A Shot in the Dark (1964 film) A Shot in the Dark (1964 film) A Shot in the Dark is a 1964 British-American DeLuxe Color comedy film directed by Blake Edwards in Panavision. It is the second installment in "The Pink Panther" film series. Peter Sellers is featured again as Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté. Clouseau's blundering personality is unchanged, but it was in this film that Sellers began to give him the idiosyncratically exaggerated French accent that was to later become a hallmark of the character. The film also marks the first appearances of Herbert Lom as his long-suffering boss, Commissioner Dreyfus, as well
The Pink Panther derives its name from the eponymous pink diamond that has an enormous size and value. The diamond is called the "Pink Panther" because the flaw at its center, when viewed closely, is said to resemble a leaping pink panther. The phrase reappears in the title of the fourth film "The Return of the Pink Panther", in which the theft of the diamond is again the centre of the plot. The phrase was used for all the subsequent films in the series, even when the jewel did not figure in the plot. It ultimately appeared in six of the eleven films.