Simply Perfect

Powerful

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This move is geared towards the baby boomers. Middle age adults might enjoy it and maybe even the 30 plus crowd. I like the character, Perry Mason. Richard Cortez does a good job playing Perry Mason. However, my favorite Perry Mason is Raymond Burr. The movie moves quickly, but not too fast to follow. It is amazing how the black cat fits into the murder mystery. I got tired of hearing about waffles and melted butter. It must have been mentioned close to a dozen times within the short movie. The murder mystery has a good length at just over one hour. I can sit down and relax, watch the movie, and enjoy popcorn. The movie is easily forgotten in ten minutes and I am ready to see the next movie with a clear head. I give it 4 thumbs up.

This is formulaic. But that is a very good thing when the formula is very good. And this formula is terrific. When it was designed — and it was very clearly specified — it was designed so that the plugged in variants were so powerful in the narrative twists that each mystery seemed unique. The setup with the characters was nothing new: a mistress/secretary, a thorough detective/colleague, the easy familiarity with the prosecutors and police.What was new was the balance between trial lawyer and murder detective. The trial is an inherently cinematic device: a place where narrative can be both shown and explained. It is a device whereby all sorts of narrative perspectives can be shifted among, allowing for shades of untrusted narration. Gardner took the Agatha Christie's device at the end of her mysteries and expanded it. Christie had all of the suspects in a single room while Poirot or Marple recounted the solved mystery, but in a way that did some fast shuffling. Gardner integrated that into a cinematic setting that allowed for the untrusted narration and discovery to be spread through the detecting.It is brilliant, and well exploited in how Gardner devised twists within each of his plot modules. Here we have an old Christie trick where neither the body nor the original murder is not as thought. The twist is at such a radical level that even today this thing thrills. Narrative structure matters. It can make up for tedious stereotypes, bad acting and poor production.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Typical Perry Mason mystery from Warner Bros. in the '30s, features RICARDO CORTEZ as a much less abrasive version of the famous sleuth than Warren William--and much less cocky. The result is a good Mason yarn with a fine supporting cast. GARY EVANS supplies some humor as sidekick Paul Drake.JANE BRYAN is the young woman who is cut out of her grandfather's will. Grandpa is an angry old man played by HARRY DAVENPORT. JUNE TRAVIS is a more serious minded Della Street helping Mason solve his case, and CRAIG REYNOLDS is one of the main suspects.The mystery is cluttered with sub-plots involving the theft of diamonds but the twist at the end comes as a real surprise.Some cryptic dialog helps a lot. "Sam doesn't like cats or old men. He thinks both should be put out of their misery." Another surprise is the fact that the cat in the story is not a black cat at all but a gray and white one that doesn't seem to mind being handled by anyone and yet in the story is a cause of much distress with its noisy howling.

Excellent pre-Raymond Burr filming of a Perry Mason novel! I was lucky enough to see this on TCM (since it isn't on video). At first I wasn't expecting much, but found Ricardo Cortez to be an excellent Perry Mason! Why Warner Brothers didn't keep him for other movies in the series I don't know! That's probably why Perry Mason wasn't that successful until the tv series came along. It would be nice to see this title on DVD.