Perry Mason season 2 part 2

A few episodes from the 1958-59 second season of Perry Mason. The character had to be toned down quite a bit for television but this series was still a great deal of fun. This is a series that raised the bar in terms of complex plotting in American series television.

In The Case of the Fraudulent Foto we get to see Perry in a new rôle - as Deputy District attorney for Waring County. He’s standing in for the Waring County D.A. who is currently on trial for murder. And Perry is defending him. It’s a tangled tale of political and bureaucratic corruption and blackmail with some personal complications thrown in.

The Case of the Romantic Rogue is fiendishly complicated. An heiress is being pursued by a con-man, the con-man is being blackmailed, the con-man’s girlfriend is unhappy about all of these things, the heiress’s uncle who ran off with his secretary has been missing but may or may not have been found. Only Perry mason could unravel a case like this. This one is slightly unusual since the final revelation does not come in a courtroom scene. A good episode but you have to concentrate.

In The Case of the Jaded Joker Danny Ross is a comic whose career is faltering but a new TV show promoted by his pal Charlie Goff will put him back on top. The new TV show goes ahead but without Danny and he’s pretty devastated, as is his buddy/aide/general factotum Freddie. Even Buzzy, the beatnik piano player who is the other member of Danny’s odd little entourage, is almost moved to express some emotion at the news. When Charlie Goff is found dead it’s Freddie who is arrested but there are several other people who also have plausible motives.

It seems like alibis will be crucial but for some reason when the case comes to trial Perry seems a lot more obsessed over the details of the murder method.

Show business is always a good background to murder but this story also gives us, as a bonus, a glimpse into the crazy world of the beatniks. It’s a solid episode.

The Case of the Lost Last Act is another show business murder story. Successful playwright Ernest Royce has written a play about playwright named Steve who gets murdered before he can write the last act of his new play. And now the last set of Royce’s play has disappeared.

This is a play that has made Royce a lot of enemies even before it’s finished. It’s a bitter angry play and everyone who has read the first two acts has good reason not to want the play finished.

When Royce is shot, exactly the way the character in his play was shot, ex-racketeer Frank Brooks figures there’s a good chance he’ll be charged with the murder so he hires Mason to defend him. Brooks had put a lot of money into the play because it was going to make his girlfriend Faith a star but once he figures out that Royce is taking much too close an interest in Faith Brooks decides to pull both his money and his girl out of the play.

Frank Brooks might have a murky past but he’s not the only one. A lot of things happened around the time that Brooks got out of the rackets. Things that people would like to forget, but they can’t.

Perry’s courtroom pyrotechnics are well and truly up to his outrageous standards. His antics aren’t just theatrical, they are actual theatre. There are the usual nifty plot twists. A very good episode.

The Case of the Bedeviled Doctor begins with a stolen tape-recording, a recording of a session with a psychoanalyst. The recording could be very embarrassing if it fell into the wrong hands and as Perry points out the fact that it’s been stolen suggests that it already has fallen into the wrong hands. Murder is the result. Ordinarily in a case of blackmail leading to murder the blackmail victim would be the obvious suspect, but not in this case. In fact there are six people with very plausible motives for the murder.

This story doesn’t have the bravura use of arcane points of law or ingenious alibis that you get in the best Perry Mason episodes. This is a routine episode, but even a routine Perry Mason episode is still pretty enjoyable.

Always a good series to revisit.

Dick Tracy TV series (1950-51)

The VCI boxed set containing all three Republic Dick Tracy serials (and I’m a huge fan of movie serials) which I bought recently includes as a bonus an episode of the 1950-51 Dick Tracy TV series which aired on the ABC network. It's a series I had never seen.

The episode in question is Hi-Jack, episode 16 of season one.

I don’t consider myself a huge Dick Tracy fan but I love the Republic serials and the 1940s RKO Dick Tracy movies so I guess maybe I am a bit of a Dick Tracy fan after all.

The episode was a disappointment, but it is an interesting example of some of the problems of very very early TV crime drama series. American television was developing rapidly and by 1955 was starting to become reasonably sophisticated, but series from the early 50s do tend to be clunky.

There were reasons for this. The half-hour TV drama is a distinctive format of its own, quite different from one-hour dramas and feature films. There was a real art to writing a successful half-hour drama. You really had to plunge the viewer straight into the action and you had to get on with it. It was essential not to waste time on sub-plots or irrelevant scenes that failed to advance the action. You would probably only have time for one major plot twist so it had to be a good one.

It’s hardly surprising that in 1950 these rules were not yet fully understood. Hi-Jack wastes a lot of time early on with a long boring completely irrelevant dialogue scene with no connection at all to the story. Once we get into the action there’s just not quite enough plot and there are no major twists. Even at a half hour it drags a bit.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a car-stealing racket. Which is a rather mundane case for someone like Dick Tracy (at least it would be a very mundane case for the Dick Tracy of the serials and the RKO movies). The bad guys are switching the engine and chassis numbers on stolen cars and they’re also planning to double-cross each other.

The villain is unfortunately rather colourless.

Another problem with early 50s U.S. TV is that it looks stodgy. This was possibly due more than anything else to the limitations of the medium at that time. TV sets had very small screens and picture quality was not good. There was little point in trying for artistic lighting effects or imaginative framing (even if there had been time for such luxuries which there wasn’t). Sets were very basic. These early TV shows looked cheap.

Of course it’s possible that this just happens to be a dud episode.

It doesn’t help that image quality is atrocious.

What seeing this episode has done for me is to increase my admiration for the achievements of American television in the late 50s. The improvement was staggering. Series like Decoy (1957), M Squad (1957) and Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958) were to demonstrate just how good half-hour episodic television could be.

Dick Tracy was possibly just made too soon. Six or seven years later it might have been possible to make a truly excellent Dick Tracy TV series.

On the plus side the series does have Ralph Byrd, the definitive screen Dick Tracy. And that’s a major plus.

So overall more of a curiosity than anything else.

I’ve also reviewed a couple of the RKO movies - Dick Tracy, Detective (1945) and Dick Tracy vs Cueball (1946).

The Twilight Zone - The Sixteen-Millimetre Shrine

The Sixteen-Millimetre Shrine was the fourth episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone and it’s always been one of my favourites. It was directed by Mitchell Leisen and written by Rod Serling and first went to air on October 23, 1959.

Barbara Jean Trenton (Ida Lupino) was, briefly, a major movie star. But that was many years ago. Her career took off quickly and crashed just as quickly. She is now a middle-aged recluse. She spends her time watching her own old movies on 16mm in a private projection room in her mansion.

While Barbara Jean Trenton, the character played by Ida Lupino, clearly has a kinship with Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard and while the initial setup resembles that of Billy Wilder’s film it is quite wrong to see The Sixteen-Millimetre Shrine as merely a television rip-off of Sunset Boulevard. The story does not follow the same trajectory, and there are differences in emphasis. And while it isn’t immediately obvious at first by the end of the story it has become very definitely a Twilight Zone story.

It has the essential Twilight Zone feel - everything seems just like everyday reality until suddenly it’s not everyday reality any more.

In The Sixteen-Millimetre Shrine there’s quite a bit of focus on the essential voyeurism of cinema. The twist here is that it’s self-voyeurism. Barbara Jean Trenton has no interest in other people’s lives. She has no curiosity about other people. The subject of her voyeurism is Barbara Jean Trenton. Not Barbara Jean Trenton the woman, but Barbara Jean Trenton the movie star. She watches herself obsessively on the screen. A further twist is that Barbara Jean Trenton the movie star no longer exists. This is voyeurism focused on the past.

