User Reviews

Perry is in Paris when he's asked to fly over to Germany to see a young Army officer who's gotten involved with the lovely German songstress Helga (Jean Beutel). Perry's an old family friend, and gets there just in time to investigate the murder of Joe Ferrell (Jim Davis) his friend's commanding officer and the mystery of some Nazi gold supposedly hidden in a Swiss lake.

Being in Europe, Perry doesn't have Della or Paul to rely on, but he is surrounded by many familiar faces including Robert Corthwaite as Duval (seen in 5 Mason episodes), Gerald Mohr as alcoholic Hollywood actor Alan Dupree (4 episodes) and Harry Townes as a helpful American colonel (5 episodes). Mohr is particularly outstanding in his part, channeling a bit of Bogart and Errol Flynn in his final days.

This is a well photographed and well directed show. You almost wish they had been doing the occasional 90 minute Perry Mason TV movie back then, because this might have been a good one to expand on.

So many of Perry's sagas wind up in the courtroom , this one is a refreshing change of pace. Interestingly large guest cast including Jim Davis (Jock Ewing) as an Army Officer who beomes yet another murder victim in an episode. Credit for the unusual script goes to writer Jsckson Gillis who wrote a lot of interesting scripts. Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink later) is an inspector ally of Mason).

Really interesting is that Mason is vacationing in Europe, and while everything looks like Europe, all the location shooting was done in the United States. Pretty clever because it really feels like Europe. Mason keeps busy solving 2 murders without Della & Paul who are getting a vacation not being here.

Klemperer actually plays an intelligent character here, one year before his best movie role in Ship of Fools. This might be the only time Burr worked with Werner and they work together well. No Fools in this episode.

***SPOILERS*** Of course there are. Now, maybe I had this all wrong, but if I didn't, then...what was the Swedish navy doing in Switzerland? every Perry Mason episode (alright; almost every episode) is about the law, and lawyers. Why not this one? well, because it is full of baloney; like a kid's sandwich for school lunch. In short, it stinks.

The hunt for gold and other treasures that the nazis murdered for goes on to this day, but back then, when they had most of the correct information, the real work was being done by the countries involved. For sure, Switzerland would have wanted to get their greedy paws on it. Just check the record of their complicity in the fortunes they helped profit on from Holocaust victims. Point is: it would have been a major effort. NOT some little crew with a small fishing boat and one diver.

The blonde old bat? she had to be in on it. The girl? Is everyone stupid? Poor little victim. Absolutely no pity for the ripoff crew or the victims. They were all trying to cash in on stolen goods; like the fish that clean the teeth of sharks, after the sharks are dead.

This could've been a really interesting case, except for the fact that there was no courtroom, no law (really, who was right?), and no character that I could care about. No Della? No Paul? Sorry, but there are even more flaws I didn't bring up that make this one a stinker. One very bright spot was the M.P. who knew how to address an officer, and deliver a message correctly. It's a 6.

Perry is on holiday in Switzerland and he helps the son of an old friend prove his innocence, not find some Nazi treasure, hang on to his German girlfriend, while a crew of incompetents dive for the gold/pound notes/jewellery/old masters.

Greta can sing, but as someone pointed out, she can't act. She's only supposed to be German, and a displaced person who doesn't know who she is - not a dimwit or a six-year-old. She spends most of her screentime blubbing, or twisting her head from side to side, or running awkwardly through a pine forest.

If they're not really in Switzerland, it's a clever illusion. I suppose back then Switzerland was still charming and exotic, rather than kitsch. Even the snow-covered mountaints are going to be out of fashion, design-wise, for another few hundred years.

***SPOILER*** Utterly ridicules Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, episode with everyone in the shows original cast having all taken off in order not to be associated with this turkey. But its star Raymond Burr who seemed to have gained at least 30 pounds, mostly in his head, stayed on in his role as the shows #1 star. Perry on a trip to Paris France to meet an old friend of his gets himself involved in a murder case involving his, the old friend's, son stationed in Europe US Army Let. Fred Ralston. It's Fred who's found with a smoking gun in his hand and accused but somehow never arrested of murdering his company commander Capt. Joe Farrell.

O'K up to this point in the story things seems like your average Perry Mason episode but then it takes a strange turn into nowhere land involving a number of people who are involved in trying to find tens of millions of dollars of gold bars dumped by the fleeing Nazis just before the end of WWII in this lake outside the town of Midnight or Mittennacth in German. It's a bit hard to connect Cpt.Farell's murder with the Nazi gold but it gets even better or worse when one of those looking for the underwater treasure Dr. Klainman ends up murdered, in him being found drowned at the bottom of the lake, himself.

Perry who's really not all that interested in all this all he wants is to have a good time and check out the local German restaurants and bars gets sucked into this mess by trying to get young Fred off in Capt.Ferrell's murder. But the fact that Dr. Klainman was also found murdered with Fred not being anyway connected with the crime or near the murder scene shows that someone else is doing the killings. Perry also has the help the former WWII German POW camp commander Col. Klink who's now using the name, in him being under cover in avoiding getting arrested as a Nazi war criminal, Inspector Hurt.

(Some Spoilers) We also have Greta Koning Fred's German girlfriend who's alway on the run churning out at least 5 miles of roadwork in the episode. So much so that you start to suspect that she's training for the 1964 Olympics in the broken track & field running competition! And who can forget Grata's aunt Madam Jurgen who has the shocking secret, and has been hiding that secret, about her that she's kept hidden since WWII! And when it's finally revealed it just about clears everything up that's been so confusing about the episode. Everything but who exactly murdered and why both Capt. Ferrell and Dr.Klinman. Which by the time the big secret is reviled we just about forgot about them anyway.