Perry Mason: Per un antico amore

In The Case Of The Lost Love we find that Perry Mason indeed had an old flame, another attorney in the person of Jean Simmons. Simmons has become quite successful and is even now having her name bandied about with speculation she might get a temporary U.S. Senate appointment from the governor.

But the publicity surrounding her appointment has led a blackmailing private detective, Jonathan Banks, to demand some hush money. It seems like he stole her medical records from years earlier when she was in a mental facility. Stuff like that is what got Thomas Eagleton tossed off the Democratic ticket in 1972.

When husband Gene Barry goes to meet Banks with a pre-arranged rendezvous he finds Banks dead and no incriminating medical records. When Barry is arrested for the homicide, it's Perry who offers to defend the husband of his old flame.

There are quite a few of the usual red herring suspects, but the ending is a twist that might surprise viewers who expect things to go a certain way in a Perry Mason story.

The Case of the Lost Love is one of the most original and best of the Perry Mason films. Helped in no small part with the presence of Jean Simmons who back in the day seemed like she was in every good movie of the 1950s.

She's reason enough to see The Case of the Lost Love.

Not usually a fan of this series, I was pleasantly surprised by the great acting (esp. Simmons/Burr) and mildly entertaining story line.

However I would still bracket this type of television with 'Murder She Wrote' and 'Father Dowling Mysteries' as being large unpalatable but pleasant in small doses - when its raining :)

I used to be a fan of the black & white Perry Masons, but this was a more than unexpected surprise. As a television drama, it works exceedingly well, with an almost faultless screenplay and great acting. I LOVED Mr. Burr's Perry, all the more so because of his real suffering with a leg and difficulty at walking; and was pleasantly moved by this story of old romance, three main characters out of five that never married, decent people committing themselves to awful behavior, treason and deceit... All in all, what you used to call a very good yarn. Watch it and admire Jean Simmons, one of my favorite actresses in the Fifties and Sixties, doing her best to enthrall us again.

Although this movie manages to hold the interest up to the -unexpected, it is the truth-finale, I would not recommend it. The reason is that it is a 'conservative' and very typical film, made for the taste of the ordinary American TV spectator, which presents an unimportant mixture between police adventures and court dramas.

When watching it, The Case of the Lost Love felt like two movies spliced together in alternating scenes. One movie stars Jean Simmons as a beautiful, classy politician, up for a Senate seat after her predecessor's sudden death. Before her appointment, secrets in her past threaten to catch up with her. This movie is interesting. The second movie is a cheesy, poorly acted, cringe-worthy television crime drama. That movie, the Perry Mason part, is pretty lousy.

I've never seen a Perry Mason TV movie, so maybe they're not all this bad, but if Jean Simmons hadn't been in this movie, I would have turned it off. As it was, I'd frequently walk out of the room for bathroom or snack breaks during the Perry Mason scenes, without bothering to press pause. If you actually happen to like his series, you'll probably like this one. But if you're just looking for an interesting crime/detective show, you have dozens of other shows to choose from. My favorite is Agatha Christie's Poirot. And if you're in the mood to watch a Jean Simmons thriller, try Angel Face instead.