The Pink Panther Strikes Again
| The Pink Panther Strikes Again | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Blake Edwards |
| Produced by | Blake Edwards Tony Adams (Associate Producer) |
| Screenplay by |
Frank Waldman Blake Edwards |
| Starring |
Peter Sellers Herbert Lom Lesley-Anne Down Burt Kwouk Leonard Rossiter |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
| Cinematography | Harry Waxman |
| Edited by | Alan Jones |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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103 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $6 million |
| Box office | $33,833,201 |
The Pink Panther Strikes Again is the fifth film in The Pink Panther series and picks up where The Return of the Pink Panther leaves off. Released in 1976, Strikes Again is the third entry to include the words Pink Panther in its title, although the story does not involve the Pink Panther diamond.
Unused footage from the film was later included in Trail of the Pink Panther.
At a psychiatric hospital, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is largely recovered from his obsession to kill the new Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and is about to be released when Clouseau, arriving to speak on Dreyfus' behalf, drives Dreyfus insane again. Dreyfus promptly escapes from the asylum and once again tries to kill Clouseau by planting a bomb while the Inspector (by periodic arrangement) duels with his manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk). The bomb destroys Clouseau's apartment and injures Cato, but Clouseau himself is unharmed, being lifted from the room by an inflatable disguise. Deciding that a more elaborate plan is needed, Dreyfus enlists an army of criminals to his cause and kidnaps nuclear physicist Professor Hugo Fassbender (Richard Vernon) and the Professor's daughter Margo (Briony McRoberts), forcing the professor to build a "doomsday weapon" in return for his daughter's freedom.
Clouseau travels to England to investigate Fassbender's disappearance, where he wrecks their family home and ineptly interrogates Jarvis (Michael Robbins), Fassbender's cross-dressing butler. Although Jarvis is killed by the kidnappers, to whom he had become a dangerous witness, Clouseau discovers a clue that leads him to the Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. Meanwhile, Dreyfus, using Fassbender's invention, dissolves the United Nations headquarters in New York City and blackmails the leaders of the world, including the President of the United States and his Secretary of State (based on Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger), into assassinating Clouseau. However, many of the nations instruct their operatives to kill the other assassins to gain Dreyfus's favor and possibly the Doomsday Machine. As a result of their orders and Clouseau's habitual clumsiness, the assassins all end up killing each other until only the agents of Egypt and Russia remain.
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Wikipedia