Writer-director Blake Edwards and star Peter Sellers followed up 1963’s The Pink Panther with this much more tightly focused farce. This time Sellers’ inept Inspector Clouseau is the star – he seems to have come to the picture with a specific character in mind rather than a collection of slapstick shtick. The bumbling and fumbling is there, of course, but he has also elaborated on Clouseau’s misplaced arrogance. Until perhaps Will Ferrell, there has never been a movie fool so tragically sure of himself. The plot, then, revolves around Clouseau’s continuous defense of a bombshell of a maid (Elke Sommer) during a murder investigation, even though corpses continually pop up in her wake. While Clouseau dithers about, Edwards gets to work staging a first-rate sex farce, in which bed-hopping is almost as common as Sellers’ pratfalls. A Shot in the Dark also features the debut of series regular Herbert Lom, whose twitchy Commissioner Dreyfus will have you reaching for eye drops.