And of course the viewer is watching Barbara Jean watching herself.

The twist at the end was later borrowed (or homaged if you prefer) by a certain very famous film director but to say any more would constitute a spoiler. It goes without saying that the film director in question was hailed as a genius for this ending, but The Twilight Zone did it first.

This is Rod Serling’s writing at its best. It packs an emotional punch but without sentimentality and without the viewer feeling manipulated. Serling could be guilty of sentimentality and manipulation but when he avoided those pitfalls he could come up with some top-notch scripts. And this is a wonderfully subtle script.

Martin Balsam is excellent as Barbara Jean’s loyal long-suffering friend and agent Danny Weiss.

But the success of this episode depends entirely on Lupino’s performance. She’s superb. She wisely avoids self-pity. Barbara Jean has isolated herself entirely from the contemporary world but we don’t despise or pity her. She has made a choice. She is happier living in the past. She knows that the modern world would destroy her. Lupino gives her a certain dignity.

While Sunset Boulevard was a rather scathing look at Hollywood and what it does to people The Sixteen-Millimetre Shrine has a different tone. It certainly acknowledges that Hollywood uses people, makes them stars and then discards them but Serling’s story lacks Sunset Boulevard’s venom. Barbara Jean’s fate is sad, and yet there’s no question that for a brief moment Hollywood really did give her everything she wanted. It gave her complete happiness. Would she have been better off never having experienced her brief moment of fame and fulfilment? If happiness is fleeting would we really be better off without it? Would we really be better off living safe predictable conventional lives with no insane highs and no insane lows?

Barbara Jean would undoubtedly say that the highs are worth the price one has to pay. She knows that she was a star, and no-one can ever take that away from her.

So rather than the bleakness and venom of Sunset Boulevard we get a bitter-sweet tone here, and the combination of Serling’s writing and Lupino’s acting makes it work.

I’ve now seen The Sixteen-Millimetre Shrine four times and it remains one of my favourite Twilight Zone moments. Very highly recommended.

13 Demon Street (1959)

13 Demon Street was a horror anthology series created by Curt Siodmak. It was made in Sweden in 1959 but was shot in English with mostly American casts. Thirteen episodes were made. It was aired in syndication in the United States.

Curt Siodmak (brother of film director Robert Siodmak) had a varied and interesting career as a novelist, screenwriter and occasional director, mostly in the science fiction and horror genres.

Lon Chaney Jr provides an introduction to each episode, in the guise of a man who has been cursed for all eternity for some terrible crime. He can only escape the curse if he can find some crime more heinous than his own, so he is telling us these stories in the hope of convincing us that there really are worse crimes than his own (although he doesn’t tell us what his crime was).

Three episodes were later edited together to make a movie called The Devil’s Messenger, and since all three episodes were quite good the movie ended up as a reasonably good anthology movie.

One of the recurring themes in this series seems to be the fuzziness of the boundary between reality and illusion, and between sanity and madness. Strange things happen, but are they really happening? These are ideas that are explored fairly effectively in several episodes.

It’s also a series that captures an atmosphere of subtle weirdness quite well.

A few other episodes are available from various sources. Something Weird Video’s DVD release of another interesting anthology series of that era, The Veil, includes two episodes of 13 Demon Street as extras. The horror in 13 Demon Street is perhaps slightly more overt but like The Veil it suffers at times from not providing totally satisfying payoffs. It’s less original than The Veil but overall it’s slightly more effective.

The Vine of Death

The Vine of Death was directed by Curt Siodmak who also co-wrote the script with Leo Guild. An archaeologist in Copenhagen plants some 4,000-year-old bulbs, from an extinct vine known as the Mirada Death Vine. Legend has it that the vine has an affinity for dead human bodies. The bulbs appear to be hopelessly desiccated but the archaeologist, Dr Frank Dylan, has the crazy idea that he can get them to grow.

There’s a romantic triangle involving Dr Dylan’s wife Terry and a neighbour. It leads to murder, and it leads to other bizarre consequences.

This is a genuinely weird and creepy story and it’s pretty good.

The Black Hand

The Black Hand was directed by Curt Siodmak and written by Siodmak and Richard Jairus Castle. It’s a pretty hackneyed idea. Dr Heinz Schloss is involved in an auto accident and to escape from his burning car he has to amputate his own hand (which is at least a suitably macabre touch).

He transplants a psychopathic murderer’s hand onto his arm (without knowing that it’s a murderer’s hand) and of course you know what’s going to happen next. It’s mostly predictable but the fact Dr Schloss is a surgeon adds a bit of interest - a surgeon has to be able to trust his hands.

It’s reasonably well executed but the basic idea has been handled better before, notably in the movies The Hands of Orlac (1924) and Mad Love (1935).

The Photograph

The Photograph was written and directed by Curt Siodmak. Donald Powell is a fashion photographer and he’s a bit of a creep. His friend Charlie thinks he needs a break. He should go to Maine and do some real photography. Donald takes his advice. The first thing that attracts his interest in Maine is an old house, but he’s even more interested in the young woman who emerges from the house. For Donald it’s an instantaneous obsession. With disastrous consequences.

Now it’s one of the photos he took in Maine that has him worried. It doesn’t look the same any more.

This episode is inspired by the classic M.R. James ghost story The Mezzotint. It’s slightly more interesting than it appears at first glance since there’s considerable ambiguity about what actually happened in Maine. It’s even possible that nothing happened.

Fever

Fever was written and directed by Curt Siodmak.

This episode shows much more promise. It’s a tale of a young doctor in Vienna the early years of the 20th century who is treating an ageing, brooding, alcoholic painter. The artist painted the same woman over and over, and the doctor becomes obsessed with her. Then he sees her in the house cross the street. But there isn’t a house across the street. And surely she’d be much older by now? So it it really her? Is she alive? Is he dreaming or awake? OK, it’s an idea that’s been done before but it’s executed with considerable skill and style.

And it is a nicely spooky story. I liked this one.

The Girl in the Glacier

The Girl in the Glacier was written and directed by Curt Siodmak. The body of a naked girl, frozen in the ice of a glacier for 50,000 years, is found in a mineshaft. The block of ice in which she is embedded is taken to a museum. Dr. Ben Seastrom, the anthropologist put in charge of trying to preserve the girl’s body, becomes obsessed by her. He starts to develop some pretty strange ideas about her.

In fact he starts to fall in love with the long-dead girl. He buys some pretty clothes for her. He also gets the idea that maybe she isn’t really dead, that maybe if he can find a way to very slowly unfreeze her she’ll come back to life. Maybe he’s brilliant but he’s clearly crazy. Or is he?

Again it’s not a dazzlingly original idea but it’s handled quite well.

Condemned in the Crystal

Condemned in the Crystal was directed by Curt Siodmak and written by Dory Previn (better known as a singer-songwriter).

John Radian is a middle-aged man troubled by dreams. The dreams take place in an old semi-derelict building and they are about the foretelling of the future. His psychiatrist explains to him that he wants to know his future but is also afraid of knowing. The psychiatrist suggests that he should face his fears. He should go to that building (the building really exists and Radian knows where it is).

Radian takes his doctor’s advice. When he finds the building he finds a gypsy woman, a fortune-teller. She sees John Radian’s future in her crystal ball. She tells him his future and that he cannot escape it. Of course he tries to do so.

