Revenge of the Pink Panther as an informant to lure Clouseau into a trap, but the Chief Inspector's car and clothes are stolen by transvestite criminal Claude Russo (Sue Lloyd), who is unknowingly killed by Douvier's men instead. Subsequently, Douvier and the French public believe Clouseau is dead; as a result of this assumption, Clouseau's ex-boss, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), is restored to sanity and is released from the lunatic asylum to perform the investigation (despite being seemingly disintegrated in the previous film). In Russo's clothes and insisting on his true identity, Clouseau is taken to the asylum himself but escapes into
The Pink Panther later adopted by the animated spin-off series, "The Inspector." Although official, the live-action film "Inspector Clouseau" (1968) starring Alan Arkin, is generally not considered by fans to be part of the series canon, since it involved neither Sellers nor Edwards. Some elements of Arkin's performance and costuming, however, were retained when Peter Sellers resumed the role of Clouseau for "Return" in 1975. Despite speculation, Alan Arkin does not appear in "Trail of the Pink Panther." The film that launched the second Pink Panther series, "The Pink Panther," starring Martin as Clouseau, directed by Shawn Levy and produced by Robert Simonds,