Perry Mason: The Case of the Murdered Madam

Vincent Baggetta is the Perry Mason client in this television feature film and it's Barbara Hale who brings him in. Turns out that back in the day if you can picture Della Street as a teen she babysat Baggetta. Now Baggetta is accused of killing his second and trophy wife Ann Jillian.

Worse than being arrested for murder Baggetta learns that back in the day before he knew here Jillian was the madam of a high class brothel in Chicago. That gave her access to the rich and powerful and when she invited some old friends over to discuss a deal involving a bank that they are on the board of directors and then tapes the meeting for blackmail purposes that is what gets her killed.

This plays more like an Agatha Christie than a Perry Mason mystery. We have a closed ring of suspects that include Anthony Geary, James Noble, Bill Macy, and John Rhys-Davies. One in fact is guilty of something else than murder which fact gets revealed in court.

A good story, but not one of the better Mason feature films.

Yet another of the numerous TV movies starring television's original Perry Mason Raymond Burr and his secretary Della Street played by Barbara Hale. Both of them look their age in this telefilm which tries to explain away Raymond Burr's weight-encumbered locomotion as due to his character's knee surgery. Nobody would be fooled, however.

"Murdered Madam" has a good plot. Unfortunately, the script-writers make no good use of it. One expects some startling revelation would actually come out of the recording equipment which Suzanne Domenico, played adequately by Ann Gillian, installs in her house. But nothing does. Suzanne's colorful past is never explored even briefly in this film. It is just touched upon, making her character one-dimensional. The bankers' reason for their rendezvous at Suzanne's house, when revealed by Perry's cross-examination at the end of the movie, may have sounded high-tech when this movie was made, but is now well-known to people who are interested in such things.

Once again, Paul Drake is shown to be an inept detective who lets his quarry slip away from him more than once. In contrast, the Paul Drake of Erle Stanley Gardner's books was even more adroit than Perry Mason himself.

"Murdered Madam" will appeal to an older audience who grew up watching Perry Mason. I do not want to sound politically correct but such folks may not mind the stereotyped portrayals of the black maid, gay hairdressers with long pink hair and the general bowdlerizing of the madam character. However, those who grew up reading Gardner's books as opposed to watching his creation on TV will not be impressed by this telefilm or its over-the-hill stars.

Ann Jillian works for a bank. She's holding a meeting with four of her associates at home. When her husband, Vincent Baggetta comes home, he discovers her corpse. When the police find newspaper clippings in Mr. Baggetta's car about his wife's arrest for prostitution and running a brothel, he gets upset and faces murder charges on the theory he found out and murdered her in a rage. Fortunately, Barbara Hale as Della Street used to babysit him, and guess who she worked for! Raymond Burr as Perry Mason He'll find suspects galore! One of them will confess on the witness stand! Meanwhile, his gumshoe, William Katt, will get beat up by street walkers.

It's a good entry in the series. The cast list is rounded out with some solid talent, including James Noble, William H. Macy and John Rhys-Davies. If you enjoy solid. classic mysteries, you'll enjoy this.

Della Street bumps into an old friend, Tony, who tells her of his happy recent marriage to Susanne. Next time they meet he is accused of her murder and the police have found papers in his car about Susanne's past that point to motive. As a favour (and for the money) Perry takes Tony's case and begins to investigate, uncovering shady business partners that Susanne had put in difficult positions. Meanwhile Paul Drake searches for a woman who was at Susanne's house during an important business meeting.

As this is an early one of the Mason TVM's it looks dated more than some of the ones made in the early nineties, however this is only really a visual problem usually and not so bad. In this film however, part of the plot has dated quite badly, with the surveillance equipment that holds the key to the killer's identity looking so basic it's almost funny - compare that to the technology you could buy now for the same sort of household use and it really pales. Despite this the plot still hangs together as well as in all the other films. Mason interviews the suspects one by one to give us red herrings galore until the courtroom scene while Drake chases a girl (who is involved in the murder somehow). It isn't anything new, but this film does have some nice comic touches (a sprinkle going off and an unintentional dig at Drake's hairstyle - which must have looked dated even then!).

The cast are reasonable but no more. Burr is comfortable enough in the role but is strangely immobile here; the script puts it down to an ankle injury but I'm sure that was added to cover his health problems. Hale has some nice moments with Burr but is really just a shadow in the story. Katt is OK but his storyline is just the same old same old and he looks like he's tired of it at times. The support cast has only famous cameo that will stand out - Rkys-Davies, he of LOTR and Indiana Jones fame (here in his first of two Mason appearances). Stiers is usually a good DA but has no good scenes here, and the new black detective looks to have been cast solely due to his resemblance to the usual actor.

Overall this is par for the course and will keep fans such as myself happy. For others it is very basic, not exploring the `past' of the madam very far or in any detail for fear of censors and not having any real characters among all the red herrings. It is as good as the usual Mason films but even I have to accept that that isn't saying a great deal.

I'm puzzled by the comparatively low ratings of TCOT Murdered Madam. It features two lovely actresses-Ann Jillian and Daphne Ashbrook-has plenty of action, thanks to William Katt chasing and being chased by his antagonists, and has an interesting plot which you might call a modified whodunit since we know that the killer must be one of the four luncheon guests at the Dominicos' country home. As is customary in Perry Mason movies, the victim has dug her own grave, so to speak, by getting greedy with her partner-in-crime: had she stuck to their original agreement and not raised her demands, she probably would have survived to scam another day.

A few random observations: The Tony Domenico character seems awfully dense, even for a Perry Mason client, and has a lower-class accent unlike his wife Suzanne, who seems to have all the brains in the family, however shady her past (and present).

Of course this entire story would not have taken place if the Domenicos had bothered to install a home security system which was available by the mid-1980s. Suzanne was up to date regarding electronic bugging devices, so why didn't she and Tony put in an alarm in their country house which they used only occasionally? Such a place, often left empty in an isolated area, would have been a prime target for burglars, not to mention the intruder who actually killed her early in the story.

Then there's her murderer who had come back hours after the luncheon searching for a tape recording and leaving a package of incriminating papers in Tony's car, a convertible that was conveniently left open with the top down. How did he know in advance that he could frame the husband and get away so easily?

And where was Suzanne's car in all this? She must have had one of her own to get to the house and conduct her business, but we never see it.

On watching this episode I assumed that Ann Jillian's unnaturally thick platinum hair was a wig. Since the actress had been treated for breast cancer around this time--a treatment involving a double mastectomy--I wondered whether the wig was necessary to hide the balding effects of chemotherapy. Whatever the case, the silver mop had become her trademark, and thankfully the actress is still with us.