Perry Mason - La dame du lac

They accuse a famous tennis player, who is a married to a multimillionaire, of murdering her with the intention of inheriting all his fortune. In addition, a few hours before the murder, the tennis player had been pressured by his brother to give him an important amount of money. Perry Mason defends the tennis player ...

David Hasselhoff plays the tennis player and it's an interesting role, more so because strangely he isn't performing any heroics and he's rather vulnerable as he's facing imprisonment for his wife's murder. It's a compelling mystery and it's quite scenic out of the court and is packed with intrigue and lies.

If you are a fan of Perry Mason, as I am, you would have figured that out there was something strange from the beginning of the movie. Normally Perry Mason spends his entire show defending his client and piecing together the crime and identifying the real criminal at the very end of the show. When the movie began, it seems that the killer was identified in the first few minutes of the movie. But obviously, things were not what they seemed. I was not sure what it was, but Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale seemed very flat and uninspired. At least William Katt and David Hasselhoff kept the movie alive. The ending was very interesting. I definitely did not see that coming. As a mystery the movie was worth watching, but as a "Perry Mason" movie, it was disappointing.

"The Lady in the Lake" starts out well. In the beginning, it records the gentle romance between newly-married Billy (David Hasselhof) and Sara Wingate (Doran Clark) and introduces the other main characters who have reasons for being malicious towards the young couple. When Billy is accused of murdering Sara, Perry Mason steps in to defend him. After that this tele-film becomes quite routine. During the courtroom scenes, Perry is not challenged much by the D.A. Even the judge is indulgent towards Perry. Because they are not hostile enough, the dramatic value of "The Lady in the Lake" is lessened. Paul Drake, Jr., is shown to be a rather inept private eye who lets his suspects slip away from his clutches. His incompetence has the effect of lengthening the film by another 30 minutes.

Raymond Burr may have been a great Perry Mason in the late 1950s. However, in these tele-films of the 1980s, he is difficult to admire - the reason being his portly Falstaffian frame which impedes even his gait. It is rather painful to see his leisurely locomotion with the aid of a cane. Why didn't the producers insist that he lose some weight? Similar comments apply to Barbara Hale. But then the purpose of these made-for-TV movies is to stir up memories of the good old days. Therefore, I cannot imagine any other actors playing Perry Mason or Della Street. A young and softer-looking David Hasselhof (in his pre-Baywatch days) and the two main female characters are pleasing to the eye, unlike Burr or Hale.

(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)

Perry Mason: The Case of the Lady in the Lake finds America's most formidable defense attorney taking on David Hasselhoff as a client who is being accused of the murder of his wife. Hasselhoff is a retired tennis player now just hanging on in the tennis circles and is thought to have just married wife Doran Clark for her money. Everyone that is but family attorney John Ireland who retains Perry on behalf of Hasselhoff.

There's another part to this story, when they were teenagers Clark and her sister were kidnapped and thrown in the lake by the suspect just before a shootout with the local sheriff and his posse. The suspect was killed, the sister drowned and her body never recovered, and Clark was traumatized. It took her years to resume a normal life. And now her body is thought to be in the same lake.

The cases are indeed connected in a complicated scheme worked out by the murderer and an accomplice. The ending is a bit of a variation on the Perry Mason format. But Mason fans can rest assured that Hasselhoff didn't kill his wife. Perry just doesn't defend the guilty.

With an intricate twist in the plot and outcome, The Case of the Lady in the Lake is one of the better Mason films. Good, but don't expect Raymond Chandler either.

If the original Perry Mason TV show was a 10, at best these movies are a 6. I gave this a 4 because Drake does even more stupid stuff than usual. I have to think that in order to get "Della" to sign on to do these movies she required them to hire her son to play the Paul Drake character. Aside from hair color he is completely wrong for the part.... One of the worst instances of miss-casting ever. William Katt just does not have the gravitas to play the Experienced Detective and on top of that the writers continually have him doing the stupidest of things which either tip off his hand or put him in situations where it's him against multiple people where he walks in begging to be cut off at the knees. In this movie he repeatedly creates situations in which his quarry gets away. In the woods, in the store, at the motel, on the highway he stupidly goes in with little or no planning and no backup, lets himself be seen and the quarry rabbits away. Infuriatingly stupid.

As to the movie itself, if the stupidity was removed I'd give it a 6 because it's a slightly different approach to a murder and because unlike the first 4 movies in the series it seems Burr had been feeling better (or the directors were more insistent he be a little bit animated) and was able to bring some semblance of life to his part. In the first 4 movies he was figuratively phoning it in.