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 creation, or "The Thin Man" was used in a series of detective films. "A Shot in the Dark," a film which was not originally intended to feature Clouseau, is the first of two films in the series (the other being "Inspector Clouseau") that features neither the diamond nor the distinctive animated Pink Panther in the opening credits and ending. Many critics, including Leonard Maltin, regard this film as the best in the series. In the original film, released in 1963, the main focus was on David Niven's role as Sir Charles Litton, the infamous jewel thief nicknamed "the Phantom," and