Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

ksf-2 Viewers will recognize actor Harry Davenport as the ornery, crochety old man who is bellowing and storming right from the beginning of the film. (He was "Thaddeus" in the Bachelor and the Bobby-soxer.) Here, he is Peter Laxter, who is changing his will, and insists that his heirs keep on the caretaker, "Ashton" (George Rosener) AND his cat, who keeps everyone up at night yowling. We know that Sam Laxter the son (Bill Elliot) hates the cat and wants it to "go away"...and Wilma, th daughter is opening up a waffle shop. In this Perry Mason film, Mason is played by the suave and easy going Ricardo Cortez, in the role that Warren William had been playing for several years. So at 18 minutes in, Mason finally gets involved when Ashton the caretaker needs help when someone threatens his cat. Then the bodies start piling up. Supporting roles for June Travis and Gary Owen. Da-Daaa... we're in the court-room. Interesting note - the first director Alan Crosland was in a car accident (and died as a result, making this his last picture) causing the remainder of the film to be directed by William MacGann. Plot a little overly complicated... we need a scorecard to keep up... and with DNA testing that we have today, this scenario would easily be un-covered. Not bad for a Perry Mason film, but takes a little work to keep up. They DO squeeze a lot into th short 66 minutes.

Bucs1960 For those of you who were convinced that Raymond Burr was the consummate Perry Mason, please take a gander at Ricardo Cortez in that role. You might be surprised at your reaction. This certainly doesn't mean that Burr was not great in the television series......it just gives us a different take on the character. Cortez, who is wonderful in most of his roles, truly shines as an urbane sophisticated Mason in a typical Erle Stanley Gardner tale of murder and mayhem. The Della Street (June Travis) and Paul Drake (Gary Owen) roles are very different from those portrayed on television and could have been fleshed out just a bit more, but I'm not complaining. It's Cortez, with those bedroom eyes and dark good looks who steals the show. I have seen the other Mason films with Warren William in the lead role and in my opinion it's no contest.The story line gets a little convoluted at one point but it all works itself out in the capable hands of our hero. It's unfortunate that this was the only outing as Perry Mason for Cortez but it is worth the watch. Catch it on TCM which may be the only place where is will be shown. You'll like it!!!!

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Not at all the Perry Mason of Raymond Burr TV fame Perry is played by the witty eloquently sophisticated and most of all, unlike Mr. Burr, thin Ricardo Cortez. Perry get's involved in a case defending murder suspect Douglas Keene, Carlyle Moore Jr, at the assistance of his fiancé Wilma Lexter, Jane Bryan; Wilma is the grand-daughter of Peter Laxter, Harry Davenport, one of the three persons who ended up as murder victims in the movie.Perry also becomes the attorney of record of this screeching and annoying cat named Clicker who's owner Laxter's caretaker Ashton, George Rosner,is worried that one of his employers relatives will kill Clicker just to shut him up so that he can finally get some sleep. There's far more to the movie then Clicker but it's the crazy cat who unwitting set's off a series of events that lead to two murders and the abduction of the body of hobo Watson Clammert. Clammert is to be used as a substitute for the load mouth and grouchy Peter Lexter who got wind that one of his many close, to his money, relatives were planning to kill him knowing that he'll change his will leaving everything over to the cat.Having Perry come over to re-write his will later that evening at the Lexter Mansion it suddenly burns down with a body burned beyond recognition found in the rubble. Later Perry finds out that the day before the fire Lexter had converted all his stocks and bonds into cash, a cool million dollars, that mysteriously disappeared. Asking the police coroner to exhume Lexter's body to see if in fact he did die in the fire it's found out that he was actually dead hours before and that the fire was just a cover. It later turned out that the persons who set the Lexter Mansion on fire had no idea that not only was whoever they thought was Lexter was already dead. Lexter himself planned his own murder, by them, in order t catch his killers flat-footed in the act of trying to murder him.What makes the movie really work is that the last ten minutes or so we get a flashback of what really happened. The flashback connects not only old man Peter Lexter but his nurse Louise DeVoe, Nedda Harrigan,and caretaker and owner of Clicker the Cat, Ashton,to the killing. The ten minute on flashback helped explain a lot of the very complicated plot, through Perry's courtroom monologue, that tied all the lose ends together and made an almost impossible to follow murder mystery easily understood.Laxter played his cards right by tricking those who were just about to do him in to expose themselves. It was their greed in not only wanting to grab Lexter's missing million but getting their hands the valuable Koltsdorf Diamond necklace that Laxter together with his caretaker Ashton secretly hid. It turned out that it was Clicker, or one of his feline relatives, who by his wild and crazy antics provided the clue that not only broke the murder case wide open by in effect marking the killer, thus making it easy to identify, by Perry Mason, him.

mrsastor Because no actor has ever been more closely associated with his character than Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, modern audiences are often unaware that Earl Stanley Gardner's books and character predate the television series by over twenty years.It is unfortunate indeed that the actor most commonly associated with the role of Perry Mason in the 1930's is Warren William, not at all attractive and with an annoying tendency to play Mr. Mason as a less-than-scrupulous drunken buffoon of whom one marvels he was even able to find his way out of a gin joint, let alone find a murderer. With each successive Perry Mason film, Mr. William's portrayal grew more drunken and buffoonish, probably an attempt to cop the fantastically popular Thin Man of the day.Sorry folks, but Ricardo Cortez IS Perry Mason. In the only Mason film to cast Cortez in the lead role, Mr. Cortez ruins the role for all others and particularly blows Mr. Warren out of the water. Cortez is everything Mason is supposed to be; beautiful, rich and elegant, sophisticated and brilliant. No drunken buffoon here.As for the story, I remain clueless why the American version of this film was re-titled "The Case of the Black Cat". The book, and the episode of the television series some 25 year later, were named "The Case of the CARETAKER'S Cat", and even the cat that appears in the 1936 movie is not black. Aside from this peculiarity, this is a great story and well worth the watch. Easily the best of the Perry Mason movies produced during this time period, it compares favorably to the Philo Vance and Thin Man serials of its era.