Sellers of the Surete

A Shot in the Dark. Four shots, in fact. A police car roars up to the porte-cochere of a chateau and out steps--sacrebleu!--it is the terror of Montmartre, the Napoleon of criminology! It is Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) of the Surete. Fresh from his daring exploits in The Pink Panther, the inspector is a model of sangfroid. Beneath the vigorous mustache, the lips are ironical; beneath the snap-brim felt, the darting eyes see everything--well, everything except the goldfish pond. Splat!

Sopping but unstoppable, Clouseau suspiciously sniffs at a jar of cold cream, moves away with a big white blob on the end of his nose. He reflectively sucks on a ballpoint pen, resumes the interrogation with a bright blue tongue. He nervously lights the cigarette of a seductive suspect (Elke Sommer), forgets to extinguish the lighter before he puts it back in his pocket. "Eeeeeeeeek," Elke squeals a moment later. "You're on fire!"

Flaming but unflappable, Clouseau rips off his trench coat, strides to the window and--wham! The chief inspector (Herbert Lorn) bursts through the bedroom door, the bedroom door clouts Clouseau in the suffix, Clouseau takes off as though there were lead as well as copper in his alloy. When next seen he is digging himself out of a gravel driveway two stories below and cringing as the chief inspector scornfully adds insult to injury. "Clouseau!" the old brute bellows. "You're off the case."

Obviously, Inspector Clouseau never does solve his case, but he manages, in a manner of speaking, to dissolve it: the suspects are all blown to bits by a bomb. Long before that hilarious moment--even though the inspector occasionally palls, and the one-joke script is much less amusing than the Broadway farce "it is broadly adapted from--most customers will have reinforced a general conviction and a popular hope: that Peter Sellers is one of the funniest men alive and that the dear fellow will please get well quick.

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