Just rewatched the Sellers entries in the series, and the OP's list - although just a chronological rundown - is exactly what I make of the quality.
For me, Clouseau belongs firmly in the early-mid 60s - and Edwards (not Sellers) completely fails to bring the character and franchise into the 70s - a troublesome decade for Edwards in general, who wouldn't recover creatively until attacking more personal projects with 10 and S.O.B, which saw him reclaim some bite, and then flourish with Victor/Victoria, a sharpened return to the farcial style he employed in the 60s with The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark.
Upon resurrecting the franchise in 1975 (a desperate bid on Edwards' part after a string of critical and commercial failures) his Panther output was uninspired, slipshod, repetitive and lazy (and I like Blake Edwards! - I'll also give it to him that the opening heist of Return is beautifully done) making for a steadily declining series of films.
In my opinion, Closeau works better as part of an ensemble, interacting with people rather than props (a prop can't set you up a straight line, not in Edwards' skill set at least) and what must have been ever-increasing pressure to up the chaos ante with each new installment fundamentally undermines Return, Strikes Again and Revenge. Many of the gags are poorly conceived, staged, filmed and edited. Sellers (and I'm not a devout Sellers fanboy!) salvages what he can, but one gets the feeling all parties were more and more checked out with each subsequent film.
As Closeau tearasses through the franchise, the humor is less anarchic than it is uncontrollably asinine and the films are only saved on a scene-by-scene basis by the charms of Sellers and Herbert Lom, both sadly caricaturized in ever broadening strokes by the time they got to Strikes Again - the two performers easily elevated above the non-characters surrounding them. The charms of the first two installments dwindle as the focus is pulled from bedroom farce to melee - a theoretically sound escalation botched by Edwards' attempts to recreate the same gags, and basically the same films (and the same successes) over and over again with a more is more approach. By the time he performed a bit of cinematic necromancy with Trail it became pretty clear his interests in the material were purely commercial, and those post-Sellers films are roundly - and appropriately - dismissed as such. Sellers' absence leaves a glaring hole, because the quality of writing and directing between Return/Strikes/Revenge is about the same as Curse.
For me, it's only The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark - both solid, airy, entertaining efforts made more illustrious by the idealized lounge and martinis and affluence 60s milieu, Sellers' restraint (I far prefer him stretching the seams instead of bursting out of them with wild abandon) and Edwards' technical bravado - and the rest, a short burst of mess, hold little interest. That's just me ...
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