The Case of the Twice-Told Twist

I learned of this episode last year, and have been watching for it since. The color production is the gift the doesn't stop giving. It's utter eye-candy for every moment: you can't stop absorbing the fabrics, the hair and makeup, Burger, the closeups, the backgrounds, the greenish interior courtroom, Perry's Lincoln, the courthouse... and on and on.

But the familiar tale of "Twice-Told Twist" sustains flat notes. An important character is unfortunately distracting: with piercing blue eyes and helmet hair, her wandering accent brings to mind Natasha from "The Bullwinkle Show" more than a Mexican woman running the family-named business. And Lennie comes back from Parris Island with as much hair as ever...? Sir! No, sir!

But it's Perry Mason. In color! Can't wait to watch it again.

It truly was an enjoyable visual experience to view PM in color. But for the life of me I'll never understand why they chose to only produce this one color episode. The script was average but the visual effects were quite remarkable for 1966. I have to agree with other reviewers the depth of color scenes brought back memories of Batman and Star Trek.. which isn't a bad thing. I'd like to know the real reason there was no Season 10 but that may never be known. One item of interest.. this lone color episode offered the entire production crew an opportunity to appear on camera.

Yes, that was the NBC voice over with the peacock. I did enjoy the bright, vivid color in this one shot episode. What I thought about watching it was the photography. Over the years, Mason had a lot of location shooting. This show seemed nearly 100% studio bound. What is also very noticeable is the constant use (or overuse) of many very tight close-ups and few master shots and medium shots of people together. When people are having a conversation, the use of close-ups got me wondering if the actors were shot saying their lines solo at different times and it was all put together by the editors later. This may have been due to the lighting setups for color.

It's a shame that there were not more colour episodes or there was never a tenth season.

I really don't see the basis of any complaints for this, this was 1960s television, mid 1966 as a matter of fact. It actually looks a lot like Star Trek as well as Batman. And as such, it shows a remarkable teaser for something that should have been that CBS neglected to give us: a full 10th season of color Perry Mason episodes. This could've also been the precise focal point where Perry Mason transitioned from 1950s film noir television to mid 60s psychedelic color TV.

I finally found a good color print of this and the Soundtrack had been enhanced for surroundsound, so it's actually pretty wonderful. The DVD set I had only had this episode in black-and-white which was completely disappointing as I have always seen this particular episode in my daily Perry Mason binges in absolute full color. They used to show two solid hours of Perry Mason on San Diego XETV channel 6 in the early 90s and while I was recovering from an illness for a few months Perry Mason was my only solace. Even my father liked it and he would sit with me and watch it and we both enjoyed this particular episode very much we would point out things about it laugh about it etc. The appearance of "King Tut" (Victor Bono) gives it a connection to Batman, but the parent company CBS is more strictly connected to Star Trek today than 20th Century Fox was back in the 60s- which used to use all of the sets from Irwin Allen shows for all of their science fiction shows including Time Tunnel, Batman, Voyage to the bottom of the Sea, and Lost in Space.

But the very production crew for Perry Mason is more related to Star Trek in the fact that several people who worked on Perry Mason ended up working for the Star Trek franchise either during the original run or later during the Next Generation and Voyager, which included the script supervisor Cosmo Genovese, who they even named a character for in a second season voyager episode, "Non-Sequitur": "Cosimo". Who was a very Perry Mason-ish alien who was looking after Harry Kim, he had the same kind mannerisms that Perry Mason showed to his clients.

The story is not an Erle Stanley Gardner episode and as such doesn't match up to some of the classics, but it does however have a modern upbeat look and feel including the background music, and the vehicles being used are very upbeat for the year that this was made. Especially the Ford van being used which was the Ford version of the Dodge A100 compact cab that used to be seen delivering and retrieving all of Batman's accessories during that show. In this Perry Mason episode, it is used as a mobile Chop Shop.

I very much would have loved to see more color episodes but alas, this is the only one. Perhaps somebody who is creative with computer video can colourise some other episodes, for personal use, of course.

....two notable items regarding this episode....

1. ....all the networks were gradually converting their series to color production; and this was kind of a swan song salute to the long- running series by CBS....

2. ...the role of Lennie Beale, the young car stripper gang member who elicits Perry's reformist zeal is played by Ryan O'Neal's kid brother, Kevin.,.