Inspector Clouseau owes his 1975 comeback, in a roundabout way, to Julie Andrews. Producer Lew Grade wanted Andrews for a television special and agreed to finance two films for her husband, Blake Edwards. Grade then suggested using one of them to bring back the Pink Panther, and Edwards agreed as long as Peter Sellers signed on. United Artists reportedly passed on the project, convinced both men had lost their touch. The result became one of 1975’s biggest hits. So much for that theory.

The Pink Panther diamond has once again vanished from a Lugash museum, and the thief leaves behind a glove marked with a “P.” Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom, The Dead Zone) has little choice but to summon the detective who recovered it the first time, Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers, The Prisoner of Zenda). Suspicion immediately falls on retired jewel thief Sir Charles Litton (now played by Christopher Plummer, Knives Out), who begins his own investigation to clear his name.

With David Niven unavailable to return, Plummer brings a dry, amused charm to Litton, but this reunion makes no attempt to pretend anyone is here for the Phantom. Sellers is now playing Clouseau much broader than he did in A Shot in the Dark, with the accent mangling everything in its path, from “minkey” to “swimming peul.” Edwards responds by engineering the comedy around him with almost mechanical precision. A doorbell, a parrot, a running bathtub, and a simple attempt to enter a room all become traps waiting for Clouseau to spring them. Edwards builds gags like a Swiss watchmaker, and every one goes off on time.

Catherine Schell, playing Litton’s wife Lady Claudine, reportedly laughed so often during takes that Edwards eventually stopped fighting it and left some of her genuine amusement in the finished film. It fits because Sellers is funniest when everyone around Clouseau seems barely capable of surviving him. Lom gets to drive Dreyfus closer to complete collapse, and Burt Kwouk returns as Cato for another round of surprise attacks that would become one of the series’ most familiar rituals.

Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret) gives the movie a glossy Eurospy sheen as it moves through France, Switzerland, and locations doubling for Lugash. The plot itself can get busy, and some of the Dreyfus and Cato material already shows signs of repetition, but Sellers and Edwards have rediscovered the comic rhythm that made the earlier films work. The Pink Panther may have begun as an elegant caper with Clouseau wandering through it. By 1975, there was no question who owned the franchise.

This is also the hinge between the earlier Panthers and the increasingly cartoonish movies that followed. The Pink Panther Strikes Again picks up directly from where this one leaves Dreyfus, while Sellers would keep pushing Clouseau further into his own strange language and physical universe.