A Shot in the Dark (1964 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A Shot in the Dark is a 1964 film directed by Blake Edwards and is the second installment (and considered by many to be the best) in the Pink Panther series. Peter Sellers is featured again as Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté. Clouseau's bumbling personality is unchanged, but it was only in this film that Sellers began to give him the idiosyncratically exaggerated French accent that was to become a hallmark of the character. The film also introduces Herbert Lom as his boss, Commissioner Dreyfus, and Burt Kwouk as his long-suffering servant, Cato, who would both become series regulars. Elke Sommer plays the attractive Maria Gambrelli.
The film was not originally written to include Clouseau, but rather to be an adaptation of a stage play by Harry Kurnitz, which in turn was based upon the play L'Idiot by Marcel Achard. As Blake Edwards and future The Exorcist creator William Peter Blatty began work on the script, they decided to insert the character of Clouseau into the proceedings. The film was released only a few months after the first Clouseau film, The Pink Panther.