This is a nicely suspenseful episode, with some cleverly ambiguous touches. We know what is going to happen because we’ve heard the fortune-teller tell Radian, but her prediction seems to make no sense. We cannot see (and John Radian cannot see) how such a thing could happen. The ending is effective. A good episode.

Final Thoughts

It’s not easy to make an overall judgment on this series based on the half-dozen episodes that I’ve seen. A couple of the episodes are certainly unoriginal but others really are pleasingly weird and disturbing. 13 Demon Street had potential and it’s worth a look.

The Veil (1958)

The Veil was an ill-fated American horror anthology TV series made by Hal Roach Studios in 1958, with Boris Karloff hosting and also acting in most episodes. Unfortunately after ten episodes had been made Hal Roach Studios went broke. The series was consigned, unaired, to the vault.

This series was obviously influenced by the success of Alfred Hitchcock Presents which had demonstrated that an anthology series could be very successful indeed. While Alfred Hitchcock Presents concentrated on mysteries, always with a sting in the tail, The Veil takes an overtly supernatural approach. It's mostly not full-blooded horror but there is never any doubt as to the supernatural nature of the events which unfold.

It’s difficult to judge this series fairly since it didn’t go to air and the producers therefore did not have the opportunity to refine the formula or to discover which types of stories worked and which didn’t. The Thriller anthology seres which Karloff hosted a couple of years later was very successful because in that case the producers spent the first half of the first season trying to get that formula right. As a result Thriller moved more and more into outright horror territory because the first few experiments in full-blooded horror proved to be so popular. Had The Veil gone to air the weaknesses would presumably have been quickly ironed out.

As a result The Veil is rather erratic in quality. The potential was there but it needed to become more focused. Several episodes have great build-ups but they suffer from a failure to provide a totally satisfactory pay-off.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that this series is not aiming for visceral horror. It’s aiming for a subtle sense of mild spookiness. It mostly doesn’t deal with terrifying events but with unsettling inexplicable events. Most of the stories are to some degree left hanging and I have a suspicion that this is quite deliberate. The aim is not to resolve things in a definite way but to leave the viewer scratching his head in puzzlement, rather than scared out of his wits. We’re not supposed to be sure whether what we’ve seen is supernatural or not, in fact we’re not supposed to have any idea as to what the explanation really is. So we get stories that are suggestive, that are hints of odd happenings, rather than fully-developed stories.

Whether this was a wise strategy for the series to adopt is something we’ll never know. Since it didn’t go to air and remained unseen for many years there’s no way of knowing how viewers at the time would have reacted.

The result is that The Veil has an odd kind of feel that you’ll either like or you won’t. If you accept it as a series of atmospheric vignettes concerning strange occurrences then you’ll find that it has a certain appeal, but you do have to accept that the plots usually don’t go in for the kill in the way you’re going to expect.

Karloff tells us in his episode introductions that these are are all stories based on actual events, a claim that the viewer might choose to take with a grain of salt although in some cases it might well be true.

For most viewers the biggest attraction of this series is that Karloff appears in every episode as an actor and gets to play a wide variety of rôles, sometimes villainous, sometimes comic, sometimes as hero or victim. It’s a fine showcase for Karloff’s acting versatility.

The Veil remained lost in obscurity until the 1990s. Since then there have been several DVD releases. The Something Weird DVD release that I have (which is still available) includes the ten episodes that were known to exist at the time. The original backdoor pilot episode, made for another anthology series, and one further episode later came to light.

Episode Guide

Vision of Crime takes place in the late 19th century. A man is murdered in his shop. The somewhat disreputable Albert Ketch was seen running from the scene so he is quickly arrested. It all seems straightforward but it isn’t, because at the exact moment that Hart Bosworth was slain his brother George, hundreds of miles away on a ship bound for France, had a vision of the murder. He didn’t see the killer clearly enough to identify him but he did see enough to know that it was not Albert Ketch. Somehow George has to convince the police that Ketch is innocent but if he tells them he had a vision they’ll think he’s mad. Even his fiancée Julie will think he’s mad.

This episode boasts an impressive cast. There’s Boris Karloff as the blustering and rather inept police sergeant, Willmore, who takes charge of the case. There’s Patrick Macnee from The Avengers as the much more efficient Constable Hawton. And there’s Robert Hardy (who went on to fame as one of the stars of All Creatures Great and Small) as George Bosworth.

The first problem with this episode is the uneasy mixture of spookiness and broad humour. The second problem is the failure to develop the spookiness enough. And thirdly, it just doesn’t have any real suspense or mystery. It’s all too obvious and the resolution falls flat. It’s certainly a very disappointing start to the series.

Girl on the Road, written and directed by George Waggner, is a major improvement. John Prescott is driving along near Lookout Point when he sees a girl who seems to be having car trouble. It turns out that her name is Lila and she’s run out of petrol. He offers to give her a lift so that they can get some petrol but he takes her to a bar instead. He’s obviously very interested in getting to know her and while she’s understandably cautious (his intentions seem a bit obvious) she seems at least mildly interested in him.

Then things take a slightly strange turn. She gets very frightened, for no obvious reason. She wants to leave, alone, but she does agree to meet him later that night at Lookout Point. They do meet, and things take a much stranger turn after an elderly man named Morgan Debs (played by Karloff) turns up and tells Prescott that Lila won’t be turning up, although she already has turned up. He tells Prescott that he should forget the girl.

Prescott has however become rather obsessed. He is determined to see Lila again. He is sure that she is in trouble. His efforts to find her again lead him to an unexpected discovery about the nature of her trouble.

The payoff is rather low-key and doesn’t have the punch that modern viewers will expect but it works reasonably well. The whole story has a nicely mysterious atmosphere with Prescott becoming increasingly bewildered, and increasingly unsure about what Morgan Debs is up to. I liked this one.

Food on the Table is the tale of a sea captain from 18th century Massachusetts. His most recent voyage almost ended in disaster when the ship was overrun by venomous snakes. Two crewmen died but now the ship has reached port safely. You would think that Captain Elwood would be anxious to see his wife Ruth but he isn’t. He dislikes and resents her (for reasons that will later be revealed). She turns up at the Mariners’ Club when he is carousing with his seafaring buddies. They’re just about to sit down to a splendid dinner when Ruth, n a jealous rage, hurls all the food onto the floor. When they get home we discover that one of those venomous snakes survived the voyage and is lurking in the captain’s luggage.

What happens next isn’t as obvious as you think it’s going to be. The captain’s marital difficulties will however shortly come to a head. And the supernatural will of course make an appearance. It’s a reasonably spooky tale. Karloff’s performance as Captain Elwood helps a good deal. This is not a bad little story.

In The Doctors Karloff plays an elderly Italian doctor, Dr. Carlo Marcabienti, in a small and very backward village. He is much-loved by all. A little girl gets very sick but there’s a fierce storm raging so the doctor’s son Angelo (also a doctor) has to attend the girl. The girl’s family won’t let him treat her because they don’t believe he’s a real doctor.

This is not a horror story. It’s simply a tale of an odd occurrence which seems to defy explanation. This seems to be the kind of story that was going to become a speciality of this series. The downside is that you don’t get a real horror pay-off but the upside is that you get an atmosphere that is mysterious and unsettling. I quite enjoyed it but going for quirky stories with a subtle hint of the supernatural was a risky strategy that would have left some viewers disappointed.

