Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
The biggest novelty of Curse of the Pink Panther (which was the original title of 1978’s Revenge of the Pink Panther before they changed it) is that it attempts to introduce us to a replacement for the Inspector Clouseau character after the death of his beloved portrayer, Peter Sellers, who died in 1980. After dabbling with Dudley Moore as a potential successor (who wouldn’t agree to do more than one film), as well as Rowan Atkinson (MGM refused this choice due to Atkinson being unknown outside of the UK at the time) and John Ritter (who was committed to “Three’s Company” at the time, but would later work with Edwards for his 1989 comedy, Skin Deep), the studio decided to go with a relatively unknown American actor, Ted Wass, who Edwards enjoyed from his appearances as Danny Dallas on the TV sitcom, “Soap”.
Blake Edwards has already tried to do a spin-off film called The Ferret which originally was meant for Dudley Moore, featuring a slapstick spy caper with the protagonist as a “Harold Lloyd” type. (As part of Blake Edwards’ penchant for in-jokes, a side character meant to represent Dudley Moore in his recent role in the hit film Arthur shows up early in the film to proposition Sleigh, who is working undercover as a prostitute in his introductory scene.) To Edwards, Wass looked very much like a modern version of Lloyd with eyeglasses on, and the new protagonist Clifton Sleigh would be his chance to make continue the series in that mold.
For most other audiences, however, he comes across more like Christopher Reeve bumbling around as Clark Kent (whose own slapstick-oriented Superman III has been released into theaters just two months prior), except we never get to see him play Superman. Wass also held a certain vulnerability in his demeanor that Edwards felt would make him likable throughout his foibles. One key difference that we learn early on is that Sleigh may be dumb but he’s not smug and overconfident like Clouseau, who would try to cover up his mistakes as if he meant to do them all along. Sleigh accepts and admits his weaknesses, yet perseveres.
Wass stars as New York City police sergeant Clifton Sleigh, who ends up getting selected by an Interpol computer that is selecting the second-best sleuth in the world to use to find the missing best sleuth, Inspector Clouseau. Except Sleigh isn’t the best, as Chief Inspector Dreyfus deliberately sabotaged the computer to try to find the worst and assure that Clouseau is never found. Meanwhile, Clouseau is still alive in the care of health spa operator Countess Chandra, who aims to change his looks through plastic surgery. Meanwhile, the criminal element of the French underworld try to take out Sleigh before he can find success in bringing their nemesis back, Inspector Clouseau.
Curse of the Pink Panther was made concurrently with 1982’s Trail of the Pink Panther in order to minimize costs, using many of the same sets, costumes, and actors, as well as to assure continuity in the handover of the series from Clouseau to Sleigh. Edwards even had the notion of putting all of the sets, props, and costumes in storage so they could use them for future releases, although the intent would be that the series would be moved to America after this one, and would serve as the final film for most of the character introduced throughout the Peter Sellers era of Pink Panther films. Edwards also would have handed over the series to other directors, turning out one new entry every three years, serving only as an executive producer and main guiding hand. It would come out eight months after Trail‘s December 1982 release. The main difference is that Trail‘s run time consisted mainly of outtakes and clips taken from prior entries in the Pink Panther series, and Curse would be a completely new adventure through and through.
Most of the supporting cast of Trail ends up returning but with expanded roles due to the extra screen time allowed. As was the case with Trail, the ailing David Niven, who gets top billing despite being in the film in only a couple of scenes, is still dubbed by Rich Little to his weaker vocal cords resulting from his ALS affliction. Joanna Lumley also returns, but she appears to be playing a different character than the investigative reporter from Trail of the Pink Panther, donning a black wig and playing a countess named Chandra who runs a health spa in the Mediterranean. In this way, Edwards is using casting nods to suggest his themes of interchangeability of actors and characters, as anyone can be replaced by anyone at any time, or play multiple roles over time, just as David Niven played Sir Charles Litton in The Pink Panther, replaced in a later film by Christopher Plummer, only for Niven to return again in Trail and Curse, albeit with Rich Little’s voice. Niven would die just a couple of weeks prior to the release of the film.
