Say this for the people who robbed Charlie Chaplin's grave - at least they didn't bring a camera along.<br /><br />Blake Edwards on the other hand showed no such scruples when it came to the star of his Pink Panther franchise, Peter Sellers. Dead for two years, Sellers was put back into service with the help of outtakes from older Panther movies and new footage shot around the expired star. It's hard to make chicken salad from chicken feathers, but this film hardly tries, loosely connecting indifferent footage of Sellers playing Inspector Jacques Clouseau to later scenes involving the disappearances of the Pink Panther diamond and, eventually, Clouseau himself.<br /><br />While Edwards claimed the point of this film was to honor Sellers' legacy, in fact he felt the same way of his dead star as Herbert Lom's Chief Inspector Dreyfus did of Clouseau, unable to refer to him in promotional interviews for this movie as anything other than "Sellers." The actual purpose of the film is twofold. First, he wanted to make a lot of money. Second, he wanted people to know who was behind the Panther franchise, a point made at the very start of the film when the name "Blake Edwards" fills the screen, before becoming "Blake Entertainment Edwards."<br /><br />Maybe I sound down on Edwards; if Sellers had his way, there would have been a Pink Panther movie with a different director and the result probably would have been nearly as bad. But you have to wonder what, other than money and ego, could motivate a smart, funny guy like Edwards to make a film full of bad jokes and go-nowhere story lines.<br /><br />Dreyfus tells his shrink about his pending breakdown from dealing with Clouseau. "You just lapsed into the lyrics of 'You Go To My Head'" the psychiatrist says.<br /><br />"I did? I apologize!" "Never apologize for Cole Porter."<br /><br />Later, as if to amplify this non-joke, the psychiatrist realizes the song isn't by Cole Porter. He identifies the song's true authors, and Dreyfus whimpers as he holds his hand to his head, about what who knows.<br /><br />Eventually the fresher material, lame as it is, dries up, and Edwards and co-writer Geoffrey Edwards (Thanks, Dad!) recycle other Pink Panther movies. A fake nose from disguise dealer Auguste Balls is called "Wino And Roses," a play on a previous Edwards film also used as a joke in "Revenge Of The Pink Panther." Much of Sellers' discarded footage are built around the same idea of his starting a fire by lighting a pipe or cigar, but allowed to run together anyway just to keep Sellers in the film as long as possible.<br /><br />But even with all that, Sellers' scenes run out with more than half the film to go, forcing Edwards to improvise, not at all well. Joanne Lumley, the future "Absolutely Fabulous" star, plays an intrepid TV reporter visiting Clouseau's old friends who wax rhapsodic about Clouseau and provide Edwards with the opportunity to even more shamefully pad his movie with actual clips from the older films, some running two minutes in length.<br /><br />The chance to see the discarded footage is interesting, and one sequence in a British hotel where Clouseau has terrible luck answering the phone is amusing, but mostly it serves to show just how good a job Edwards and his editor Alan Jones did with "The Pink Panther Strikes Again," where the outtakes came from.<br /><br />Another painful element of "Trail" is David Niven, his voice all but gone and dubbed by Rich Little, attempting to reprise his role as Sir Charles Lytton. At least Niven was alive at the time, and signed a contract to be in this film.<br /><br />"He epitomized the 11th commandment" Niven/Little says of Clouseau. "Thou Shalt Not Give Up!" That's one commandment Edwards would have been better off breaking as far as this series was concerned.