The Crystal Ball is another episode that is too subtle for its own good and again we don’t get a fully satisfying pay-off. Edmond is a young writer in 19th century Paris. His fiancée Marie gives him the big brush-off (she’s going to marry his rich publisher instead because she wants money) but she gives him a parting gift - a crystal ball. She thinks it’s just a harmless bauble but she’s wrong. Edmond sees things in the crystal ball, things that could have disastrous consequences. But consequences for whom?

This is another story that really needed a clever twist at the end (of the kind that Alfred Hitchcock Presents always provided) but we don’t get it. It’s another episode that feels strangely unfinished.

In Genesis an old farmer is dying. He has two sons. One, John, is a devoted son, the other (Jamie) stole some money and ran off to the big city. Now Jamie has returned in the hope of getting his inheritance. It all depends on the old man’s will. Or in this case wills - he seems to have made several wills. The vital clue is connected to a passage in the Bible and John and Jamie are modern versions of Esau and Jacob. It’s another story that involves the supernatural without being a horror story and once again the script needed to provide a bit more punch.

Destination Nightmare is about a father (played by Karloff) who wants his son to follow in his footsteps and take over his aviation business. He’s worried that his son doesn’t have what it takes. The tensions between them rise when the son almost crashes after seeing a vision. Maybe it has something to do with the father’s nightmares about the war. This episode is much more fully developed than most and pays off pretty nicely whilst still retaining that slight edge of uncertainty that was the trademark of the series. A very good episode.

Summer Heat sees The Veil doing a Rear Window, or at least that’s the initial impression. A mild-mannered New York shipping clerk named Edward Page sees a murder committed in the building opposite his apartment. When the police arrive they find that the apartment in which Page claimed the murder happened is vacant. Page ends ups in Bellevue but the psychiatrist there (played by Karloff) is convinced that Page isn’t crazy. And then we get the twist. This is quite a decent episode.

The Return of Madame Vernoy is set in India and deals with reincarnation. Santha Naidu is a young woman who not only believes that she had a past life, she remembers that past life vividly. She was a woman very happily married to a M. Armand Vernoy. She died in 1927, shortly after the birth of her son. A year later she was reborn as Santha Naidu. M. Vernoy is now a man in late middle age but he is still very much alive. Santha can’t wait to tell him the good news that his beloved wife has been reborn. They can pick up their life together where it left off.

Things don’t go as smoothly as she’d expected. Her son Krishna, now a young man (and played by a very young George Hamilton), refuses to believe that Santha is his mother. M. Vernoy is thrown into an emotional turmoil. He doesn’t know what to believe. This is a fairly typical episode in the sense that there’s no horror, just something that is inexplicable and puzzling and disturbing for everyone involved. It is, typically for this series, very low-key. But it’s not a bad episode.

Jack the Ripper was actually made by a different studio but was acquired by Hal Roach Studios. They added the Boris Karloff intro and outro but Karloff does not appear in this episode. Walter Durst is a professional clairvoyant. Both he and his wife are convinced that his powers of clairvoyance are real. Walter has a dream in which a woman is murdered and the next day the body of Jack the Ripper’s second victim is found, precisely at the spot foretold in Walter’s dream. Walter goes to Scotland Yard but they simply laugh at him. And then he has another vision. This story has quite a similar feel to the episodes of The Veil so including it in that series made perfect sense, and was a nice way of saving some money. Quite a decent episode.

Final Thoughts

The Veil isn’t scary but it does offer a slightly unsettling slightly spooky feel which was what it was aiming for. If that doesn’t bother you then you’ll probably like it. If you’re expecting full-blown horror you’ll be disappointed. Either way it’s reasonably interesting and probably worth a look, especially if you’re a hardcore Karloff fan.

Decoy (1957)

Decoy was a syndicated 1957 cop drama that has considerable historical interest, being the first American cop series to feature a woman as the lead character. It’s also unusual for American TV of that era in featuring some actual location shooting with some great New York street scenes.

Officer Patricia “Casey” Jones (Beverly Garland) is a New York policewoman. She doesn’t have a regular assignment. Like a lot of her fellow policewomen she gets assigned to various squads when they need a female officer to go undercover.

The series only lasted for one season (of 39 episodes). The obvious explanation for this is that it tried to be fairly realistic. Policewomen didn’t spend most of their time beating up bad guys or shooting them. When assigned to plain-clothes work they just went undercover and tried to blend into whatever environment they found themselves in, either patiently gathering evidence or equally patiently for a criminal to take the bait (the policewoman being the bait). Which means that it’s a much less action-packed series than something like M Squad. The insistence on not making Casey an unrealistic action heroine was admirable but would not have helped the ratings.

It’s not hard to see why none of the networks were interested - they would have had no idea what to do with a series such as this which is too unconventional and low-key to fit neatly into the cop show genre.

The show’s biggest asset is without a doubt Beverly Garland, an extraordinarily talented actress who should have become a major star but it just never happened for her. The format of the series gives her plenty of opportunities to stretch her acting wings. An undercover policewoman like Casey had to be an actress of sorts, constantly playing different rôles which of course means that Garland gets to vary her performances (and she does so very skilfully).

She also has to be tough and she has to be sensitive and occasionally she has to be vulnerable. All of which Garland manages with ease.

It also has to be said that Beverly Garland is very glamorous. And when she gets undercover assignments that require her to play up the glamour she’s very very glamorous indeed.

At the end of every episode Casey breaks the fourth wall and gives us a spiel about the work of policewomen. This sort of thing (along with voiceover narration) was a common but irritating feature of a lot of 50s cop shows. Of course the producers needed the coöperation of police departments so the spiels occasionally sound like public relations releases.

The scripts are, on the whole, extremely strong and despite the half-hour format they have a lot more complexity than you might expect. They’re pleasingly varied - sometimes very dark, sometimes slightly whimsical. And on occasions they’re not afraid to address tricky ethical dilemmas.

It’s fascinating to compare Decoy to Police Woman. Police Woman is a wonderfully entertaining series but Decoy is more interesting, more psychologically complex, more realistic and more intelligent. It can be dark but it can be hopeful as well. And while Angie Dickinson has enormous charisma Beverly Garland is in her own way just as memorable.

Episode Guide

In Stranglehold a sailor has been murdered and a woman, Molly Orchid, has been picked up trying to pawn the dead man’s watch. The police think her boyfriend George did the killing but they know nothing about him apart from his name. It’s Casey’s job to befriend Molly and find out who George is. It turns out to be a much more dangerous job than she expected.

The Red Clown is an episode that offers a clue as why this series only lasted one season. Casey is trying to track down an errant husband so that he can be forced to pay child support. Casey has visions of reuniting father and daughter but finds that putting families back together isn’t so easy. It’s not a bad story. In fact it’s very good. I admire the series for showing a policewoman working the sort of unglamorous everyday cases that a real policewoman would have been involved in. It’s just not a cop show story. There’s no crime, no arrests, no guns, no-one is in any danger. It’s just a cop trying to bring a father and a daughter back together. When you compare it to contemporary cop shows like Dragnet or M Squad you can see why a lot of viewers were going to be alienated or mystified. In TV in that era a series that did not fit genre expectations was going to have trouble finding an audience.

In The Phoner Casey has to trap a man making obscene phone calls to a woman named Betty. It could be more dangerous than it sounds, for both Betty and Casey. An effectively tense episode.

To Trap a Thief starts with Casey on a routine assignment, trying to catch pickpockets. Then gunfire breaks out. It’s the aftermath of an armed robbery. The robbery itself is far from routine. $17,000 was stolen but the thieves only had $7,000 on them when apprehended. What happened to the other $10,000? Suspicion falls on veteran cop Frank Torrino. As part of the investigation Casey poses as a blackmailer but what she uncovers is not what she expected. It’s a solid story but what makes this a typical (and very good) Decoy episode is the compassion for human weakness.