Ted Wass was given the keys to the franchise despite being untested as a leading man, signing on for a six-picture deal. Wass is certainly likable as an actor, and game for whatever Edwards is willing to throw at him, but lacks the dynamic physical gifts of Peter Sellers to play funny characters and offer nuance in his slapstick performance. He also doesn’t quite register as a leading man, getting lost amid a bevy of supporting players who offer much more screen presence, and Wass never gets to truly stand out, despite some amusing set pieces set up for him. Despite signing the multi-picture contract, this would be his first and only turn in the series. Wass would continue to find success on TV, especially as the dad on the hit 90s TV show, “Blossom”. Wass would retire as an actor after “Blossom” ended its run in 1995, and would work primarily as a director-for-hire for a slew of TV shows henceforth.
Those set pieces do offer some funny sequences. Sleigh visits Professor Auguste Balls, who once supplied Inspector Clouseau with a variety of wacky disguises, and gives the New Yorker the final one he made for Clouseau before his disappearance: the Instant Diversion Kit, which is really nothing more than an inflatable woman to serve as a companion. A few comical sequences involving Sleigh trying to hide the fact that his companion is indeed artificial, further complicated when the doll springs a leak caused by a hole burned into her upper thigh that requires him to blow it back up to size while out in public. Other highlights include a wacky car chase involving one car that gets turned upside down, with a plethora of sight gags that result taken from a famous Harold Lloyd taxi-driving sequence featuring baseball legend Babe Ruth in his silent film from 1928 called Speedy.
One of the other novelties of Curse of the Pink Panther is that we get a new actor to play Inspector Clouseau, who undergoes plastic surgery to make him look like Roger Moore. Obviously, an in-joke by Edwards due to Moore’s having replaced Sean Connery as James Bond, but an even further in-joke when you consider that David Niven portrayed James Bond in the 1967 version of Casino Royale, as did Peter Sellers as a decoy. The film also seems to lift some elements from Roger Moore Bond films, especially Moonraker, with its use of ominous giant head costumes at a carnival parade. This last aspect spotlights another motif of the film, that of using false likenesses, from Clouseau’s apartment being turned into a wax museum of his many disguises, to the carnival heads, to the inflatable woman (there’s also an inflatable duck!), to Clouseau himself and his plastic surgery.
They had initially attempted to keep Moore a secret, crediting him as “Turk Thrust II” (a reference to a pseudonym used by actor Bryan Forbes in A Shot in the Dark) instead of Roger Moore, but it was pretty much given away at the time of its release. Moore shot his scenes at Pinewood Studios while on break from his scenes while making Octopussy for MGM. Edwards paid Moore $100,000 a day for his role, and it was expected to be five days for his shoot, so Moore had been very much looking forward to earning a cool half-million dollars potential for just a couple of scenes. However, Edwards worked Moore hard until the wee hours to get all of his scenes done in one day.
Clouseau is not particularly important to the overall picture, used here primarily as a MacGuffin to hinge all of the set pieces upon. in essence, that is another one of Edwards’ commentaries on his own series with the two films he has done back to back: Trail asserts that a character like Clouseau can never truly die so long as we have the movies, while Curse states that despite Clouseau’s continued existence, the series can go one without him being relevant.
As with Trail, Edwards wrote the screenplay with his son, Geoffrey. Critics and audiences complained about Trail of the Pink Panther not completing either of the cases set forth, as we don’t learn much about the whereabouts of either the Pink Panther jewel or the man hired to find it who goes missing, Inspector Clouseau. In Curse of the Pink Panther, we, the audience, get the answers to both right away, but they are not discovered by the man on the case, Clifton Sleigh, rendering Dreyfus finally successful in thwarting the progress and advancement of a bumbling detective in the end. Curse begins and ends with callbacks to the original 1963 film, The Pink Panther, as an homage to the fans who’ve stuck through that long.
Trail and Curse were given a combined budget of $17 million, with about a third of that going to Trail (which needed much less due to half of the film consisting of already filmed scenes), and the rest going to Trail. Reviews for both films were considered lackluster at best, and Trail and Curse were, by far, the worst-performing films in the franchise, making $9 million and $4.5 million respectively, far short of expectations given that the prior Sellers film in the series, 1978’s Revenge of the Pink Panther, made nearly $50 million in the United States alone.
