Peter Sellers
The comedy pioneer behind the Goon Show, Dr Strangelove and the Pink Panther series is explored in depth in this film, surveying his meteoric rise to fame and troubled personal life.
Angela Barrows is a man-eating business woman sent by her American employer to investigate their export opportunities in Edinburgh. En route she meets Robert MacPherson a businessman who asks for her help to bring his company into the 20th Century. The staff, led by Mr Martin has other ideas though, and a battle between the old and new business methods soon breaks out.
In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other… or can be made to have seemed to do so!
Concert pianist Henry Orient (Peter Sellers) is trying to have an affair with a married woman, Stella Dunnworthy (Paula Prentiss), while two teenage private-school girls, Valerie Boyd (Tippy Walker) and Marian Gilbert (Merrie Spaeth), stalk him and write their fantasies about him in a diary. Orient’s paranoia leads him to believe that the two girls, who seem to pop up everywhere he goes, are spies sent by the husband of his would-be mistress. When Val’s mother, Isabel Boyd (Angela Lansbury), finds their diary, she suspects that Henry has acted inappropriately with her daughter. She contacts Orient and they end up having an affair. Val finds out about it, as does her dad.
The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau.
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau is dead. At least that is what the world (and Charles Dreyfus) believe when a dead body is discovered in Clouseau’s car after being shot off the road. Naturally, Clouseau knows differently, and taking advantage of not being alive, sets out to discover why an attempt was made on his life.
Now seriously mentally ill after working with Clouseau for such a long time, Inspector Dreyfus escapes from the mental asylum he was being held in and vows to destroy Clouseau forever. He kidnaps an eminent scientist and forces him to build a machine capable of destroying the world, with the intention of doing so unless Clouseau is delivered to him.
Lionel Twain invites the world’s five greatest detectives to a ‘dinner and murder’. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.
The famous Pink Panther jewel has once again been stolen and Inspector Clouseau is called in to catch the thief. The Inspector is convinced that ‘The Phantom’ has returned and utilises all of his resources – himself and his Asian manservant – to reveal the identity of ‘The Phantom’.
Hrundi V. Bakshi, an accident-prone actor from India, is accidentally put the name on the guest list for an upcoming party at the home of a Hollywood film director. Unfortunately, from the moment he arrives, one thing after another goes wrong with a compounding affect.
Sir James Bond is called back out of retirement to stop SMERSH. In order to trick SMERSH, James thinks up the ultimate plan – that every agent will be named ‘James Bond’. One of the Bonds, whose real name is Evelyn Tremble is sent to take on Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat, but all the Bonds get more than they can handle.
A playboy who refuses to give up his hedonistic lifestyle to settle down and marry his true love seeks help from a demented psychoanalyst who is having romantic problems of his own.
Insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. As soon as the actions of General “Buck” Turgidson are discovered, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop the nuclear strike. Near the end is a scene that is probably the most uniquely unforgettable performance of Slim Pickens in his movie career. Peter Sellers plays multiple roles in this film.
A Shot in the Dark is the second and more successful film from the Pink Panther film series where both animated and real life sequences are mixed. A cult classic from Blake Edwards based on the play L’Idiot by Marcel Achard and Harry Kurnitz.
The trademark of The Phantom, a renowned jewel thief, is a glove left at the scene of the crime. Inspector Clouseau, an expert on The Phantom’s exploits, feels sure that he knows where The Phantom will strike next and leaves Paris for Switzerland, where the famous Lugashi jewel ‘The Pink Panther’ is going to be. However, he does not know who The Phantom really is, or for that matter who anyone else really is…
Naive Stanley Windrush returns from the war, his mind set on a successful career in business. Much to his own dismay, he soon finds he has to start from the bottom and work his way up, and also that the management as well as the trade union use him as a tool in their fight for power.
A gang of five diverse oddball criminal types rent a two room apartment in an isolated house on a London cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow with three pet parrots. The group’s mastermind, Professor Marcus, tells her a cover story that they are members of an amateur string quintet and would like to use the rooms to hone their musical skills. In reality, they’re plotting to rob a bank and plan to use Mrs. Wilberforce’s naiveté and her Victorian sensibilities to their advantage.