Dream Fix deals with a junkie, a young woman who might lead the cops to a big-time dealer. Casey goes undercover as a nurse at a rehab hospital. Another typical Decoy episode with the emphasis on the human side of police work.

The Savage Payoff deals with sports betting and rigged basketball games. Casey goes undercover to befriend a player whom the cops suspect is involved. He’s a nice boy and Casey hates to think he might be mixed up in anything dishonest. Another story in which right and wrong is not something straightforward.

Casey finds herself behind bars in Deadly Corridor, posing as a prisoner to solve the murder of an inmate. She might find the answer but she might not like it. This one gives Beverly Garland a chance to do her tough girl thing. Not a bad story.


In Escape into Danger Casey arrives home after a long shift to find that one of her neighbours has committed a murder. Mary Waleski has killed her violent alcoholic husband and now Mary has fled. But there’s something really important that Mary doesn’t know, so Casey has to find her. A good tense story with an interesting twist - the police are hunting a woman they know to be innocent.

Casey is launched into high society in Necklace of Glass. She’s the bait in the trap for the man responsible for a series of jewel robberies. It’s the kind of job she’s done before but you can’t always be sure things will go smoothly. A good episode which gives Beverly Garland the chance to show how glamorous she can be.

In Scape Goat Casey screws up badly. She and a male detective had to go to the airport to take a woman into custody (the woman had been extradited from Canada). Casey followed her instincts and took the cuffs off the woman. Casey was wrong, but she was also right. Her instincts told her correctly that this woman was no ordinary criminal. Now Casey and her colleague are in race against time to prevent a tragedy. This is another Decoy episode focused on the emotional pressures that can lead a person to commit a crime. And it’s another solid episode.

In Two Days to Kill Casey has to act as bodyguard to a 18-year-old named Selma who is a vital witness against her hoodlum boyfriend. It’s only for two days but it’s a long two days for Casey. She and Selma are just not going to get along and Selma is going to be trouble. A darker episode, and a good one.

Queen of Diamonds takes Casey undercover as a photographer in a night-club. Her job is to find evidence that will break an unbreakable alibi. There’s a complex romantic triangle involved as well, and conflicting loyalties that could play out disastrously. There are complications from the past and the past can haunt the present. A very good episode.

My Brother's Killer starts with Casey getting a very lucky break. An incident that is absurdly trivial could lead to the capture of a man wanted for his part in an armed hold-up that ended in murder. That lucky break isn’t as straightforward as it seemed and the result is a remarkably dark, brutal suspense-filled episode with some real film noir atmosphere. A truly excellent episode, the best of the series so far.

In Bullet of Hate a teenage girl is driven to murder her cruel aunt, or at least that’s how it looks. Casey isn’t so sure. She’s spotted quite a few clues that tell a different story but she’ll have to move carefully to find evidence to support her suspicions. There’s certainly plenty of festering hate in this overheated melodramatic episode. Decoy is usually a bit more subtle than this.

Casey infiltrates a major shoplifting gang in Death Watch. Her job is to find the man behind the operation, which she does only she finds out that he is involved in a lot more than shoplifting. She also has to deal with a punch-drunk young ex-fighter. This episode deals with evil but as usual with some touches of complexity. Unfortunately it’s an episode that should be suspenseful but the suspense falls a bit flat.

In Odds Against the Jockey there’s murder at the race-track. This one has a decent mystery plot and Casey is charmed by a loveable rogue who may be a killer. It’s fairly light-hearted but stylish and slick and overall it’s a very good episode.

A model is murdered in the garment district in New York in Dressed for the Kill. She wasn’t a very popular model. Casey goes undercover as a model to find the killer (there’s no point in having a series about a beautiful policewoman unless there’s at least one episode in which she has to pose as a model). The mystery in this one isn’t too challenging but it’s a decent enough episode.

In An Eye for an Eye Casey goes undercover as a junkie after a female junkie is murdered. The police want the murderer and they want to break up the narcotics ring that was supplying her. It turns out the dead girl’s brother was involved in the drug ring. It’s a story of loyalty betrayed and it’s not bad.

The Challenger is a boxing story, dealing with mobsters trying to take control of a young boxer’s career. Casey gets involved when she encounters the boxer’s wife. The problem of course is that no-one in the boxing game is prepared to talk to the cops but Casey isn’t giving up. A reasonably good and rather dark episode and one which emphasises the difficulties the police face when people make the mistake of thinking they can deal with criminals on their own.

In Across the World an import-export business is dealing in more than just machine tools and the owner of the business is murdered when she finds out too much. Casey goes undercover as the new owner and finds herself in the middle of some complicated double-crosses. And she gets beaten up for her trouble. Not a bad episode.

The Showplace deals with a bar that is a front for prostitution although this is implied rather than stated outright. One of the girls has been murdered. Casey has to find the killer, preferably without getting herself killed. A decent episode.

Reasonable Doubt is interesting. The police have one suspect for an armed robbery and they want to nail the guy’s brother as well. Casey has to find the evidence to prove the brother’s guilt but she’s not comfortable with the lies and manipulation in which she has to engage in order to do so. It’s rather surprising for a cop show in 1957 to be so honest about the methods of the police. There are several layers of betrayal in this extremely good episode.

Night of Fire is an arson case. The chief suspect is one of the office girls, a former patient in a mental hospital. This one gets just a tiny bit preachy but there’s some good stuff with alibis.

In Saturday Lost Casey has to help a woman who has lost her memory. Her memory loss is real enough but maybe she’s lost her memory because there’s something that she really doesn’t want to remember. A good story.

In High Swing a drug overdose leads the police to a robbery racket and, as so often in tis series, we’re dealing with criminals who are tragic rather than evil. And Casey discovers once again that when you work undercover you get inside people’s lives. A very good episode.

A high-stakes gambling club is the target in Earthbound Satellite, but the operators are very clever indeed. Casey is of course undercover but she’s without backup. There’s some fun 1950s high-tech stuff in this story and it’s another case which for Casey has a rather bitter-sweet ending. A very good episode.

In The Sound of Tears a rich young man is shot by a woman in Central Park. She really wanted to make sure of the job - she shot him six times at close range. A cop on the scene let her get away. There is one clue - a dachshund which may belong to the murderess. Another story that combines mystery and emotional depth.

Ladies Man starts interestingly - a woman carrying a cardboard box on the subway, but it’s a deadly box. And the man who gave her the box has to be found. There’s a good tense climax in a cabin in the woods. A pretty good episode.

Cry Revenge starts with a woman reporting threatening phone calls from a pair of hoodlums. Casey is assigned to protect her and discovers there’s a complicated family drama going on as well. There’s a daughter who wants revenge and there are illusions that would be better off being shattered. The police case against the hoodlums collapses but that family drama will have unexpected consequences. There’s a crime story here but it’s the family dynamics that really matter, with Casey remaining mostly in the background. Another emotional story but it works.

In The Gentle Gun-Man a cheap hood named Danny gets killed in a bungled robbery but it’s his gun the police are interested in. Lots of similar guns have been used in recent robberies - guns that have been so cleverly doctored that they are completely untraceable. Casey poses as Danny’s widow to try to find the source of these guns and she learns that sometimes criminals can be not just sympathetic - they can be really really nice people. But she still has her job to do. A very good episode.

