Touches You

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Captivating movie !

"Trail Of The Pink Panther" may be the only movie in history in which the first-billed actor appears only in archival footage, and even then only for about one third of the running time, and the second-billed actor appears for about 3 minutes! All the Peter Sellers material is made of deleted scenes and replayed clips from previous films in the series; the problem with those deleted scenes is that there were deleted for a reason (Blake Edwards showed good judgement when he cut them out, not when he put them back in), and the problem with the film clips is that....we've seen them all before, obviously. The new scenes with Joanna Lovely....ooops, I mean Lumley interviewing series regulars one-by-one are pointless; Richard Mulligan's scenes near the end (he plays Clouseau's father) are mostly embarrassing. On the whole, apart from being morally dubious as an experiment, "Trail" is not very funny either....until the end credits, where we get a compilation of some of the series' most memorable moments. *1/2 out of 4.

In the early '80's, United Artists was in serious trouble. Having lost a king's ransom on Michael Cimino's epic Western 'Heaven's Gate', the studio now faced bankruptcy. The only way for it to keep afloat was to churn out as many hits as possible. Luckily, U.A. owned two of the most profitable franchises - 'James Bond' and 'The Pink Panther'. The main problem with the latter was that Peter Sellers had died of a heart attack in 1980.Nevertheless, the studio commissioned Blake Edwards to construct not one but two new 'Pink Panther' comedies. The first of these was 'Trail' and it was partly composed of unused material from earlier movies but mostly old clips. It begins in Lugash where ( surprise, surprise! ), the Pink Panther diamond is stolen yet again. Clouseau is called for, but for some unknown reason goes to London ( in disguise ). While there, he mysteriously disappears. Investigative reporter Marie Jouvet ( Joanna Lumley ) begins to piece together the detective's life by interviewing people from his past, such as 'Hercule' ( Graham Stark ), and 'Sir Charles Lytton' ( David Niven returning to the role he first played back in 1964 ). At this point the movie becomes a sort of 'That's Pink Panther!' as clip after clip is unveiled. To be fair, there's new footage too, such as the appearance of Clouseau's father ( Richard Mulligan ), who looks like Gepetto out of 'Pinocchio'. The flashbacks to Clouseau's childhood are amusing but marred by poor dubbing. Nudity rears its head for the first time in the series as we see two lovely girls treading grapes in a barrel. The movie ends with Clouseau's whereabouts still a mystery.I went to see this when it was released mainly out of curiosity to see how Edwards ( or Blake 'Entertainment' Edwards as he is listed in the opening credits ) had managed to make a movie out of all these bits and pieces. Thanks to the unused footage we found out Mel Brooks' regular Harvey Korman was cast originally as 'Professor Auguste Balls' ( the owner of the shop where Clouseau gets his disguises from ) in 'Revenge Of The Pink Panther' before Graham Stark. The audience laughed heartily for the first twenty or so minutes, but then when Clouseau vanished so did the comedy. No offence to Ms.Lumley but she is no substitute for Sellers. Niven was ill when he made the movie ( he was dubbed by Rich Little ) and it shows. As well as being a homage to the earlier pictures, 'Trail' doubles as a lead-in to 'Curse Of The Pink Panther' ( 1983 ), starring Ted Wass as 'Clifton Sleigh'. It seems a pity they could not have made a single movie combining the best elements from both. After the Sellers off-cuts, they should have brought in Wass and bypassed Lumley.Sellers' widow Lynne Frederick went to court to stop 'Trail' from being released. U.A. won its case but it did not matter. Neither 'Trail' nor 'Curse' did well at the box office and it would be a decade before another 'Pink Panther' appeared - 'Son Of The Pink Panther' starring the incredibly unfunny Roberto Benigni as Clouseau's illegitimate son. 'Trail' is a strange movie alright. It purports to be a tribute to Sellers', but is basically a tasteless money making attempt. He deserved a better send-off.

OK this is the 2nd appearance of The Pink Panther even though there were several other titles with that name it has nothing to do with it it was only in for a cameo where someone steals it and Cluesau is kidnapped (after the abomination of the first one I'm celebrating) and some journalist asks questions about Cluesau (Cluesau isn't in this one only in Archive Footage I know a complete ripoff even though so was the rest of the series) and they ask even Charles the real "Phantom" makes an appearance we see Clueseau's childhood and all this other crap which has nothing to do with anything if the journalist was really an author writing bio's about detectives who are so stupid it isn't funny (the only other thing in that category is FAMILY GUY) OK Clueseau isn't found. Oh we are all depressed *sarcasm*. seriously if I were to recommend any of the Pink Panther series which I am still trying to put my finger on why the #### anyone calls the series COMEDY (don't worry I get that a lot like with movies like Charlies Angels 2, Pirate Movie, Muriels Wedding (I am still ashamed I even watched it) (don't watch Full Throttle even if somebody pays you $100) well this movie is horrible not for anyone with intelligence (maybe from Cluesau to Clueless)

I believe Blake Edwards intentions with this movie were noble. I'm sure it was meant as a tribute to Peter Sellers, who passed away in 1980, for playing Chief Insp. Jacques Clouseau so greatly in the previous more successful Pink Panther movies. It does this by using archive footage of Sellers in his role as Clouseau and by incorporating 'interviews' with people Clouseau encountered in the previous movies. This also means the return of David Niven, Robert Loggia, Harvey Korman, Graham Stark, Capucine, Burt Kwouk, André Maranne and of course Herbert Lom. Some of them only had appeared in the earliest of the Pink Panther movies and I felt that they appeared in this movie because they felt they owed it to Peter Sellers. I mean they really didn't needed to appear in this movie unless they really wanted to. After all David Niven was already seriously ill at the time and also died shortly after shooting.Therefor this movie can perhaps be better seen as a special you would normally see on a DVD, that is paying tribute to a past away actor. However there were obviously no DVD's yet in 1982 and a TV special would perhaps had been too expensive and simplistic as a tribute. I'm sure Blake Edwards wanted to make something special for his good old friend and at the same time also use this movie as a set up for the next sequel "Curse of the Pink Panther", which was also shot at the same time as this movie and is therefor also featuring most of the same actors.However big mistake that Blade Edwards made was that he tried to incorporate a story into this movie. This story however seen gets abandoned again early on into the movie, as if they ran out of good usable Peter Sellers archive footage.Watching this old cut archive footage also often makes it obvious why it got cut from the original movies. Often the sequences go on for too long and are stretched out far too much, as if Sellers and his fellow actors and director were merely trying out some stuff to see what would work and what wouldn't and how far they could go with things. The comedy in those sequences also often doesn't work out as intended, which explains why they never made the final cut. It's also confusing to see some sequences that were obviously meant original for mainly "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" and "Revenge of the Pink Panther" incorporated into this movie as part of the story but however these different sequences obviously don't really connect with each other also because most of those sequences are basically the same, though less good, ones that got eventually used in those earlier mentioned movies.But also the originally shot comical sequences for this movie don't really work out. Peter Sellers is simply missed too much in this movie. Blake Edwards tried but his attempts simply weren't good enough. He tried to make it work by putting also new characters into the movie, such as Clouseau's father.A failed experimental attempt by Blake Edwards.4/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/