I love how this thread is now about Inspector Closeau. 
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I absolutely love the Pink Panther films, Return being my favourite (just for that priceless vacuum and sauna scene in the hotel). However, much as I wish there were more, I have to accept that some actors are just irreplaceable in their role, Sellars and Clouseau being one of the best examples. He was also hilarious in the lesser known After The Fox, which features Victor Mature gamely sending himself up. I know that in 1968 people said the same about Connery and Bond, but where recasting works, it happens fairly soon after the original steps down. Too long a gap and the character becomes the actor, on which note… just one more thing, Peter Falk and Columbo is another!
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Taking his cue from Eon, Blake Edwards certainly wanted the series to have a new lead, though he was shrewd enough not to recast the role itself (probably as the Alan Arkin effort floundered).
Curse, of course, was supposed to introduce a new lead in Ted Wass (who has since moved on to direct several sitcoms), and a continuation would’ve seen ‘Sgt. Clifton Sleigh’ causing havoc in New York. As Edwards himself was American, and the British film industry was in such decline at the time (save for so-called ‘heritage’ films from Merchant Ivory and the like), this probably made sense. Unfortunately, Trail and Curse were much too alike, and should’ve been one film (erasing Joanna Lumley - sacrilege, I know - and putting Wass in her place).
I liked Steve Martin in the role, though the films themselves were too ridiculous, as oddjobbies indicated. The Sellers ones were slapstick, yes, but their set pieces didn’t so obviously defy physics.
Of Sellers’ other work, Two Way Stretch is my favourite.
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Just realized that’s my fault. I put my comment regarding Herbert Lom in the wrong thread 
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Clouseau would be proud 
Well, I’m very grateful you put somewhere! Having an excuse to think about Clouseau has been a very welcome escape from the apocalypse.
Am I right in recalling that sadly Sellers died midway through the Trail movie, so they introduced lumleys reporter as a way of using what footage they shot, as well as some unused stuff from previous films?
I could never bring myself to watch Curse and had forgotten about it. Is it worth a viewing?
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I believe that is correct and that’s why Trail turned into a clip show.
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Well, what happened was: The last couple of films took a long time to make, due to Sellers’ failing health, and much of the physical business was performed by his stunt double Joe Dunne. By 1980, Sellers had decided to make extended use of such doubles so he would barely feature on film at all, and co-wrote Romance of the Pink Panther, to be made without Blake Edwards. The story revolved around Clouseau falling in love with a cat-burglar named ‘The Frog’, who would have been played by Pamela Stevenson. The ending saw him give up the police force to pursue a life of crime with her. Dreyfus, meanwhile, would have been a private detective modelling himself on Phillip Marlowe and still quite mad.
Obviously, Sellers died a few days after completing the script (and on the morning he was due to sign divorce papers). Edwards decided to make his own sequel, using twenty minutes of deleted footage from Strikes Again, and have the character later lost at sea. (He also wanted scenes from Return, to be linked with new ones featuring the same actors, but ITC owned the rights). Both films were made back-to-back (and also featured a dubbed David Niven) with some scenes almost identical as the plots both involve trying to find Clouseau.
This is pointless, of course, as he can’t be found - at least as we know him - and so we are presented with a bandaged Clouseau, post-plastic surgery, falling off his chair, along with a some dodgy half-lit doubles. Fortunately, Roger then turns up as the man himself (a scene which was filmed in one take during the shoot of Octopussy) and Clouseau is given the same fate as Sellers himself had written into the Romance script.
His widow sued Edwards for one and a half million pounds, as she believed it insulted her husband’s memory, and won.
Slightly better (a relative term) was 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther, which also featured Herbert Lom and Burt Kwouk, along with License to Kill’s Robert Davi as the bad guy.
I hope I haven’t bored everyone too much, but there we are.
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Not at all and that was a lot that I actually didn’t know. Very interesting.
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Wow! Nice to know there are still a lot of Sellers and Clouseau fans out there!
I love those movies, I even like the first half of Trail. If they only made one last movie and put the best stuff they could think of in the last half in stead of releasing two borring movies.
I bought a couple of years ago the American blu ray set with all the movies, incl. Return (which is usually missing) in superb quality.
Strikes again is the best one for me, but Return has also its funny moments. When I saw it for the first time I literally fell off the couch laughing when I saw the hotel room scene with the vacuum cleaner and the parrot. Great stuff!
A shot in the dark is also a very funny movie, based on a play, which also starring the great George Sanders and Elke Sommer.
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You must be joking - I could read this stuff all day long! Huge thanks for your knowledge and time!
Romance of the Pink Panther Sounds great - would love to thread that script!
Kind of mirroring and developing the end of the original PP movie in which he takes credit for the crime in the back of the police car.
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I haven’t seen the first movie in so long. Wasn’t he framed and just goes along with it?
I think Return of the Pink Panther was owned by a different company for a long time. MGM gained the rights from Universal in 2017, so now I think they can all be included.
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Yes, that’s right, somehow they didn’t have the rights anymore (although it’s a United Artists film like the others), but Shout! did a marvelous job. The movies look (and sound) better than I’ve ever seen them.
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That’s an interesting point you make about the '63 film - which is nice, as the film doesn’t otherwise jibe with what came after (Clouseau being married etc).
Here’s the Romance script:
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Oh my, you just vastly improved my lockdown. I’m indebted 
Indeed! If I recall correctly he’s asked how he managed to pull it off. At this point he gives up protesting his innocence and lies, “Well, it wasn’t easy!” Or words to that effect. It’s a great ending.
And kudos to Edwards and Sellers for recognising that the film’s comic relief was actually the real star. Many a studio sequel would’ve rehashed things with Litton as the star (imo it wasn’t until Return that they nailed the format and then started rehashing; much like the bond franchise).
No idea if the contemporary reaction to the movie made it obvious what they should do next, or if they saw the potential themselves.
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Talking of Trail, I’ve always been a little morbidly curious to see how studios incorporate deceased actors into a film. The most impressive is probably Peter Cushing’s appearance in Rogue One, but Oliver Reed’s inclusion into Gladiator was also remarkable. The most woeful example is that Bruce Lee movie in which they stuck a photograph of his head onto a mirror, sat someone else in front of it, and filmed the reflection.
It happens in music too, of course. Such technology even brought The Beatles back (briefly).
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and Prince
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It happened in earlier times as well. Robert Walker died before completing Leo McCarey’s MY SON JOHN. To finish the film, McCarey borrowed shots from Hitchcock’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and repurposed a rehearsal recording Walker made of his character’s last speech as the character’s taped confession played at the commencement where he was supposed to speak. The looniest of the anti-Communist films of the 1950’s, McCarey’s visual virtuosity remains intact despite the subject matter–making for a profoundly schizoid viewing experience.
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Wow, I never knew about that! Not familiar with the film, but interesting nonetheless.
I don’t know if you’re in Blighty, but you might find this interesting:
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I am, so thanks for the heads up - definitely be turning in!
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