On the surface Night Light is about upscale jewel thefts but it’s really about the complex relationship between a father and his son. Nick (Martin Balsam) is a crook and a loser but he loses his son. Unfortunately that’s going to be very bad for the kid in the long run. Casey wants to solve the case but as usual she’s more interested in the human cost of crime. And that’s really what this series is all about. A very good episode.

In Fiesta at Midnight Juan Ortega is fresh off the boat from Puerto Rico and now he’s facing a murder charge. He has an alibi but the police can’t find the girl who can confirm it. All Juan can tell them is that her name is Maria and she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. The alibi stuff is handled well and the clue that leads Casey to the solution is clever. A good episode.

The Lieutenant Had a Son is another domestic drama episode. A soldier is looking for the son he abandoned five years earlier. He finds him but the result is a heart-breaking tug-of-love story. These are the stories that Decoy did very well, accepting the complexities of domestic situations in which nobody is actually the bad guy but there seems to be no way to resolve the situation with someone getting hurt. As so often Casey doesn’t see her job as being to arrest people but to persuade them to do the right thing. A fine episode.

In Shadow of Van Gogh someone is producing high quality forgeries of Van Gogh paintings. The forgeries are so good that it’s almost as if they’re being painted by someone who really thinks he is Van Gogh. Which proves to be the case. But Casey’s job is not to find the forger but the man behind the forgeries. This is a reasonably successful attempt to explore the strange world of art. Maybe it’s a bit too respectful of that world but it’s more successful in getting into the mind of a struggling artist. A good episode.

In Tin Pan Payoff Casey discovers that the music business is a world of glamour and excitement but also a world of heartbreak, treachery and murder.

Blind Date starts with a woman involved in a minor traffic accident. The police find $125,000 in her suitcase. The woman was supposed to deliver that money somewhere and now Casey is going to deliver it instead. It’s a good plan, if it works. Another solid episode.

The Come Back is a racetrack crime story involving counterfeit betting slips. Casey thinks she’s figured out how it’s being worked but she has to go undercover, as a crooked cop. This is another character-driven drama with Casey finding as so often that the case revolves around all-too-common human weaknesses. A good story.

First Arrest is a semi-comic episode. Casey is talking to a young policewoman who has just made her first arrest and feels bad about it so Casey recounts the slightly farcical and slightly sordid story of her own first arrest and how it made her feel that she was using and manipulating people (which in fact she was but that’s what the job is all about). An OK episode at best.

The Lost Ones starts with Casey visiting girl just out of reform school. Casey hopes she’s going to be OK now but it’s not to be. Elsa has shot and killed her violent, drunken father. And now she’s armed and on the run. This is a dysfunctional family drama, with the question being whether the dysfunctionality is going to destroy the whole family. As usual with Decoy the emphasis is not on Casey solving a crime but on her attempts to help people put their lives back together.

Final Thoughts

Decoy is hampered a little by the half-hour format but it still manages to be an emotionally grown-up and very engaging character-driven cop drama. And Beverly Garland is terrific. Very highly recommended.

some Alfred Hitchcock Presents from season one

I finally got around to watching the last few episodes of the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (originally screened in 1955-56), possibly my all-time favourite anthology series.

Yes, like any anthology series it’s uneven but even the stores that don’t quite make it are usually interesting failures. And the episodes that do work (and that’s the majority of them) are some of the best television ever made.

While Hitchcock seems to have exercised some vague oversight of the program the producing duties were left to Joan Harrison. She had worked with Hitch for many years. She knew his methods, she knew how his mind worked and she knew the kinds of stories he liked. She could be relied upon to make sure that the series would have a thoroughly Hitchcockian flavour. Which it does.

The series is an object lesson in how to pack just enough plot into a half-hour format.

Episode Guide

The Belfry is a bit of a misfire although it’s certainly different and it’s always nice to see a TV episode that takes a few risks. It all takes place in a one-horse country town. Clint Ringle (Jack Mullaney) can’t wait to show Ellie Marsh (played by Hitchcock’s daughter Pat) the house he is building for them, for when they get married. The problem is that Clint is a bit unstable and he’s not too bright and he’s living in a dream world. Ellie does not have the slightest interest in marrying him. In fact she’s just become engaged to Walt Norton. Poor Clint really flips out when he hears this piece of news and unfortunately he happens to be holding an axe at the time. So that’s the end of Miss Ellie’s fiancé and her marriage plans.

That’s the beginning of the story. The rest of the episode is the manhunt for Clint Ringle. Clint isn’t smart but he does come up with a rather unusual idea for a hiding place. He hides in the bell tower of the town’s one-room schoolhouse. It’s a very clever ideas in some ways, but in other ways maybe it's not quite so clever. The big question is, how long can he hold out in such a tiny cramped hiding place and will anyone ever thinking of looking in such an unlikely place?

Mostly the episode is taken up by Clint’s inner thoughts (conveyed to us in a voiceover narration). Clint really doesn’t understand what he’s done or what the consequences will be and the more he thinks about things the more he figures that it wasn’t just Walt Norton who was to blame, it was Ellie as well. He broods about this a lot, and decides he should do something about it.

The suspense comes from our uncertainty as to exactly what Clint is likely to do. Is he going to go after Miss Ellie? And of course there’s the suspense provided by the fact that Clint is still being hunted.

The Hidden Thing is a somewhat controversial episode. Almost everybody seems to hate the ending. Of course I’m not going to give any hints as to what that ending is.

It all starts with Dana Edwards' and his fiancée Laura stopping to get a hamburger. Laura leaves her bag in the car and goes back to get it. Crossing the street to the car she is run down and killed by a hit-and-run driver. Dana witnessed the accident. He was the only witness. Without his evidence the police have no chance of catching the killer. But the one thing he cannot remember is the one thing that matters - the licence number of the car that hit Laura.

Then John Hurley shows up on his doorstep. He lost his son to a hit-and-run driver. He tells Dana that he has a technique for total recall that will allow Dana to remember that licence plate number. Of course there’s a price to be paid - remembering that vital detail will require Dana to relive the accident and see Laura die again.

So it’s a story about the past and about how it’s sometimes a very good thing that we don’t remember things. You find yourself wondering, if Dana does remember that licence plate, will it actually help him? Should we forget the past? Or should we pay any price to avenge a wrong?

Then there’s the ending which so many people hate because it’s not the ending they wanted. I think that to some extent that’s the key to the success of Alfred Hitchcock Presents - it was a series that was prepared to take the risk of giving us endings that are not the endings we expected or hoped for. So for me this episode works and works quite neatly.

The Legacy takes place among the international set (in 1956 they weren’t yet known as the jet set). Oil tycoon Howard Cole and his even richer wife Irene have a happy marriage. Howard has his hobby to keep him amused. His hobby is collecting blondes (his latest blonde is a Hollywood starlet), and it’s a hobby that Irene regards with amused toleration. But now Irene is getting unexpected attention from the opposite sex, in the person of the fabulously wealthy and glamorous Indian prince Burhan. Since Irene is neither glamorous not beautiful (nor particularly young) this relationship is regarded with amazement by all.

By the halfway stage you’re probably going to be a bit disappointed because the explanation is so obvious and so straightforward. But this is Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the twist at the end is not the kind of twist that you’re probably expecting.

This is a series that made its reputation by not giving the audience what it expected and this episode is no exception.

