Information
- BFI identifier41316
- Date1976 (Copyright)
1977-04-03 (Release) - Production countryUSA, United Kingdom
- SynopsisComedy. Inspector Clouseau tries to stop his insane former boss Dreyfus from destroying the world with a Doomsday Machine. Clueless French Inspector Jacques Clouseau has driven his former Sûreté boss, former Chief Inspector Paul Dreyfus, quite mad. Dreyfus escapes from a facility for the criminally insane, abducts the scientist Doctor Hugo Fassbender and his daughter Margo and takes them to the moated Mondschein Castle in Bavaria. Dreyfus threatens to harm Margo unless Fassbender builds a Doomsday Machine capable of erasing anything from the face of the Earth. Dreyfus hogs the world's television channels to warn that he will erase the UN building unless Clouseau is killed. Fassbender's butler Jarvis, who moonlights as a nightclub singer in drag, is killed by the kidnappers but not before he is able to slip Clouseau a clue: a travel brochure to the imminent Munich Beerfest. As Clouseau tries to track down Dreyfus, assassins from round the world are sent by their governments to track down Clouseau and kill him. At the Beerfest, Clouseau, through sheer fluke, narrowly evades multiple assassins, who, in a series of freak accidents, end up targeting each other. At the Bayerischerhof hotel, Russian agent Olga Berriossiva waits in Clouseau's bed to seduce him, but an Egyptian assassin turns up and Olga seduces him, believing him to be Clouseau. She is so transported by the supposed Clouseau's lovemaking that she decides to defect. Clouseau locates Dreyfus's castle and manages to infiltrate it by posing as a dentist (much needed, as Dreyfus has been eating too many sweets). Clouseau's fake nose make-up starts to come off but Dreyfus is already high on nitrous oxide, and as further calamity ensues, the Doomsday machine goes haywire and eventually wipes out both Dreyfus and the castle. Back in his Paris apartment, Clouseau is greeted by the amorous Olga in a large waterbed. The bed's mechanism goes wrong and the bed flings them out into the Seine. (Synopsis)
- Work historyIn Cannes Festival 1992: Cinema de Toujours. Length note: The original cut of the film runs 124 minutes, and was submitted to the British Board of Film Censors in 1976. Afterwards, the film was cut to 103 minutes and that is the version shown in cinemas, on VHS, and on DVD. Most of the scenes cut involved Clouseau's journey to, and arrival in, in England. The 124 min original cut has never surfaced, but a large chunk of the deleted footage forms the basis of Sellers' scenes in Trail of the Pink Panther. Role note: Jackie Cooper as 'service repair man' is still credited though this role was cut.
- Genre
- Subject
- Credits
- CastPeter Sellers (Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau)
Herbert Lom (Charles Dreyfus)
Howard K. Smith (himself)
view full cast
Title
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Original)
Inspector Clouseau and the Doomsday Machine (Working)
The Pink Panther Strikes Back (Working)
Inspector Clouseau Strikes Back (Working)
EIDR identifier
10.5240/5A27-D3F2-6D31-5923-3EC6-CCategory
FictionThis work is included in the BFI Filmography.
- Collections
- Film / Video
35mm Colour Positive - Safety - Combined - Viewing
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- StillsPhotograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00o-6vu
Photograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00m-tb2
Photograph: print - Portrait - Black and White - bfi-00m-tb1
Photograph: transparency - Landscape - Colour - bfi-00m-ns2
Photograph: transparency - Portrait - Colour - bfi-00m-n55
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- Digital documentsBFI Southbank Programme Notes October-November 2018
available to view in BFI Reuben Library
- +The Pink Panther Strikes Again
Work - 41316 - 1976 (Copyright)
USA - Film - Fiction
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