Pink Panzer (1965)

Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The Pink Panther is in an all-our war between his neighbor who seems to love borrowing garden tools from the panther without asking him first. From cutting down a tree limb to protect a property line to cutting down an entire section of a house, it's a cartoon that you would love to cheer the Pink Panther on, hoping he would get the best out of his jerk of a neighbor.Paul Frees narrates the story and is the voice influencing both characters to turn on each other. Does Frees have such a menacing and devilish voice in this one - absolute chilling.Not a very funny cartoon, or a very entertaining one. Just a lot of back and forth duels with not much humor or substance.Grade C

The next-door neighbor neglects to return the Pink Panther's lawn mower, an oversight the sinister off-screen narrator is only too happy to point out to the peaceful feline suburbanite. The insinuating voice pours poison into the neighbor's ear as well, and soon the two home owners are feuding over some hedge clippers and a tree limb hanging over the property line. Finally, the Pink Panther builds a brick wall to separate himself from his one-time friend, an act the neighbor considers to be a declaration of war.At the end, the two neighbors are donning combat helmets and exchanging cannon fire, but not even the interpolation of live-action stock footage, featuring real soldiers and tanks, adds much life to this tepidly comic morality play. The Pink Panther is ill-suited to this material. The feuding neighbor storyline has been handled better elsewhere, notably in the Donald Duck short, "The New Neighbor" (1953).

Normally, I hate it when they have some annoying narrator talking to the Pink Panther. Thankfully, it doesn't happen frequently. However, in this one, it's okay because it's Paul Frees, not a name you probably would not know but certainly a familiar voice. It seems like I heard Frees' voice many times from the '50s through the '70s. The gentleman is still alive- and-kicking, too, in his mid '80s as I write this.As another reviewer points out here, the "voice" is very devil-like in his message, stirring up neighbor against neighbor, whispering remarks in both the Panther's ear and his neighbor's, getting the two to square off against each other, all for selfish reasons.There's lots of truth to this cartoon. We may not hear audible voices, but you know these kind of bad thoughts enter our heads from time to time, and some of them probably are from Satan. It's best to know where they come from, and ignore them! The last minute of this cartoon is really hilarious as this neighborly feud escalates into literally an all-out war. The final message, delivered by the devil himself, will have you laughing right out loud.

LOL... I thought that Paul Frees did an absolutely spectacular and inimitable job of speaking in a sneaky seductive manner ("Then YOU cut it off...") to create steadily building resentment and get both neighbors more and more incensed with each other... it sounded EXACTLY the way I'd have expected the little orange "devil" to speak who was constantly needling both neighbors and whom we finally see at the end of the movie ("You know... it might be a good idea to return that lawn mower YOU borrowed... hahahahahahahahahaha!!!")... it sounded to me as if Mr. Frees was actually enjoying his role here as the "devil's advocate"... it appeared that he was actually having FUN doing it.