You can chalk up commercial interests as to the reason why Curse of the Pink Panther would end up failing, as MGM didn’t want to give much funding to the most lucrative franchise they would inherit from their acquisition of United Artists. They also nixed the selection of a truly gifted physical comedian with a penchant for zany characters in Rowan Atkinson because he was only known to Brits, and yet they selected Ted Wass to a six-picture deal despite him being completely unknown to even most Americans. They also followed up Trail of the Pink Panther, which was mostly compiled with bits that were thrown away from prior films, with a sequel that hinges on having seen Trail, which few did see in the theater, and VCRs were only starting to become more commonplace, so not very many could rent Trail before seeing Curse.
And, of course, Edwards makes the ultimate mistake in thinking that people came to see all of the Pink Panther films for reasons that had little to do with Peter Sellers, which, if any of the films made after his death have been any indication, is completely misguided. The fact that they thought that audiences would want to see Clouseau live on as an evil guy with a different face with a terrible accent and none of the charisma only serves to add insult to the injury from longtime fans who’ve truly cherished the character and his portrayer over the years.
Financial matters would only get worse after the release of both films. The widow of Peter Sellers, Lynne Frederick, would file a lawsuit against the makers claiming that the late actor’s contract never explicitly allowed them to use excised footage from the films for Trail of the Pink Panther, and asserted that could not use and profit from his posthumous likeness. She reported that they sought to use the footage as early as three days after Sellers’ death and she had opposed it, but they continued with making the film despite her objections, which she felt would be echoed by Sellers himself if he were able to contest. The case would be heard in 1985, and it was ruled that the production of the film had violated the Performers Protection Act, awarding the Frederick $1 million. However, she could not stop the film from further exhibitions but was awarded just under a half-million additional dollars for compensation.
Interestingly, Blake Edwards filed a lawsuit of his own to the tune of $180 million against MGM/UA and its Chair/CEO Frank Rothman claiming they forever hurt the reputation and viability of the franchise by bungling the marketing for Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther. Edwards contended that the studio did it in retribution to his support of ex-studio chief David Begelman in an arbitration hearing earlier that year, and they had chopped out over half of the $3.5 million they had verbally agreed they would use to advertise the films and they would not let another distributor handle the films who might have done a better job.
Edwards asserted that they refused to do press previews for the film, which made the critics think the studio had something to hide in releasing it into only half of the theaters customary for a major release with little to no fanfare. He felt MGM/UA barely promoted it, then stopped advertising it at all before its run was close to completing and even put it on double bills or dramatically reducing the number of theaters it would perform in, further cutting profits.
The studio rebuffed the allegations, claiming they put as much effort as they could into the films but the public did not seem as interested in seeing the series continue without Peter Sellers. MGM/UA would file a countersuit of its own against Edwards for $340 million claiming that he fraudulently overspent on the budget he was given for the two films, as well as on 1982’s Victor/Victoria. Edwards would follow up this lawsuit in 1984 with a $400 million libel suit in response to their allegations of fraud.
Their disputes would be settled out of court, while Edwards would remain locked into a dispute for control of the Panther franchise with MGM, forcing him to stay away from doing any more Panther films until the studio had a new chairman who would greenlight 1993’s Son of the Pink Panther, with Roberto Benigni as the son of Clouseau with the potential to resurrect the franchise. It would be the biggest flop in the series yet, raking in only $2.4 million, effectively ending any further attempts by Edwards, not only to continue Panther films but to make any further films altogether, as it would mark the final effort in his long and illustrious career. A lesson to be learned here: putting “Curse” in your title becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Qwipster’s grade: D+
MPAA Rated: PG for brief nudity, comic violence, and language
Running time: 109 min.
Cast: Ted Wass, Herbert Lom, Joanna Lumley, David Niven, Robert Wagner, Leslie Ash, Capucine, Robert Loggia, Roger Moore, Harvey Korman, Burt Kwuok
Small role: Peter Arne, Denise Crosby, Joe Morton, Bill Nighy, Patti Davis, Rich Little (voice)
Director: Blake Edwards
Screenplay: Blake Edwards, Geoffrey Edwards