A Shot in the Dark (1964) on Netflix
PG19641h 42mComedyCrimeMystery
Inspector Clouseau takes over a murder case at a millionaire's estate. The accused maid is Maria Gambrelli, and he is smitten with her. He insists on her innocence despite the evidence.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.3/1034,408 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
Late one night, gunshots ring out in the room of maid Maria Gambrelli at the country estate of millionaire Benjamin Ballon; chauffeur Miguel Ostos is found dead. Inspector Jacques Clouseau arrives with his assistant Hercule LaJoy. Maria is found holding the murder weapon, and Commissioner Charles Dreyfus removes the bumbling detective from the case. But Ballon's influence gets Clouseau reinstated, and Clouseau announces that Maria is innocent, convinced she is shielding the real killer. He arranges her release from prison to keep her under surveillance. Soon two more murders occur, at the greenhouse and a nudist camp, and the evidence again points to Maria. Clouseau continues to believe in her innocence, while Dreyfus grows more exasperated by the scandals his detective causes.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sophia Loren had to quit days before production began to recover from throat surgery; Shirley MacLaine turned the role down; Romy Schneider was cast but quit over her commitments to Good Neighbor Sam (1964), and Elke Sommer replaced her.
- Walter Mirisch asked Blake Edwards to take over directing from Anatole Litvak, and Edwards agreed only on the condition that he could rewrite the script, make Inspector Clouseau the lead character instead of the play's original lead, and choreograph comic scenes on the fly.
- Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers fell out so badly during the shoot that they vowed never to work together again, then reconciled four years later for The Party and three more Pink Panther films in the 1970s.
- When Blake Edwards's rewrite of the script left little of Harry Kurnitz's play, Sellers's co-star Walter Matthau quit the film.
- A Shot in the Dark was where Peter Sellers first gave Inspector Clouseau the idiosyncratically exaggerated French accent that later became a hallmark of the character.
- Edwards created Cato Fong from the American Kenpo style he learned from his martial arts teacher Ed Parker, who urged him to add slow motion to fight scenes; the favourable audience response led Edwards to reuse the effect in later Pink Panther films.
- Henry Mancini's theme for A Shot in the Dark was reused as the opening theme and incidental music of DePatie-Freleng's Inspector cartoon shorts from 1965 to 1969.
