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Trail of the Pink Panther

The first of the posthumous sequels, with Blake Edwards cobbling together all the outtakes from the previous films he can muster, employing Joanna Lumley as a “French” reporter for a clumsy linking device, getting Rich ‘Blue Aardvark’ Little to dub a visibly ailing David Niven, making Richard ‘Soap’ Mulligan do a feeble turn as Sellers’ dad, and generally pissing all over the already soggy Panther legacy. And it doesn’t stop there! Ronald ‘don’t talk to me about unemployment, young man’ Fraser, Harvey ‘Daddy love froggy’ Korman, Graham ‘then we can have Eric Morecambe fixing some slates on a roof, just for the hell of it’ Stark, Leonard ‘suffused with herbs and spices from four continents’ Rossiter, Liz Smith, Dudley Sutton and William ‘Porkins’ Hootkins appear, mostly in old footage.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    August 25, 2019 at 10:22 am

    What Ed Wood did to Bela Lugosi in Plan 9 from Outer Space is what Blake Edwards did to Peter Sellers in this. As bad as it was, the worst Wass, sorry, was yet to come.

    Joanna Lumley did publicity photo shoots dressed as the Pink Panther. From Sapphire and Steel to this! The ignominy!

  2. richardpd

    August 25, 2019 at 10:24 pm

    I’ve not seen this but it sounds like a weird mess that’s worth watching at least once.

    Thanks to using footing from a few of the previous films the cast is a strange trans-Atlantic mix.

  3. George White

    August 26, 2019 at 8:13 pm

    It has both Reginald Perrin in Leonard Rossiter, and his failed US counterpart, Reggie Potter, Richard Mulligan having starred in Reggie in 1984.

    • richardpd

      August 27, 2019 at 1:42 pm

      Just like the Third Man has the first two actors to play M, Bernard Lee & Robert Brown.

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