Courtroom Fashion
Fashion mag editor Dyan Draper (Valerie Harper) is well known for her cattiness towards her staff and publishing articles which destroy other people's careers. It is why Lauren Jeffreys (Diana Muldaur), an editor for a rival magazine, ends up having a public row with her as she knows Dyan is about to write about her. So when Dyan is discovered murder all police eyes turn to Lauren as she is charged with the murder. Fortunately for Lauren she is friends with Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and Della Street (Barbara Hale) who take on her case. It leads to Perry's investigator; Ken (William R. Moses), down a path to a mobster with a penchant for designing fashion as his nephew also ends up murdered and is willing to help Ken track down the killer.
I wonder what Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale and William R. Moses' reactions were when ever they read the latest Perry Mason script. Maybe Moses wondered how many times he would get shot at whilst maybe Burr wondered how many scenes away from the courtroom he would have. And maybe they all wondered which stars of TV and the big screen they would be working alongside for a few fours. The one thing I doubt they wondered about was what formula the movie would run to as that seemed set in stone.
And so I come to "Perry Mason: The Case of the Fatal Fashion" a typical Perry Mason movie where the renowned lawyer comes to the aid of a woman who after a public row with a person who ends up dead ends up the chief suspect. About the only thing non typical about this movie is that Ken ends up being assisted by a mobster who is a fashion designer and that the prosecutor, played by Scott Baio, plans to put Mason on the stand. But beyond those things "Perry Mason: The Case of the Fatal Fashion" is as routine as a Perry Mason movie gets and as such delivers the familiarity which fans of these movies enjoyed which whilst a good thing is also a negative because sadly this Perry Mason is so completely routine it is forgettable.
What this all boils down to is that "Perry Mason: The Case of the Fatal Fashion" is just another Perry Mason movie with nothing which makes it stand out from the other Perry Mason movies. And that means if watched on the fly is entertaining enough but watched after you have recently watched another Perry Mason movie it just blurs into the background.
Tags: TV Mystery Movie Crime Solvers, Perry Mason
