Perry Mason - Le mauvais esprit

I am not a big Perry Mason fan, but this is the movie that got me hooked more on the movie series than the tv series. It starts out with a pretty good ghost story which I wanted to know a lot more about than the murder. We don't even see much of this spooky old edifice that the plot revolves around, but what we do see has a wonderful shadowy "Dark Shadows" Collinwood kind of feel. The murder mystery, don't get me wrong, is excellant; it has more twists and turns than a politician in a confessional booth. Raymond Burr and Barbera Hale fit into their old roles very well, but William Katt will always remind me of "The Greatest American Hero." Robert Stack emotes a great character just a few shades away from his character of Elliot Ness and Dwight Schultz plays a nervous and slightly shady character not that far unlike Lt. Barclay of Star Trek. Kim Delaney's acting reminds me too much of too many other actresses, particularly that of Joanna Going, but it may be because of too many Dark Shadows parallels: the spooky location, the ghosts, the painting, hidden rooms and the squirrely maintenance man who is almost too similar to John Karlen's Willie Loomis. In short, if it hadn't been for my fondness for ghosts and that series, I might never have seen this movie at all.

Famous Stephen King like novelist Matthew Faison invites several people whom he's crossed in the past to an evening at a hotel owned by young Kim Delaney and purportedly haunted by the ghost of her father. Her father committed suicide by jumping off a tower and later on she sees Faison doing the same thing.

Two things happen, someone starts out to frighten Delaney with all kinds of spooky tricks. The second is that publisher Robert Stack one of the guests is charged with Faison's murder and gets his lawyer Perry Mason to defend him.

In the films and on the TV series Raymond Burr is an omnicompetent attorney. As often as not his clients are people like Stack who have retained him already for other legal matters.

William Katt as Paul Drake, Jr. gives Delaney his personal attention. In effect he solves the case when he discovers who's been trying to frighten her. Katt provides the ammunition that Burr fires in court.

This one was not a bad Mason film, but one that was easy to predict. Still the performances were good by the whole cast.

When a mean-spirited author plummets from the tower of a haunted hotel, his publisher, Robert Stack, faces trial for murder. It's a good thing he's already hired Raymond Burr playing Perry Mason for a slander suit against the author. We all know that Stack will turn out to be as innocent as all of Perry's clients are. Will Perry have a ghost confess on the witness stand?

As with several other of the Perry Mason TV movies, major references are made to real-life personalities. In this case, Matthew Faison's murder victim is clearly modeled on Stephen King and the haunted hotel a reference to THE SHINING.

It's a purposefully atmospheric spooky-house mystery. While I was able to see who was the murderer -- not from the clues, but from the structure of the story -- early on, his motives ultimately came as a surprise. It's not a whodunnit, it's a whydunnit with lots of red herrings.

Jordan White is in the process of consulting his lawyer Perry Mason about the potential to sue writer David Hall over similarities to him in Hall's new book when he is called to visit Hall's mansion. When he arrives White finds he is just one of several guests but still there is no Hall. Each guest is given a copy of Hall's new book which apparently has characters very closely modelled on all of them and secrets in their pasts. That night each guest gets a sinister practical joke played on them and they confront White, full of threats and anger. At midnight that night White is called to the building's tower by Hall but just before he gets there someone seems to throw Hall off the building and the witnesses to the fall only see White in the tower. The police arrest White, who immediately turns to Perry Mason for defence and, while Perry starts the trial, Paul Drake investigates strange goings-on within the hotel.

It has been some time since I have watched a Perry Mason film simply because I have seen almost all of them. So when this one came onto television I moved quickly to take the chance to see one of the few I have yet to watch. Having seen so many of them I knew just what I was getting into and, aside from a ghostly element to Drake's thread, this pretty much sticks to the formula that made the series achieve an uninspiring if enjoyable standard. The set up to the mystery is slightly different and it does use the ghost element well to make the investigation side more interesting (Drake almost always teams up with a young woman and gets punched – at least this time it feels a bit different). The court case does the usual thing with some nice "objections" etc and the usual last minute revelations; it is never anything that special but it is on formula for the series and as such Perry Mason fans should enjoy it.

The cast are pretty good. Burr hardly sets the screen alight but I always liked him as Mason and he has a good presence in the court scenes. Hale has a small role but is comfortable with it while Katt does his usual stuff to introduce a bit of action into the story. Stack is solid enough but I cannot hear his voice without seeing him in his Airplane character – so that undermined the early scenes a bit for me. The support include Schultz, Delaney, Lipscomb and a few others turn in good performances, or at least good for this type of film.

Overall an enjoyable Perry Mason film that takes a slightly different tact but generally sticks closely to formula and will please fans as a result. Nothing too special or dramatic and will certainly not win over those viewers left cold by the series in other films but it is worth a look if you like this sort of thing.

As I was watching this, I couldn't help but think of Clue (the movie) from two years earlier. Mr. White in the dining room and the chandelier falling and other things. I like Perry Mason in the original series, I find the movies somewhat lacking.