The Case of the Black Cat (1936)

Very well executed

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

How sad is this?

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Typical Perry Mason mystery from Warner Bros. in the '30s, features RICARDO CORTEZ as a much less abrasive version of the famous sleuth than Warren William--and much less cocky. The result is a good Mason yarn with a fine supporting cast. GARY EVANS supplies some humor as sidekick Paul Drake.JANE BRYAN is the young woman who is cut out of her grandfather's will. Grandpa is an angry old man played by HARRY DAVENPORT. JUNE TRAVIS is a more serious minded Della Street helping Mason solve his case, and CRAIG REYNOLDS is one of the main suspects.The mystery is cluttered with sub-plots involving the theft of diamonds but the twist at the end comes as a real surprise.Some cryptic dialog helps a lot. "Sam doesn't like cats or old men. He thinks both should be put out of their misery." Another surprise is the fact that the cat in the story is not a black cat at all but a gray and white one that doesn't seem to mind being handled by anyone and yet in the story is a cause of much distress with its noisy howling.

I really loved Warren Williams' 1st Perry Mason film, THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG. As with most viewers my introduction to Perry was Raymond Burr, but despite WW's very different look and behavior, I felt I was still watching the "real" Perry. Not so in the follow-ups, where outrageous comedy all but pushed the murder mysteries to the back.What a shock it must have been when WB did THE CASE OF THE BLACK CAT with Ricardo Cortez. This film seems designed to be the "anti-WW" Perry Mason movie. Cortez' Perry plays it straight, as does Della; for the first time Paul Drake is actually called "Paul" instead of "Spudsy", and we finally get to see D.A. Hamilton Burger! While much thinner than Burr, Cortez has a vaguely similar look and attitude, and the general format familiar to anyone who's watched the TV series is recognizably present, including the courtroom scenes at the end where Perry solves everything.It's a very well-made film, but if I have any problems with it it's this: Perry doesn't seem to stand out much, and Della, Paul & Burger do so even less. Also, the mystery is SO complex, after watching it twice uncut, I STILL can't make heads or tails of it! It all comes together at the end, in a very long-winded monologue from Mason. I expect this sort of thing from Hercule Poirot, but wouldn't a courtroom judge insist on a lot further testimony from others to corroborate what Mason says? It's almost a shock when Mason asks for a dismissal and the judge agrees, instead of the guy telling Mason his head's spinning from everything Mason just said! I suppose the biggest mystery concerning this film must be, WHY did they only do ONE film with Cortez and his supporting cast? (But then, I'm also wondering why WB seemed bent on sabotaging the series after Warren William's excellent debut installment as well.) Maybe Hollywood just didn't like mysteries that were too "intelligent".

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!!!!

**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.