The second film in the Pink Panther series could be argued to be the best, it puts all the familiar players on the screen with Peter Sellers, returning as Inspector Jacques Closeau. Herbert Lom is his long-suffering boss, Dreyfus, Burt Kwok is Kato, Closeau’s manservant and sparring partner, and Hercule as played by Graham Stark.

With a script by director Blake Edwards and The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty adapted from a stage play by Marcel Archard, Peter Sellers is priceless, and Henry Mancini’s score perfectly complements the film, the characters and the great comedic beats.

Released a mere three months after The Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark continues to be laugh-out-loud funny but is also the only film in the entire series to center around a murder. Closeau is accidentally assigned a murder case against Dreyfus’ wishes, but there are those in the know who want Closeau to conduct the investigation.

It seems a beautiful maid, Maria Gambrelli (Elke Sommer), is the prime suspect in the murder of a chauffeur in a massive country home where everyone seems to be sleeping with everyone else.

Will Closeau find the actual murderer? Will Closeau fall for Maria’s charms? Will he possibly survive the number of pratfalls and physical assaults that come his way? And what happens when his investigation leads him to a nudist colony? Will he bare all to find the truth?

Incredibly funny, Sellers is perfectly on point throughout the film and one murder seems to lead to another, as things get completely out of control. Dreyfus gets in on the action, as he wants Closeau out of the way completely – and he’s not afraid to kill to get it done!

It’s troubling to hear the behind-the-scenes tales from this film, Sellers and Edwards would have an on-again off off-again rocky working relationship and as the Pink Panther films progressed Edwards would use doubles for Sellers to boost the physical comedy.

And that bothers me, because as a kid when I was first introduced to these films, it was the later films I loved, the physical gags, the funny accent, and now, to learn that Sellers suffered from anxiety and was possibly bipolar and wanted to get away from the character, that makes me sad.

But the two original films are classics, and the middle films are damned entertaining as well, I just have to decide whether or not I check them out again.