Mink is a very slight story and it’s totally lacking in any kind of gruesomeness. Mrs Hudson takes her new mink stole to a furrier to have it valued. The furrier recognises it as one that was stolen two weeks earlier. The police are called. Mrs Hudson has a plausible explanation but the two witnesses who could confirm her story don’t back her up. Now she could be facing prison.

The explanation is just too simple and obvious. There is a kind of twist at the end but it’s subtle and may not satisfy some viewers. I like the fact that the series was prepared to get right away from murder in episodes like this but in this case it doesn’t quite work. The setup is good, with Mrs Hudson becoming more and more flustered and confused and terrified of going to prison and with a bit of feel of paranoia to it - the paranoia of finding that nobody will believe her. It’s just a bit too slight and the payoff just isn’t quite there.

In Decoy accompanist Gil Larkin has fallen for singer Mona Cameron. When he finds out that her husband (big time theatrical agent Ben Cameron) has been beating her up he is outraged and goes to Cameron’s office to confront him. And Gil steps into a nightmare world in which he’s the chief suspect in a murder. There are two possible witnesses, of a sort.

The plot is solid but not overly hard to predict. It’s the stylish execution of the idea that’s interesting. There’s the film noir style voiceover narration. The two people whose evidence could clear him are a Japanese dancer and a crazy DJ. The police also play a more interesting rôle than usual. Overall a good episode.

The Creeper deals with Ellen Grant, a housewife whose husband works the night shift and now she’s really scared because a serial killer known as The Creeper has been targeting women home alone at night in her neighbourhood. She’s scared and her fears just keep growing. Anyone could be the killer. Anyone at all.

This episode has both great atmosphere and nerve-wracking suspense. The viewer will have some pretty strong suspicions about what’s going to happen but that just makes the suspense more intense. That’s what makes for effective suspense - the viewer knows (or thinks he knows) where the danger lies but the protagonist doesn’t. And there’s just enough misdirection to keep us from being quite sure. We share Ellen’s fears.

A fine performance by Constance Ford as Ellen certainly helps. This is the kind of darkly ironic episode that earned this series its high reputation. Great stuff.

In Momentum Richard Paine is down on his luck. He and his wife have both been sick, he can’t find a job and they’re broke. There is a way out however. His old boss, a man named Burroughs, owes him a lot of money. All Paine has to do is to keep his head when he confronts Burroughs. But Richard Paine is one of nature’s born losers. He makes a really dumb mistake and then he just keeps on making mistakes. His mistakes develop a momentum of their own.

This one is based on a Cornell Woolrich story which explains why it has a particularly nasty ironic ending. An excellent film noirish episode.

I reviewed some of the earlier episodes in season one of Alfred Hitchcock Presents a few years back and I reviewed the episode And So Died Riabouchinska.

I’ve also reviewed a few episodes from season three.

Perry Mason - The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (TV episode, 1959)

I’m pushing ahead with my project of reviewing Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels and the comparing them to the television adaptations from the 1957-66 TV series. In this instance it’s The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. The novel dates from 1936 while the TV version went to air in 1959 as part of the second season of the Perry Mason series.

The story concerns a rich old man who has been trying to find his grand-daughter. Having found her he’s absolutely delighted and decides to change his will to leave everything to her. The problem is that a certain bishop from Australia has also found his grand-daughter. And they’re two different young women.

The bishop and the grand-daughter he’s found, a certain Carol Delaney, consult Perry Mason. Della Street is somewhat suspicious of the bishop. He stutters, and as she explains to Perry, bishops don’t stutter.

The old man is murdered. Carol Delaney is charged with the murder.

When adapting a novel for a one-hour television episode some changes always have to be made. The plot has to be streamlined in order to be accommodated to a single hour of television. There’s no real way of avoiding this. In this case however the changes really have been sweeping. It might be more accurate to describe this as a teleplay inspired by the novel rather than an actual adaptation.

Vaguely inspired rather than inspired by the novel might be even more accurate. Almost every element in the original story has been altered and the result bears no resemblance whatsoever to Gardner’s novel. As I said, major changes are often unavoidable, but in this case all the most interesting elements of the novel are eliminated and what remains is a pretty routine story. The interesting legal points which are at the heart of the novel are also, sadly, eliminated.

The conclusion I’m slowly coming to is that the episodes that are adaptations of the novels are generally speaking much less satisfactory than the episodes that are original stories. Gardner’s plots are intricate and carefully constructed. Once you start making wholesale changes the chances that the changes will be improvements are very slim. There are a few of the adaptations that work very well, but as a general rule they’re a bit of a disappointment. The problem is that the novels are just so good.

It’s also worth pointing out that in this case they courtroom scenes dominate the episode. In the book they’re very important but they’re just part of the overall structure. Most of the really interesting parts of the novel do not take place in the courtroom. Perhaps in the TV episodes there was just a little bit too much emphasis on the courtroom scenes.

There is one thing to be grateful for. Vaughn Taylor, who plays the bishop, makes no attempt to do an Australian accent. American (and English) actors always make a frightful hash of Australian accents.

On the whole the TV version of The Case of the Stuttering Bishop is reasonably OK but if you watch it immediately after reading the novel you’ll be disappointed.

My review of the source novel can be found at Vintage Pop Fictions.

Perry Mason season 2 part one (1958-59)

By the time the second season of the Perry Mason TV series began its run in 1958 the series was already a major hit and well on its way to being a television classic.

Most season one episodes were based on Erle Stanley Gardner novels but in season two there a lot of original teleplays.

Perry Mason not only established the hour-long television drama format (and made superb use of its possibilities) it also raised the bar when it come to production values and general slickness. There were other very good American television crime dramas in the 50s but Perry Mason looked a lot more polished. It’s very professionally made and the professionalism shows.

If there’s a weakness in this series it involves the D.A., Hamilton Burger, and Lieutenant Tragg. It’s actually an unavoidable weakness. Every week we see poor old Tragg very pleased with himself after making an arrest only to have his case collapse in court, and every week we see Burger defeated in court by Perry. Which gives the viewer the impression that they’re both a bit on the incompetent side. But it’s also obvious that Mason doesn’t think they’re incompetent at all. He may think they’re inclined to be overzealous but clearly he considers both men to be very good at their jobs. There’s not much that could have been done about this. It’s an obvious advantage in a TV series (or a series of novels for that matter) for the prosecuting counsel and the arresting police officer to be regular characters appearing in every story, but they always have to lose. We just have to imagine that when Perry Mason is not defending they probably win pretty often.

It’s also necessary for dramatic purposes to have the courtroom confrontations between Mason and Burger seem tense and even acrimonious so every so often a scene has to be thrown in to show that they actually have considerable mutual professional respect and are on very friendly terms. Interestingly enough in the books the relationship between them actually is rather strained.

Perry Mason has been released on DVD in half-season sets, which in the case of season two means fifteen episodes in each set. This reviews covers the first half-season.

The Episodes

The Case of the Corresponding Corpse is an original teleplay. George Hartley Beaumont is supposed to be dead but he isn’t and that fact has been discovered by a sleazy insurance investigator. It leads to blackmail and murder. A good episode.

The Case of the Lucky Loser is based on a 1957 Erle Stanley Gardner novel. Amateur archaeologist Lawrence Balfour (Bruce Bennett) is off to the Sierra Madres. His wife Harriet kisses him goodbye and heads off home. Except that he isn’t going to the Sierra Madres and she isn’t going home. He follows her, she meets a man named George Egan and Lawrence Balfour shoots Egan. But Lawrence Balfour isn’t charged with the murder of Egan. His nephew Led Balfour is charged with killing Egan in a hit-run driving incident.

