The Pink Panther Strikes Again Clouseau prompts a relapse which cancels Dreyfus's planned discharge, but he soon escapes anyway and organizes an elaborate plot to threaten the countries of the world with annihilation by a large laser if they do not assassinate Clouseau for him. Unused footage from the film was later included in "Trail of the Pink Panther" (1982), after Sellers' death. At a psychiatric hospital, former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is largely recovered from his obsession to kill the new Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) and is about to be released when Clouseau, arriving to speak on Dreyfus' behalf, within
Trail of the Pink Panther in the fashion of Jack Lemmon's Professor Fate). When Sellers died, United Artists tried to get Dudley Moore to play Clouseau in the Sellers-penned "Romance of the Pink Panther". Moore wouldn't do it without Edwards and was only willing to play Clouseau once as a tribute to Sellers (knowing "Romance" was to have ended the series, according from a LA Times interview with Moore in 1980). United Artists wanted the series to continue, but Edwards wouldn't use another actor as Clouseau, no doubt remembering the negative reception that "Inspector Clouseau" suffered upon release in 1968 (a production which featured Alan