1. Trail Of The Pink Panther (1982, Dir. Blake Edwards)
What Was The Comedy? The last Pink Panther film to star Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.
Why Was It So Appalling? Peter Sellers died before the film was made. I swear that I am not making a word of this up. After Peter Sellers death, production began on Trail Of The Pink Panther with the film relying on material that had been cut from the other Pink Panther films (mostly taken from The Pink Panther Strikes Again), with half of the film being about a character played by Joanna Lumley searching for Clouseau after he goes missing. The decision to construct the Clouseau scenes out of archive footage led to the whole thing being incredibly disjointed since it was attempting to connect archive material with new footage to make a coherent story.
Who Should Have Known Better? Whoever was insane and money-grubbing enough to suggest that making a comedy starring a dead actor was both plausible and not in bad taste.
Why Should They Have Known Better? It is a truth universally acknowledged by all but those with an IQ in single figures that any film starring a dead actor made after said actors death will be terrible in both quality and taste. Theres really nothing to be said beyond that. You just cant make a feature length film starring a dead man and expect it to be any good. Even with some of the focus on another character in a different but connected story. And this fundamental failure to grasp the concept of both human dignity and how the film industry works (mainly the part about how actors need to be alive in order to act) cost the studio $1.5 million after a successful lawsuit by Sellers widow who claimed that the film was a cheap insult to her husbands memory.
Which appalling comedy films do you think should have been avoided? Leave a comment...