Search - The Pink Panther Film Collection (The Pink Panther / A Shot in the Dark / Strikes Again / Revenge of / Trail of) on DVD

The Funniest Films Of Any Time

Kaya Savas | Bethesda, MD USA | 04/18/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"MOVIES: Within this collection are some of the funniest movies ever conceived by man. Not only did these movies spawn off the Oscar winning cartoon that is known worldwide and is still being shown on Cartoon Network today, it also created a model for new generation "screwball" comedy (well in 1964) that can be seen in films today. Characters such as Harry and Marv from the first two Home Alone films follow this formula. The characters Leslie Nielson plays in almost all of his satires are all modeled after Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau. This character is so perfectly crafted that it will have you rolling around in laughter. Peter Sellers is a legend of comedy, a brilliant comedic actor. The way this character is, is that he is the most clumsiest, reckless, and graceless person there is and he always tries to recover from everything he does by acting serious about it. The collection includes all films except for The Return of the Pink Panther, Curse of the Pink Panther, and Son of the Pink Panther. Return of the Pink Panther should be there but is owned by another distributor, Curse of the Pink Panther really has nothing to do with the series since it does not star Peter Sellers, and Son of the Pink Panther was an abysmal. These classic films are the funniest you will ever see, if you have never seen them I highly suggest this collection. The title "Pink Panther" was never intended as a cartoon but actually was referring to the diamond in which the bumbling inspector was to find because within the diamond there was a minor flaw that resembled the shape of a panther and the diamond had a pink hue so that's how it fits together. So, all in all every collection should have this sitting on the shelf for you will never see a better comedic performance in past, present, or future.VIDEO: WOW! That's all I can say. I am shocked at how crisp these transfers are. I have recent movies that don't look as good as these do, they really cleaned up the print from the original 1964 reel, and same for the other four films. Anyway, the film is in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio as well. I have to say though the picture was impressive for a film 40 years old (referring to the first one).AUDIO: Another wow in this department. You'll get a 5.1 surround mix that is excellent for these classic films. The audio does not sound degraded or present any loss of quality. Very goodPACKAGING / EXTRAS: The case comes in cardboard slip case. Once taken out you'll have fun with the squishy plastic/foam digipak that resembles a book. When the digipak unfolds the discs are aranged in three sepreate segments in a very creative way yet with one minor flaw. The discs overlap eachother, two per segment. And even though they look mighty cool all set in place this is where the flaw is. Discs 2, 4, and 6 are overlapped by 1, 3, and 5. So if you need to get to those even numbered discs then you need to pop out the odd numbered one on top of it. As goes for extras we get a nice collection of original Pink Panther cartoons (4 to be exact), and two others. One that has nothing to do with the Pink Panther (it's just released by the same people whi created the original toons), and then one modeled after the actual character of Inspector Clouseau. There is also a 10 minute featurette explaining the phenomenon of these cartoons. Then we have a documentary titled "The Pink Panther Story". Each film also contains their original theatrical trailers on their own discs (not on the bonus disc), and each film has a photo gallery, and The Pink Panther has a commentary track. A limited number of extras plauge the set slightly, but not enough to hurt the quality of the set overall. One of the best collections to come out of MGM in a while."