(Blake Edwards, UK/US 1976, 103 min.)

In the most surreal and cartoonlike of director Edwards’ divinely inspired farces, Peter Sellers returns for the fourth time as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, whose French accent is increasingly silly and indecipherable. Clouseau’s former boss, Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), who has finally succumbed to madness, assembles a team of the world’s greatest criminals. They kidnap an eminent scientist and build a device capable of destroying the world; they threaten to do so unless someone delivers the corpse of Clouseau to Dreyfus. Clouseau, with a number of assassins on his tail, must find and stop Dreyfus before it’s too late.