The Case of the Twice-Told Twist

Recidivism or rehabilitation? The whitest, most clean-cut bunch of hoodlums L.A. has ever seen attacks Perry's Lincoln Continental for parts rather than just steal the thing (and car theft was easy in those days!). Perry won't press charges because, well, the boy is only 17, and cute besides (irony alert, Raymond Burr).

Considerable comic relief is provided by Victor Buono as the evil henchman Huggins (rotund and in a bathrobe) managing the 'clean-cut' boy gang. "How many pairs of bucket seats can you use?" he coos to his fetching Mexican fence, and pronounces "penchant" in the manner francais. Good thing the gang goes to an expensive prep school so they can understand things like that. Oh for the days when petty criminals wore jackets & neckties...

The exceptionally vivid color, the jazzy score and the silly 'Oliver Twist' theme separate this from most PM episodes. It's definitely not one of the strong, tight Perry Mason plots (see the early seasons for those), but it's fun and scenic.

While many younger viewers can't stand B&W, I LUV being able to see the WONDERFUL colors & wardrobe from a different time & space.

Someone else mentioned Ford providing so MANY vehicles it made them obviously a Sponsor of THIS EPISODE? My little Brother was born the Year this episode airedSentimental to see almost 60yrs later. Producers probably appreciated the $$$ it took to make THIS Early IRONSIDE feeling here as well.

I purchased the 50th Anniversary release before seeing this color episode. I was ALREADY AWARE of the diff in set colors & decor for lighting purposes as other reviewers mentioned other Networks ALREADY filming🎥 in color... With SO MUCH SAID about Oliver Twist I almost expected to see the"rough character" Mr Burr played previously w/his English Accent straight out of Dickens.

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.

A rather routine melodrama from the bountiful Perry Mason filmography, probably below average for the series, but still above average for most 60s programs.

This episode gets knocked for its use of color, with such statements as: looks like it was colorized, the crew didn't have experience with color, etc. However, I disagree. I find it's use of color above average for TV of the period.

If one were to look at other color programs from the 1960s, one will see that, in general, colors were rather bright, use of contrast or shadows was not great, and there was not much concern over subtlety of shading. This was in particular due to the color TV sets of the time that lacked the significant details and color variations of film, and of what we see with modern TV. This was true until finally in the early 70s some thought was given to increase contrast and color variation in TV sets, as was done with black matrix and trinitron screens.

The idea of color on TV then was to show it bright and brightly lit, and to prompt sales of color sets, quite different from film production. Take a look at the original Star Trek for an example. In fact, for those like myself who can remember this period, TV and Film were entirely two different worlds, and they rarely met except when somebody was able to make the jump from TV to film. It's not like that today.

In regards to this episode, I'd suggest that in fact it used more shading than was common to other color programs of the time, and was actually a better example of good use of color in a medium that lacked such. To the one who thinks it looks colorized, I'd think that was more a product of your own bias that Perry Mason ought to be B&W and not in color, as you know the colorized films ought to be.

To the one who feels the crew lacked experience, well, that's just a big laugh for me because the one thing the Perry Mason crew did not lack was cinematography experience. That's like telling a veteran artist doing a charcoal that he or she probably can't do the same in color, basically an ignorant comment.

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.