User Reviews

This episode is stronger than most because it show cases Burr as Mason in the court room. It has a crooked lawyer, a murder, bribes, and leaves a couple of folks still in trouble with the law at the end including Mason's client.

The real strength is in the court room sequence where Burger unexpectedly rests the prosecution early & forces Mason to call 4 witnesses to present a defense of his client. Then he gets the dramatic courtroom confession from the murderer. Masons cross-examination here is top notch.

Hamilton Burger (William Talman) is good here too trying to short circuit Mason in the court room & then watching in amazement when Mason produces a murderer out of the examinations.

Two things that jump out at me in this episode (pun intended) is one, it has the best jump scare, not typical in this show. When the body is thrown out in front of the car, it literally made me jump. Second, the first conversation with the Aunt and Mason is a hoot. Auntie is one freaky dame.

**SPOILERS** I'm giving it a 10 because of the courtroom interplay. The incredulous part is the whole set up itself. The body, the driveway, no lights, etc. etc. all add up to just too much to sort it out and care about Perry's client or the original case. One thing that I liked was the old bat that thought she was going to cash in, and getting shut out, and shut up. Della is beautiful, of course, and the acting, generally, is very good, but this one should have been cleaned up on the writer's table before releasing it as a screenplay, I think.

****SPOILERS**** Utterly ridicules Perry Mason,Raymond Burr, episode with the star of the show hit and run and later murder victim Helen Austin not even being in the shows ending credits! It was Helen who after calling her ex-lover lawyer Everett Dorrell, Russell Arms, and threaten to commit suicide ends up getting hit by his car, with its front lights off, as he was on his way trying to stop her from doing it! It's Dorrell's good friend and client Richard Hammond, John Conwell, who just happens to show up and with Dorrell giving him $15,000.00 who just happened to have the cash on him agrees to cover up the incident! For all his trouble Hammond is later arrested for Helen's death by someone planting evidence, including the damaged hit and run car, in his garage!

The big surprise comes in that it was Dorrell was won a damage suit in a hit and run accident a year ago where his good friend and client Hammond's mom was gravely injured and sister killed! And as Perry soon find out it was the person behind the wheel who was being blackmailed by Helen for as much as $2,000.00, that about $15,000.00 in 2015 dollars, a month to keep her mouth shut about it! Chould that person have been behind Helen's death or murder?

****SPOILERS**** Things get a bit fuzzy when the late Helen Austin's husband Alexander Hill played by Walter Reed, not the guy who cured yellow fever, pops up at Hammond's trial not as a witness but an interested observe. Perry after exhausting all those suspected in Helen's death zero's in on the upright and pillar of the community Marvin Clartidge, Hayworth,who's law-firm Dorrell works for and who's daughter Barbara ,Nan Peterson, he's engaged to. It's at the trail that Perry without as much as breaking a sweat gets Helen's killer to brake down and confess his crime. Not by cross examining him but by the killer or the actor who played him so sick and tired of having to sit through this entire atrocity, lame Perry Mason episode, in him just having about enough and finally putting, by confessing his guilt, an end to it all!