This is an interesting one because we know the explanation for all these events. That explanation is relatively straightforward. But this is a Perry Mason story based on an Erle Stanley Gardner novel so we need to remind ourselves that anything that seems to be straightforward almost certainly isn’t. And this case turns out to be a long long way from straightforward. There are finish plot twists, fascinating points of law and surprise items of evidence. When we finally think we’re starting to see what it all means we discover that there are even more plot twists to come. An excellent episode.

In The Case of the Pint-Sized Client a 14-year-old boy asks Perry for some legal advice. It seems he’s found something and wants to know if he can legally keep it, but he’s not prepared to say what it is he’s found. The answer becomes obvious when the boy’s grandfather is charged with armed robbery and murder. The boy had found the proceeds of a robbery in an abandoned house, and the police found the money hidden in the house in which the boy and his grandfather live. The big problem is that one of the employees of the finance company that was robbed has made a positive ID of the old man, even though all the robbers wore masks.

The Case of the Sardonic Sergeant is a tale of money to burn, or rather money that should have been burnt. When American forces on Corregidor in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese in 1942 they burnt several million dollars worth of currency to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemy. Sixteen years later some of that money has started to turn up. It appears likely that someone in the finance and accounting section at a large military base is passing these bills. And Major Lessing, the Finance Officer, has been murdered. Or so it appears, although there is the matter of the suicide note. Master-Sergeant Dexter is accused of the murder and Lessing’s widow persuades Perry Mason to defend him at the court-martial.

What happened on the night that Major Lessing died is important, but maybe not as important as finding out exactly what happened on Corregidor in 1942. Maybe this one stretches plausibility a little but it’s clever and very entertaining.

In The Case of the Married Moonlighter a young man named Danny who works nights in a diner to put food on the table for his family is charged with murder. He certainly has a motive - a guy went in to the diner ostentatiously flashing a huge bankroll and Danny could sure use that money, especially give that his wife wants to divorce his because he can’t provide for her and the kids. Perry as usual bends the rules quite a bit, there are some nice red herrings and it’s all pretty satisfactory.

The Case of the Jilted Jockey is obviously a racetrack story and they can be rather fun. Jockey Tic Barton has had some bad breaks and a year ago he had a serious fall. But now things are looking up. He’s riding a great horse in a major race and a win will cement his comeback. The owners have confidence in him, the trainer has confidence in him, plus he has a wonderful wife. Then his wonderful wife drops a bombshell. She wants him to throw the race, for $10,000. If he doesn’t she’ll divorce him. He suspects the offer originates with a smooth-talking gambler named Johnny Starr. What he doesn’t know is that his wife intends to run off with Starr anyway.

Tic’s problems are only just getting started. Pretty soon he’s wanted for murder. It’s a typical Perry Mason setup - Perry’s client has not merely a motive but a genuine desire to commit murder but what happens if you’re going to commit a murder and someone beats you to it? And there are several other very good suspects. This is a story in which timing is important - there are in fact several events the timings of which are crucial but that doesn’t become apparent until close to the end. Perry has no idea of the identity of the actual killer until very very late in the day but when he does figure it out he zeroes in on the guilty party with devastating efficiency. Throughout the trials scenes Perry does some very nifty cross-examining, leaving the witnesses and poor old Hamilton Burger equally bewildered. It’s classic Perry Mason.

The Case of the Purple Woman involves an art collector, an art dealer, the art dealer’s wife, his secretary and a painter. It also involves a painting. The Purple Woman is a painting by a famous 19th century artist but it’s an obvious forgery. The puzzle is how the collector, a bit of an expert in this artist’s work, could have been taken in by a clumsy forgery. It’s an important puzzle because it’s the key to a murder. A solid episode notable for the ending which sees Perry and Hamilton Burger being very chummy, showing that their fierce courtroom rivalries are simply all part of the job.

The Case of the Fancy Figures starts with a case of embezzlement. Martin Ellis is serving a prison term for the embezzlement from the firm of Hyett, Brewster and Hyett. Now evidence has come to light that proves his innocence and the the guilty party was Charles Brewster, a partner in the firm and the son-in-law of the firm’s founder Jonathan Hyett. Brewster is arrested, recessed on bail and then murdered. Martin Ellis’s guilt in this instance seems obvious. Of course the truth is much more complicated.

The clever bit in this story is the revelation of the real murderer, which has Paul Drake kicking himself. It’s an average Perry Mason episode, which means it’s still pretty good.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot is based on one of Gardner’s early Perry Mason novels. It happens to be an excellent novel and I posted a very brief review here a long while ago. This case takes Perry into small town America where a woman has been accused of murder. At the coroner’s inquest the District Attorney (not Hamilton Burger but a local) produces his star witness, a parrot. The parrot was an eyewitness. Perry tells the coroner he doesn’t mind the parrot being introduced as a witness but he does insist on being allowed to cross-examine the bird. Of course a parrot can't commit perjury. Or can he?

While the parrot naturally provides some amusing moments there’s a typical and reasonably effective Perry Mason plot here as well, which centres on the question of identity but not in the way we’re led to believe it will. Not quite as good as the book but there’s still plenty here to enjoy.

The dream that gets shattered in The Case of the Shattered Dream is a diamond, the Pundit Dream. It belongs to the girlfriend of a diamond merchant and prize sleazebag. He needs the diamond to pay off gambling debts. At the heart of the plot is an elaborate con. But this guy is as dishonest in his relationships with women as he is with money, in spite of which women seem to adore him. Perry does his usual magic in the courtroom. The plot works satisfactorily. It’s not one of the best episodes but it’s very solid and very enjoyable.

There are many possible motives for murder. Including goldfish, as we will discover in The Case of the Glittering Goldfish. Actually in this case it’s not so much goldfish per se, but a miracle cure for sick goldfish. It cures an ailment that is very common and invariably fatal so the treatment is something that everybody who keeps fish is going to want. Which means there’s likely to be a tidy sum of money in it. Enough to provide a motive for murder. The complication is that lots of people had lots of other motives for wanting Jack Huxley dead.

This is one episode that can definitely be said to play fair with the viewer - the clue that leads Perry to the solution is out there in plain sight and it really does lead to only one possible conclusion. If, like me, you manage to miss it you’ll kick yourself. A very neat and enjoyable episode.

The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll begins in a nicely convoluted way. A young woman, Mildred Crest, picks up a hitch-hiker, another young woman named Fern Driscoll. The car crashes and one of the women is killed. But which one? And why is a private detective named Davis trying to retrieve certain letters which he believes are in Miss Driscoll’s possession? It seems that both these young women were on the run. And then there’s the  corpse, killed by an ice-pick. The woman who isn’t dead is facing a murder charge but luckily she has legal representation - Perry Mason has accepted a retainer from her, to the amount of thirty-eight cents.

Mason’s client is actually facing quite a few charges, including possibly another murder charge. Of course Mason is confident she’s innocent on all counts but D.A. Hamilton Burger has pretty strong evidence pointing in her direction on every one of those charges.

This one has a surprise ending that might seem to come out of nowhere but in fact the vital clues that lead Mason to the solution are there, you just have to be watching attentively to spot their significance. So it’s once again an episode that can fairly be described as fair-play. And it’s another very very good episode.

Final Thoughts

The first half of the second season is every bit as strong as the first season, which means it’s very very good indeed. It sticks to a rigid formula but the scripts and the performances  are terrific. This is superbly crafted television.

And the DVD transfers cannot be faulted. Very highly recommended.