Verdict
Summary
One of the liveliest and most hilarious of the Pink Panther movies – the fifth in the series, but only the fourth with Sellers, The Pink Panther Strikes Again is consistently amusing until it becomes an absolute gut-buster when Sellers pretends to be a dentist and begins pulling the wrong teeth from his nemesis, who has a toothache. That scene had me cramping from sidesplitting laughter, but the entire movie is pretty funny, despite the fact that it’s basically one big farce with a plot straight out of a MAD magazine comic book. You can easily tell where the Despicable Me movies got their inspiration from: Here!
Plot:
Inspector Clouseau’s arch nemesis Dreyfus escapes from an insane asylum and becomes a super villain out to destroy him.
Review:
Former Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) can’t escape the fact that he’s gone completely insane at a mental sanitarium, but he can escape the sanitarium, and he does, vowing to destroy his nemesis Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers), who in the interim has become the Chief Inspector, despite his faults and stupidity. When Dreyfus kidnaps a brilliant scientist and his daughter to force them to build for him a massive laser gun, he aims the ray gun at England and hacks into the networks and ransoms the world to turn over Inspector Clouseau … or else! Dreyfus has become a megalomaniacal super villain! Just in case his plan doesn’t work, Dreyfus hires a cadre of the world’s greatest assassins to try to kill Clouseau, but the bumbling inspector is far too innocent and cunningly imbecilic to be killed by such conventional means and continues to evade death day by day. In the meanwhile, Clouseau dons disguises, falls into lust with various gorgeous women, and inches closer to his nemesis despite all the odds stacked against him.
One of the liveliest and most hilarious of the Pink Panther movies – the fifth in the series, but only the fourth with Sellers, The Pink Panther Strikes Again is consistently amusing until it becomes an absolute gut-buster when Sellers pretends to be a dentist and begins pulling the wrong teeth from his nemesis, who has a toothache. That scene had me cramping from sidesplitting laughter, but the entire movie is pretty funny, despite the fact that it’s basically one big farce with a plot straight out of a MAD magazine comic book. You can easily tell where the Despicable Me movies got their inspiration from: Here! Blake Edwards directed. Revenge of the Pink Panther is next in the series.
Kino Lorber brings The Pink Panther Strikes Again to 4K Ultra HD / Blu-ray in a two-disc combo pack, and the new 4K scan is stunning and completely absorbs the eye with crystal clarity. It comes with an audio commentary by a historian from the Peter Sellers Appreciation Society, plus three featurettes, radio spots, TV spots, and trailers, plus a reversible sleeve and a slipcover.
