Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

Trail of the Pink Panther Blu-ray Movie Review

THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN Redux?

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson July 14, 2017

Trail of the Pink Panther is being released as part of The Pink Panther Film Collection.

With the very unfortunate and untimely passing of Peter Sellers at age 54 in July 1980, United Artists was forced to scramble with how it would assemble the next film in The Pink Panther series. According to William Patrick Maynard on this disc's commentary, the studio was insistent that a transitional film be made featuring unused footage of Sellers before proceeding with Curse of the Pink Panther. Director Blake Edwards and his editor Alan Jones combed through the MGM/UA library and extracted two-thirds of outtakes from The Pink Panther Strikes Again, which fills most of Trail of the Pink Panther's first forty minutes. Previously unreleased scenes of Chief Inspector Clouseau at his favorite masquerade shop owned by Professor Auguste Balls (Harvey Korman), inside his office at the French Sûreté, and in an airplane bandaged from head to toe were inserted and juxtaposed with interlinking new footage. Cinematographer Dick Bush filmed new material in two different police headquarters (separate scenes), Chief Inspector Dreyfus talking to his psychiatrist on the couch, a stunt double mimicking Sellers's Clouseau, among other new inserts. The filmed but excised opening scene of Revenge of the Pink Panther in which Sergeant Francois Duval (André Maranne) drives Clouseau to the psychiatric clinic to visit Dreyfus is re-purposed here for a drive to the airport where Clouseau will fly to London to try to catch Sir Charles Litton, who is actually residing in the South of France. When he learns that he is the target of yet another assassination plot, Clouseau takes a different flight for Lugash. Character names have been altered by dubbing the actors' original utterances in order to accommodate changes in this film's story. In his mostly favorable review of Trail of the Pink Panther, Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that the various strands of footage are expertly put together.

When and where does Clouseau's fate await him?

The movie's narrative becomes bifurcated when it is reported that Clouseau's plane has gone missing. French TV reporter Marie Jouvet (Joanna Lumley) jumps on the story and begins her own investigative journey of who really was Jacques Clouseau. She goes out and interviews Dreyfus, Hercule Lajoy (Graham Stark), Sir Charles (David Niven) and his wife Lady Simone Litton (Capucine), the coquettish Mafioso Bruno Langois (Robert Loggia), Clouseau's home companion/sparring partner, Cato Fong (Burt Kwouk), and the detective's father (played by Richard Mulligan). When I first watched Trail of the Pink Panther, Jouvet reminded me of the journalist Jerry Thompson (William Alland), who probes to discover the meaning of Rosebud and the title character's full identity in Citizen Kane. Indeed, critic Richard Combs of the London-based Monthly Film Bulletin observed: "[Edwards's movie] seems to be working backwards through Citizen Kane (ending, not beginning, with its 'rosebud') to arrive at something like a slapstick F for Fake." Although Edwards includes flashbacks of Clouseau's childhood and teenage years, he struggles to come up with enough unused or newly shot footage to fill a feature-length film. He relies on various scenes from four prior films in the series to fill in large chunks of the 96-minute run time. Trail of the Pink Panther is thus a pastiche of Sellers's best moments as the character. Also, it is more of a retrospective tribute to a legendary comedian than it is a movie of its own breed. While it would have been nice to see this compilation on a big screen, Trail of the Pink Panther would have played better as a made-for-TV documentary.

Trail of the Pink Panther Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Trail of the Pink Panther makes its Blu-ray debut worldwide courtesy of Shout Select on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The first posthumously released post-Sellers film appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Video streams on the main feature average a healthy 31995 kbps while the whole disc amasses a total bitrate of 42.38 Mbps. Even though this is the most recent Panther title in Shout's set, it is the weakest looking and contains the least amount of restoration work done. For instance, notice the swarm of dirt/noise hovering around the blue sky above the cityscape in Screenshot #10. There is a high number of artifacts appearing throughout the presentation. This would not be as bothersome during the recycled footage from the previous films (which frequently have speckles) but it's inexcusable for the previously unseen material. The conversation between Jouvet and the Littons shows pretty consistent scratches and blips. See the marks on and above the back cushion on the left side of the frame in #2. Colors look decent but contrast is mediocre.

Shout has demarcated the main movie into a dozen scene selections.

Trail of the Pink Panther Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout has provided a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (2819 kbps, 24-bit), a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1584 kbps, 24-bit), and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Dual Mono (1624 kbps, 24-bit). The tracks made from the original masters sound okay but vary in quality. As previously noted, there are some dubbed lines and these tend to sound inauthentic. For such instances, spoken dialogue sounds a little like a wound-up chipmunk. Because he was suffering from ALS at the time of filming, David Niven had his lines looped by Canadian actor Rich Little so they're not spoken by a true Brit. Henry Mancini's music sounds flatter and less robust than it does in the other films.

Shout has supplied the option for English SDH and they present an accurate transcription of the dialogue.

Trail of the Pink Panther Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Audio Commentary by Author and Film Historian William Patrick Maynard - Like Maynard's commentary on Revenge of the Pink Panther, this track contains frequent gaps only this time Maynard has considerably more information to impart. He mentions where old and new footage originates as well as deleted scenes incorporated in Trail of the Pink Panther that were first featured in Frank Waldman's novelization of The Pink Panther Strikes Again. In English, not subtitled.

• Trailers (3:23, upconverted to 1080) - opens with a one-minute, full-frame rare teaser trailer of Trail of the Pink Panther, followed by MGM/UA's official theatrical trailer. Both in English, not subtitled.

• Still Gallery (2:18, 1080p) - a slideshow displaying thirty (mostly color) high-res images containing production candids of cast members.

• Poster Gallery (2:22, 1080p) - this slide show contains a total of thirty-one (mostly color) images, with several repeated from different ad campaigns. There are US/foreign theatrical release posters of Trail of the Pink Panther and color lobby cards courtesy of the National Screen Service Corporation.

• Rare Images Gallery (1:36, 1080p) - a short slideshow comprised of twenty black-and-white pictures showing the "new" footage of Trail of the Pink Panther. There are also several studio publicity photographs with the actors captured in profile.

Trail of the Pink Panther Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

With one of his favorite lead actors gone, Blake Edwards faced a great challenge in trying to carve a narrative out of Trail of the Pink Panther. The director did all he could with the material available to him but the end result is an omnibus rather than a film that can stand on its own. Shout Select essentially recycles a fair-looking theatrical release print as the basis for its transfer. The extra features don't include any new interviews or featurettes but the commentary track contains some quality tidbits and trivia. The movie is a compendium of cinematic endnotes and should especially appeal to Sellers's most dedicated fans.