User Reviews

This truly is a poorly plotted episode as described in other reviews; however the payoff is the last exchange between Perry and Della.

In the last scene, Perry and Della have arrived at the client's home in the evening. Della asks Perry if they are going to go into the party they are watching through a window, and Perry asks her about the last time she stayed out "all night drinking champagne".

Despite Della's somewhat turgid and melodramatic response regarding how long it's been, it is one of the most clearly romantic (rather than one of Della's vaguely flirtatious) exchanges between them in the entire series.

After Perry invites Della to continue into the party to experience a night of fun, Della replies "you're the boss".

It is truly a rare glimpse into their relationship which has been the subject of endless conjecture.

In the mid-1960's, long running series often tried to broaden their appeal to hip, young viewers by doing a show featuring their versions of hip, young people. More often than not, these episodes are embarrassing failures. "The Case of the Careless Kidnapper" is no exception.

David Pelham (Tom Lowell, who played Billy Nelson on "Combat!") takes "the gang" home to meet his parents. After an amazing exchange of square, unreal and unhip dialog, they arrive at his home, only to find his father Greg Pelham (Peter Hobbs) in a argument with his mother Susan (Marilyn Erskine). This so embarrasses young David, who was just telling everyone how great his parents are, that he goes on a drinking binge, swearing never to come home again. Apparently he has NEVER seen his parents argue or something like that. His incredibly arch and sour buddy Michael (Mark Slade) makes sure David gets real drunk and takes him to the unlikely location of a "abandoned" freighter in the harbor (coool location but I mean how realistic is that? Sounds like something out of a "Scooby-Doo" episode) and then sends a note to David's parents claiming he's been kidnapped.

David's mom shows up and knocks Michael off the side of the freighter when she hits him with her purse. He falls to the dock, apparently dead. But later, he turns up alive and a different man is found on the dock. He's someone who was trying to blackmail Dr. Greg Pelham. So Perry has a new client.

Besides the terrible "hip" dialog and strange reaction of David to a parental fight, the story is convoluted, Regina Gleason puts in a pretty bad performance as alcoholic film star Mary Manning and the way Perry "catches" the real killer (saying a microscope can be used the same way one would use binoculars to read the reflection of someone dialing a safe combination across a room off the mirror on a doctor's head!) is beyond belief.

***SPOILERS*** Seemingly rushed and idiotic Perry Mason episode involving a kidnapping and murder where the kidnapper turns out to be not the person that you at first thought did the kidnapping and were the dead, or murdered, man seems to have come out of nowhere just to end up dead at the bottom of a pier! And where the supposedly kidnapper whom we assumed was dead turns out to be quite alive and replaced by someone who happened to be murdered before all the actions even began!

Perry Mason , Raymond Burr, who's handling the case of his friend accused murderer Gregory Pehlam, Peter Hobbs, who's son David, Tom Lowell,is the so-called kidnap victim just goes through the motions, as if he's on automatic pilot, in him solving the case without Perry having any idea of what's going on. And how could he when even at the end of the episode when the murderer is exposed in the courtroom we and Perry, with his tongue squarely in his cheek, can't quite figure out exactly why he murdered the guy!

It so happened that the murder victim Joe Velvet, Ron Gans, who for a while we were lead to believe was the very alive but with a bandaged head, from the fall in the shipyard, David's good friend Michael Da Vinci! It's Michael Da Vinci whom we later find out is actually Michael Manning, Mark Slade, who's mom is the once big time but now washed up alcoholic actress Mary Manning, Regina Gleason. It's Mary who's being treated by Gregory Pehlam who was being blackmailed by Joe Velvet who threatened to release a list of his famous clientèle to the news media who wanted to have their names kept private.

With the story so confusing and unbelievable that by the time Velvet's killer is finally exposed by Perry Mason for his crime you as well as himself have no idea what he's talking about, in him confessing, that whatever surprises is left to explain this entire mess have completely evaporated from sight! By now the Perry Mason series had just about run out of gas and was just running on its reputation that it earned itself after six years on the air. With only the dead pan acting of Raymond Burr keeping it alive and on life support which he did for the next two years. That until it finally ran out of any worth while stories or episodes and was humanly put to sleep or canceled by the CBS TV Network.

