moonspinner55 Fifth in the "Pink Panther" series (sixth if you count 1968's "Inspector Clouseau", which starred Alan Arkin) opens with a promising set-up--Clouseau, who is marked for assassination by the millionaire businessman who heads up the French mafia, is mistaken for dead--but fails to come up with anything remotely funny following the introductions. Director/producer/co-screenwriter Blake Edwards (who also gets a story credit!) does some uncharacteristically lazy work here. Peter Sellers can't even get laughs dressed in transvestite's clothes or disguised as a mafia godfather. Edwards must have been relieved to close the chapter on Clouseau after this abysmal installment, though he was persuaded to piece together another film (1982's "Trail of the Pink Panther") from series outtakes after Sellers' demise. * from ****

studioAT In Inspector Clouseau Peter Sellers created one of the greatest comedy characters and he and Blake Edwards reunite for a fifth Pink Panther film featuring the inept Frenchman.After Return and Strikes again the Pink Panther series began to falter at this point as the character of Clouseau began to get more and more extreme and the plots of the film began to get more and more like a James Bond spoof with the ending in particular being totally manic.One thing that is nice about this film is that we see Clouseau walk off into the distance and this is made more poignant by the fact that we now know it would be the last time Sellers played the character. The series should have ended while it was still pretty much at the top of it's game rather than being followed up by the trilogy of films Edwards made in order to try to revitalise the franchise after Seller's death.

TheLittleSongbird I do not think Revenge of the Pink Panther is the best in the series(Shot in the Dark is hilarious), but it was a funny and pleasant diversion. The plot is a bit of a less though, and while I liked the music in general some of it got a little repetitive or interfered too much in some scenes. Also there is the odd bit of slow pacing. However, I actually kind of liked it. Peter Sellers is a sheer delight as Clousseau, and Herbert Lom was good also, his eulogy scene had me in hysterics. And there is some decent scripting, however I did find the sight gags more memorable, especially the scene in Clousseau's apartment about twenty five minutes into the movie, the funniest moment of that particular scene was when he fell through the ceiling when it was cut through. I quite liked the production values as well, they weren't what I call exquisite, but they were pleasant enough. Overall, decent but I do agree it is uneven at times. Worth watching for Sellers, but for those looking for a more structured plot they'd better see Shot in the Dark for example instead. 7/10 Bethany Cox

jzappa The sixth film in the Pink Panther film series, Revenge of was the last installment featuring series star Sellers, who died in 1980. You've got to hand it to Blake Edwards. Unlike countless directors who give great franchises their A-grade launches only to let other hired hands and marketing people butcher the rest of the series, Edwards butchered it himself, striving to keep the series active with Trail of the Pink Panther by making the most of unused footage of Sellers from previous Panther movies.But even before the patchwork was employed, there was this sleepwalk of sub-cheap kiddie humor. Horrendous puns, slapstick gags and disguises are the material of the comedy that, for no particular purpose that I can think of, has Clouseau, at one point and another, masquerade as a woman, a peg-legged sailor who carries an inflatable rubber parrot on his shoulder, and as Toulouse-Lautrec. In the original Pink Panther, and its fortuitous sequel A Shot in the Dark, Inspector Clouseau plays first a supporting role as the central jewel thief's incompetent antagonist and then a pawn in an elaborate murder mystery, supplying slapstick comic relief to films that were otherwise subtle, lighthearted capers, a somewhat jarring contrast of styles not atypical of Edwards' films. The popularity of Clouseau caused him to become the main character in subsequent Pink Panther films, deadening the impact of his character and trading wit for tedium. And aggressive to the cultural identities of their audience.Utterly racist, the film shows crude and archaic stereotypes are everywhere. It shows Cato no respect whatsoever, prefixing his every reference with the word "yellow," having him convert Clouseau's apartment in a brothel---sorry, "Chinese nookie factory"---the moment news of "boss's" demise leaks to the press, and hampering him with a pair of Coke-bottle spectacles for the climax, the better to bring into play the signature ridicule of Yellow Peril. Later in the movie, Clouseau dons a Mr. Yunioshi-like disguise similar to Cato's for no reason whatsoever, which is not to pardon Edwards, who gratuitously introduced Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sellers unreservedly sought a kind of catharsis in later years through an adverse handling and cartoonizing of Asians in Murder by Death and The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu, while Clouseau's increasing dependence on puns and malapropisms here is an indicative precursor of Sellers' physical decline, and the series'.Despite being warned by Cato, Clouseau drives toward the location tipped off by an apparent informant as the whereabouts of an important criminal, but his car and clothes are stolen at gunpoint by a transvestite criminal named Claude Rousseau. Rousseau drives into the trap and is killed by Douvier's men. Subsequently, the majority of people believe Clouseau to be dead, and as a result of this assumption, Clouseau's mad boss, ex-Commissioner Charles Dreyfus, again played by the exceedingly funny Herbert Lom, is deemed sane, and is to be released from the Mental Asylum to try and crack the case, only to continually see Clouseau. This is the high point of hilarity in Revenge of, the plot having set it up that Dreyfus would think Clouseau is dead, so whenever Clouseau innocently appears, Dreyfus thinks insane thoughts after being deemed sane, thinking he's hallucinating or being haunted.Other than that, Revenge of the Pink Panther is scattered in its structure and not very creative in its situations. It's weary, apathetic, and only intermittently funny. Also, uncharacteristically, it ends peacefully, hinting at a shift indicative of an intended close to the series, a glum one.