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Charles Dreyfus

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Chief Inspector Charles LaRousse Dreyfus is a fictional police officer in Blake Edwards' Pink Panther series. He is the closest the Pink Panther franchise has to a single main antagonist, as he routinely tries to kill his subordinate, Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Dreyfus famously has a pronounced tic which occurred under particular stress and an accompanying childlike giggle when plotting Clouseau's murder.

Biography[]

His first appearance was in A Shot in The Dark where he held the rank of the Commissioner, despite his health problems, involving personal injuries with his letter opener when he stabbed himself with it and accidentally cutting off his thumb with a cigar cutter. He is constantly driven to distraction by Clouseau's bungling and is eventually driven insane. In The Return of the Pink Panther, Dreyfus holds the rank of Chief Inspector. His trauma leads him to accidentally strangle his therapist while fantasizing Clouseau's death, then trying to assassinate Clouseau with a sniper's rifle, in which he killed Colonel Sharki instead. Later, he is arrested and is straitjacketed in a padded cell, writing "Kill Clouseau" on the wall (with his toes). Dreyfus returned as the main antagonist of The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Dreyfus is about to be released from an asylum after a complete recovery; however, within five minutes of Clouseau's arrival to speak to the board on Dreyfus' behalf, he suffers a variety of injuries, causing him to relapse. Thence Dreyfus escapes the asylum and kidnaps a scientist, forcing him to build a disintegrator ray later used to intimidate the rest of the world into attempting to assassinate Clouseau (as a demonstration, Dreyfus uses the ray to destroy the United Nations headquarters building in New York). Dreyfus appears to disintegrate because of his own superweapon at the end of Strikes Again, but subsequently (and without any explanation) re-appears in Revenge of the Pink Panther and is reinstated Chief Inspector when Clouseau is mistakenly declared dead. At the end of the film, he tries to shoot Clouseau in a firework storage room, only to accidentally activate them with a lighter. In the end, he is arrested and was either put in jail or back to the insane Asylum. In Trail of the Pink Panther, Dreyfus is excited to see Clouseau disappear, but in Curse of the Pink Panther he is stuck with Clifton Sleigh, an American detective who is just as incompetent and clumsy as Clouseau. In Son of the Pink Panther, Dreyfus gets married to Maria Gambrelli. During the reception, Dreyfus is shocked when Jacques Gambrelli's twin sister Jacqueline appears and turns out to be just a clumsy and dim-witted as her father. Dreyfus is now the stepfather of his hated enemy's children. Despite that, Dreyfus still attended Jacques' award ceremony where his stepson is decorated by the King of Lugash for saving his daughter.

Trivia[]

  • In the original timeline, he is played by Herbert Lom. In the remake timeline, he is played by Kevin Kline and John Cleese.
  • It is never explained how exactly Dreyfus survived getting shot with his own disintegrator ray. The novelization seems to suggest that nothing was disintegrated but rather transported to an alternate dimension. Since this contradicts the film, it is perhaps most likely that the disintegration machine teleported Dreyfus somewhere else, and he was eventually put back in the mental institution.

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