I'm watching these old Perry Masons for the first time, and I must say, they are emerging as incredibly convoluted.

This one in particular, as described by the other review.

Yes, David and his friends were having square dialogue trying to sound hip (when actually, I would guess this simply shows how out-dated hip dialogue becomes).

The strangest thing about this moment is it has next-to-nothing to do with what takes place in the episode.

Filler? Then why not show the group stop at a red light and a truck drives by? It would mean as much as the conversation here did.

And yes, then we get the equally strange argument with parents who were labeled as conservative.

I looked at that scene and tried to figure out what the problem was now.

The parents were believed to be conservative, but now they were seen as something else? Not conservative? Shouldn't that have made the son happy? Now the kids looked terrified, mortified. I thought, wow, now who is conservative? Shocked at married people arguing.

I get the impression there was supposed to be something here about why David didn't take his friends around his parents.

With that in mind, it starts looking like someone is writing the episode as they were filming it.

But the orderly confusion doesn't stop there.

So David gets drunk at seeing his parents argue, and the friend hatches this unbelievably bizarre plot to 'kidnap' David and worry the parents, get money from them, something.

This reminded me of the Frank Sinatra Jr kidnapping by his friends.

The confusing part was we have no reason for why this friend is doing this? And why was it on that boat? So the mother gets the letter, goes to the boat and meets this friend. Yes, that much took place.

She strikes at him, knocks him over the side and her purse falls as well. We saw this much.

She rushes home, tells her husband.

Now this is when it gets confusing, both in plot and to make suspense.

The father goes back and tosses the body over into the water. The handbag is missing.

First impression is this man did this to protect his wife.

We don't see the face of the man he throws into the water.

Perry was called, the police go to the scene, the body is found.

Now we are shown the man's face.

Apparently it wasn't the same face as the man the wife had hit. I looked away a bit here.

The son was found by dad's secretary, who took him home and called a scientist who worked with the father.

Total confusion, isn't it? We THEN learn the young man who fabricated the kidnapping is the son of an old Hollywood actress, they don't have a good relationship.

The son is also still alive! So how did he get from the dock, to bandaged up and the other fellow get on the dock, in the SAME spot, dead? But one more! The dead man is the ex-husband of the secretary who got the son off the dock! Turns out there was a scene of the ex-husband and the secretary at the bar when the son and his friend left, but I didn't pay attention to that.

I've watched soap operas for years, but I don't think I've ever seen one with a convoluted plot like this episode had.

Turns out the dead man was blackmailing the father, a doctor, over treatment he was giving to 'special' patients, celebrities and big name persons who wanted their dependencies and no doubt, STDs, kept secret.

So the show cleverly didn't show the man the father looked at that was dead, and we don't see the mother's reaction to the face of the dead man we are shown.

It just wasn't a phenomenal mystery. How did the bodies get switched? It was a coincidence. One got up or was taken away (can't remember) and the actual victim and killer were there at the same moment, later on.

And yes, the solution involving a safe and binoculars, yea, that would just make me break down and confess too.

***SPOILERS*** I wasn't going to review this title, but, what the hey. The kids are punks at best. "Misunderstood teenagers"? who cares? The driftwood dried-up wharf rat with binocs? Most guys his age are supposed to be in bed at that hour, or just going to the bathroom. The guy is supposed to be able to read a reflection from a doctor's light reflector? They are designed for just that. NOT a perfect mirror. I'd just love to see someone do a real-life experiment with those instruments; let alone with binoculars. Della is beautiful, as usual. Besides that, this one is a 4.

I normally have a lot to say about these episodes. This one was so asinine as to be laughable. The method for getting the combination to the safe is utterly ridiculous. The only thing I will say has nothing to do with the episode itself. Barbara Hale, as Della Street, is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen on film.