Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Party Blu-ray Movie Review

BYOB (Bring Your Own Bakshi)

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 10, 2014

Blake Edwards will probably forever be best remembered for films like Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Pink Panther, though his filmography also includes a vast array of other well known efforts ranging from The Great Race to Victor/Victoria: The Broadway Musical (this links to the Broadway musical version—the feature film has yet to make it to Blu-ray). But Edwards had his fair share of flops, both critically and commercially, including such mostly forgotten efforts as The Tamarind Seed (designed as a comeback vehicle for his wife, Julie Andrews, after their previous collaboration Darling Lili tanked). In fact, Edwards had achieved a certain reputation for self-indulgence after The Great Race, a film which aimed to be another “epic comedy” in the vein of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but which despite its own considerable charms often felt bloated and chaotic. The late sixties weren’t an especially fecund era for Edwards, who offered the fussy if occasionally humorous What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? and revisited his early television success with Gunn, a feature film reboot of Peter Gunn. If The Party is unquestionably one of the better Edwards films from this time period, that’s perhaps damning the outing with faint praise. Reteaming Edwards with his Pink Panther star Peter Sellers probably seemed like a sure fire enterprise, but Edwards was content to simply let Sellers maraud his way improvisationally through this largely formless film. The results are once again largely self-indulgent and chaotic, but they reap some decently funny rewards, even if the admittedly sweet natured aspect of the film seems oddly quaint, especially in the light of the anti-establishment “flower power” ethos lurking just beneath the surface of a “plot” built around a glittering fete thrown by a tyrannical Hollywood producer.

Audiences who wandered into The Party back during its original theatrical exhibition might have initially been checking their ticket stubs to see if perhaps they had entered a screening for another 1968 film, The Charge of the Light Brigade, for this “mod” comedy starts rather anachronistically with a scene from what appears to be Britain’s colonial past. As a haggard group of English soldiers marches through a pass, an Indian bugler keeps sounding the alarm despite getting shot—repeatedly. The conceit here is that the scene is actually a film being shot, and the intrepid bugler, who resolutely refuses to stop bleating and blaring on his instrument despite the insane number of shots fired in his direction, is an actor named Hrundi S. Bakshi (Peter Sellers).

Bakshi is for all intents and purposes simply an Eastern rendition of the same sort of clumsy oaf that Sellers’ Gallic Inspector Clouseau was, although Bakshi has a perhaps even more childlike view of the world. But very much like Clouseau, Bakshi has the inerrant habit of fouling things up, something that invites the acrimony of his superior, in this case not Chief Inspector Dreyfus, but the film’s exasperated director (Herb Ellis). When Bakshi first ruins a take by wearing a contemporary watch and then manages to blow up an important set, the director bans the hapless actor. A call to studio chief Fred Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley) results in the bigwig uttering that famous adage “he’ll never work in this town again.” Unfortunately for Clutterbuck, he scribbles the actor’s name down on the bottom of a piece of paper that turns out to be the invitation list to a deluxe party he’s having at his tony Beverly Hills home. And that’s more or less the set up of The Party, a film which then plays out in a series of at times largely improvised vignettes where Sellers is left free to roam the set and wreak whatever havoc he can.

This loosey-goosey quality is probably The Party’s chief liability, for some scenes (including that opening bugle bit) just go on and on, without much accretion of additional comedy. The film is actually much better in little throwaway bits like a great little moment in the opening sequence where smarmy producer C.J. Divot (a rather paunchy Gavin MacLeod) snaps his finger at a nubile young starlet to follow him to his trailer. The woman’s look of glaring hatred is a fantastic little instance of the “real” Hollywood, but of course she stands up and follows her meal (and/or career) ticket into the trailer.

Some of the bits in the main party sequence are amusing if not laugh out loud hilarious, including Bakshi trying to get back an errant shoe, or, later, completely destroying a well appointed bathroom. But too often Edwards simply lets Sellers indulge in one piece of business after another, and it becomes evident after a while that that indulgence is reaping diminishing returns. Some of the funniest bits here come from the wonderful Steve Franken (a cousin of Al Franken) as an increasingly inebriated waiter who stumbles through various scenes causing almost as much chaos as Bakshi himself.

Claudine Longet, certainly one of the more minimally gifted vocalists to ever have hit albums (her A&M sides in the sixties were surprisingly popular) is the putative love interest here, and she also gets to sing the big Henry Mancini play for an Oscar nomination “Nothing to Lose” (he did nonetheless lose—the film’s music went unrecognized at the Academy Awards that year). Still, the interplay between Longet and Sellers provides the film with a real sweetness at its center, seeming to offer these two childlike personalities a shot at happily ever after in the wild and wooly confines of Hollywood, USA.

The Party Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Party is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber Studio Classics with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. The elements utilized here are in quite good condition, with only minimal age related wear and tear. Colors seem to have faded slightly, and so flesh tones are a bit on the brown side (even putting aside Sellers' "brownface" makeup), and with tones like reds looking a bit rusty at times. Clarity is still very good throughout the presentation, and fine detail is often commendable, so much so that the tiny ridges in the elephant's hide are plainly visible even in midrange shots. (If you're wondering how an elephant got into this review, you'll simply have to watch the film.) The image is stable and organic looking, resolving a lot of the late sixties' costume, set and art patterns with ease and with no anomalies.

The Party Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Party's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix is suitably noisy and busy, but it boasts excellent fidelity almost all of the time. There's just a touch of brittleness in the upper midrange (listen to the whistling in that opening British military scene), but for the most part Henry Mancini's charming score sounds great. Dialogue is also rendered cleanly and clearly and there's no damage of any kind to report.

The Party Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Inside The Party (480i; 24:00) is a nice vintage piece with some good interviews and production data.


• The Party Revolution (480i; 16:30) is another vintage featurette with a number of other interesting interviews focusing on things like the then new technology of video playback of takes on set.


• Blake Edwards Profile (480i; 6:00)


• Ken Wales Profile (480i; 7:20)


• Walter Mirisch Profile (480i; 4:25)


• Trailer (1080p; 2:01)

The Party Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some fans actually prefer The Party to at least some of the Inspector Clouseau offerings, but others find the film too self indulgent for its own good. I probably tip more toward that second category, but the film's wacky charms are undeniable, and Sellers is—well, very busy as Bakshi. Interestingly, Edwards' casting of Mickey Rooney as an Asian American in Breakfast at Tiffany's started raising a newly PC aware ruckus in the 1990s, though there doesn't seem to be similar outrage with Sellers playing an Indian. That may be testament to Sellers' innate charm and for how innocently sweet—if often very dangerous—Hrundi S. Bakshi seems. Recommended.