumley, sporting a French accent even more hideous than Sellers', travels from place to place interviewing those who knew Clouseau. All pretence at the ostensible plot (the latest theft of the Pink Panther Diamond) goes out the window, in place of flashback clips and extremely dull comedy sequences. While Herbert Lom gives it his usual best (his attempts to conceal his joy at Clouseau's demise are as always sublimely hilarious) and the odd new scene raises a slight smile at best, the words SELLERS IS GONE, YOU MAY AS WELL SWITCH THE DVD OFF seem to flash before our eyes and cannot be ignored. Richard Mulligan's cameo as Clouseau's father is either amusing or painful, depending on your tolerance level for blatant and witless Sellers aping. But, while Peter IS there, there's plenty to enjoy. Highlights include a disastrous series of errors at an English hotel, Clouseau's fiery car lighter blunder, a painful visit to an aircraft toilet (all excised from Strikes Back) and an alternate take of the famous August Balls Costume Shop scene. Harvey Korman, who was replaced by Graham Stark as Balls in the take used, reprises his role here in new footage. David Niven, who played 'The Phantom' in the very first Panther movie, appears again alongside screen wife Capucine. Niven was dying at the time his scenes were shot, and over the violent protests of his family his lines were dubbed by impressionist Rich Little. Niven has very little to do here; he has a slightly larger part (his very last) in the follow-up, Curse Of The Pink Panther. Trail and Curse were filmed back-to-back, and in the main feature the same cast. Curse, while having a complete plot, lacks even Seller's posthumous presence to elevate the tired sight gags and double entendres Blake Edwards puts Sellers replacement Ted Wass

through. If United Artists hoped that this 'new' Sellers Panther movie would recoup some of the gigantic losses suffered as a result of Heaven's Gate, they were to be sorely disappointed. Both Trail and Curse bombed, and only Trail's curiosity value has saved it from complete oblivion. As it is, this is a weird and curiously compelling last bow from a true master of comedy. Goodbye, Peter, you crazy diamond.

Cut 45 minutes of filler material and this would make a nice little hour-long network retrospective and a decent tribute to Peter Sellers. It mostly plays that way anyway, with a "plot" which is simply dropped halfway through, serving only as one of the framing devices to introduce the Sellers clips. The other framing device, a reporter's series of interviews with Clouseau's associates, is so inanely written and obviously "tribute-y" that it's shocking to remember that this was a theatrical feature film.

And that was Blake Edwards' major mistake. Some of the unused footage is amusing, but if it had been up to Sellers' usual hilarious standard, it wouldn't have gone unused. And the flashback sequences are made up of, well, flashbacks--scenes which we already saw in the previous movies. On a TV special, that would have been fine. Here, it just makes you wonder what Edwards could have been thinking.

I've been watching Pink Panther films since I was very young. Peter Sellers is probably one of the early names I got to fix with a face on the screen, he and Roger Moore. I really like Sellers and this series is one of my favorites. However this isn't really a new film. It's Blake Edwards' tribute to Peter Sellers. It could have worked out great if it was a television program because it's a mere collection from old Panther films shown as the characters who knew Clouseau from the old films narrate about their relationships with him. It was fun to watch though. But makes you sad as it makes you nostalgic to Sellers and the old films and the "baameb".

Blake Edwards was not interested in doing a "tribute" to the late Peter Sellers with this movie. What he wanted to do was find a way to milk more money out of the property by first setting us up with a "Clouseau disappears" movie to squeeze the last nickel out of Sellers posthumously and then hope audiences would come back for the dreadful follow-up with Ted Wass and he could then get some more movies out of it. For the first half, we have half a plot by using old Sellers outtakes and then when he runs out it turns into a "tribute" by spotlighting old clips. What I remember so vividly when I saw this movie in the theaters was how after the outtakes ended, absolutely no one in the theater laughed for the last half of the movie.

If Edwards wanted to do a proper "tribute" he would have taken these Sellers outtakes (which are funny) and put them back into longer directors cut versions of the Panther films they were originally intended for (one outtake finally clears up why Clouseau keeps referring to Colin Blakely as "Sergeant Yard" in "Pink Panther Strikes Again"). The end result would have pleased everyone as a proper tribute to Sellers' genius and when Edwards used to know how to make a funny movie. Unfortunately Edwards wasn't bright enough to think of a sensible idea like that.

If you watch this film, then watch the others, you could figure out what other Pink Panther movies the scenes come from:

The Harvey Korman/Peter Sellers' Exchange in the beginning of the film is from "The Pink Panther Strikes Again." That can be assumed, because Sellers is trying on the hunchback disguise.

But the film does manage to be a tribute to the late Sellers, who died much too early.