One of the funniest films in the "Pink Panther" series: the best parts (the Poirot-style interrogation, Clouseau's attempts to enter the castle, the laughing gas, "does your dog bite?", "it was hard in the Resistance but not as hard as it is now", etc.) are hilarious, there is considerable cleverness in many of the elaborately staged gags, and although there are dry stretches, they are fewer than in the other series entries. Peter Sellers is in good form, and Herbert Lom is every bit his equal in laugh-getting. The cinephilic animated credits sequence is wonderful. *** out of 4.

Radically different from the previous three 'Pink Panther' movies, this popular fourth entry takes the story to absurdist extremes with a now completely mad Chief Inspector Dreyfus escaping from an insane asylum and holding the whole world hostage with a doomsday device, demanding Clouseau's life. The extra screen time that Herbert Lom gets as a result of this plot deflection is welcome given that he was one of the main highlights of the previous two 'Pink Panther' films. The multiple failed attempts by international assassins to be the successful one to kill Clouseau also leads to several funny sequences, the best of which involves some madness in the restrooms at Oktoberfest, which of course Clouseau is completely oblivious to. While his parodying of a megalomaniacal Bond villain is spot-on, something is definitely lost though by having Lom insane from the get-go as there is no delicious gradual descent into madness as in the two earlier films. The film also unsteadily walks a tightrope between absurdist lunacy and simple inane silliness and a number of gags backfire as a result of the filmmakers pushing things too far (the climax in particular is very over-the- top). And yet, for all its detriments, 'Strikes Again' is a hard film not to warm to since the filmmakers show such obvious passion for doing something different with series and as Lom proves himself to be worthy of every extra percentage of screen time that he is given. It is probably a film that is worth giving a spin even if one disliked the first three films -- that's how different it is.

For me, this movie is enjoyable because it's a total parody of the classic Bond films. It includes all the necessary elements: a madman with a doomsday machine who wishes to take over the world, a shapely female spy who abandons her country to join with our hero, (although she only thinks it's Clousseau; it's really Omar Sharif...). And more spies than you can swing a dead cat at, and of course, at the end, the villain's lair is utterly destroyed in a huge display of pyrotechnics. This makes the film unique in the Pink Panther series, and as a huge Bond fan, it makes it my favorite. Tragically, Peter Sellers died shortly after filming this picture, and all of the subsequent attempts to revive the franchise have, in my opinion, failed.

A very funny premise and beginning soon gives way to sheer nonsense in this 1976 film, 4 years prior to the passing of Peter Sellers.Herbert Lom was a perfect foil for Sellers. As the Chief Inspector gone mad after the last film, Lom is about to be released from the asylum until his meeting with Clouseau brings agony to him and he reverts back to his lunacy, turning to evil this time.Clouseau is hysterical in the way that he can cheat his demise, but the film begins to labor in slapstick comedy and it wears upon you after a while.Look for non-speaking Omar Sharif to appear. The guys who impersonated Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford were hysterical.