The Movie: If you're looking for some great 1960's style and music, The Pink Panther is the place to be. The first of the series of films featuring the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, The Pink Panther delivers a campy comedy with oodles of juicy 1960's swingin' style and a wonderful soundtrack composed by Henry Mancini.

If on the other hand, you're looking for high drama, well, look elsewhere. This is a cheeseball comedy through and through with lots of little sight gags that requires the audience to believe that yes, someone as clueless and oblivious as Inspector Clouseau could actually keep a job as a police inspector.

The plot revolves around a very attractive young princess with a priceless jewel, and a mysterious jewel thief known only as "The Phantom". Inspector Clouseau comes in to try and solve the case but has a difficult time even though the theif is right under his nose... and is having an affair with his wife... and the princess...

The DVD: The video transfer on this DVD is remarkably clean, absolutely free from any dust, scratches, and other blemishes, though it did suffer a bit from excessive edge enhancement. The 2.35:1 aspect ratio suggests to me that this transfer was made from a 35mm anamorphic reduction print rather than the full size Technirama version, but either way, it looks pretty great when you take the limitations of the film stocks of the day into consideration.

Audio is similarly clean, but with the limitations you'd expect from a film of this vintage, though actually it sounds pretty good for what it is. Also it sounds like the musical score has undergone some sort of restoration as it sounds significantly cleaner than the dialog, but overall, great sound for such an old movie.

Special features include a commentary track, a photo gallery, an original theatrical trailer and a "trivia track" which I didn't get a chance to investigate so I have no idea what it is.

Overall I'd say that this is a better quality DVD release than I would have expected, and the movie is not so bad if you're into campy comedy bits.