Perry Mason: The Case of the Lost Love (1987, Ron Satlof)

The Case of the Lost Love is a rather charmless Perry Mason outing. Jean Simmons is an old flame of Raymond Burr’s and he ends up defending her ungrateful husband (Gene Barry). Simmons and Burr have some chemistry as Lost Love establishes their history, but the movie’s so technically inept, it never quite comes across right. Simmons doesn’t get a reasonable character to play so Burr can’t react to her reasonably. And Barry’s just lame, both in terms of script characterization and performance.

There’s a lot of lame acting in the movie. Most of it is because it’d be impossible to be anything but lame given the technical problems. Director Satlof doesn’t give editor David Solomon enough coverage, but Solomon doesn’t even cut the stuff he does get well. And Arch Bryant’s photography is weak, so the shots rarely distinguish themselves visually. And Satlof’s really bad with the actors here. Not even Gordon Jump can survive Lost Love.

Performance wise, Barry, Stephen Elliott, Robert F. Lyons and Leslie Wing are the worst. Wing is the female cop who gets to get chatted up by William Katt. Katt’s got a far less interesting wardrobe than usual this time. He and Wing have negative chemistry. There’s really nothing going for Lost Love, not after Simmons starts getting strange and Burr spends all his time doing the investigating. Writer Anne Collins hints to doing something with Burr and Barry, but it doesn’t come across. It’s way too forced. And the less said about Simmons and Barbara Hale’s interactions the better.

Everything about Lost Love is either forced or contrived, which makes it exhausting. The weak supporting performances mean there’s no joy in seeing them get to act. Except Jonathan Banks, of course. He’s trying really hard and not getting any support from Satlof. There’s almost a good performance there. Almost, but not really.

And the mystery itself is lame. Collins tries doing something different with it–having Burr doing the important investigating, trying to present necessary information to the viewer to keep them interested, but it doesn’t work. Not just because of Satlof’s direction, but because the script’s poorly paced. And Hale gets nothing to do, which seems to be a trend.

Case of the Lost Love needed to percolate some more before getting released on an unsuspecting public.

Perry Mason: The Case of the Shooting Star (1986, Ron Satlof)

There’s a lot of camp value to The Case of the Shooting Star. During William Katt’s investigation scenes, his clothes get more and more absurd. At one point he’s wearing a jacket with a tiger on it. Then he gets sidekick and flirtation partner Wendy Crewson, who wears really loud eighties pants, and it becomes more about their banter.

But the camp factor is more than just Katt, it’s the plot–Joe Penny’s a hotheaded action movie actor-director (Joe Penny playing Clint Eastwood)–and it’s how they keep making a big deal out of shooting in New York when the movie was obviously filmed somewhere else (Toronto). Only it must have shot somewhere else too because the tough neighborhood set has palm trees in the background.

And Alan Thicke plays a talk show host. What’s not campy about Alan Thicke playing a talk show host.

Even without the camp value though, Shooting Star’s a pretty solid diversion. Katt’s likable, especially with Crewson. Thicke’s good, Penny’s good enough. There are a lot of decent supporting turns–Ron Glass, Ross Petty, Mary Kane, J. Kenneth Campbell. Opposing counsel David Ogden Stiers seems a little better this time out. He pretends to take it a little more seriously. And Jennifer O’Neill is great as an old friend of Perry Mason. She gets a lot to do in the first act and she’s fantastic. The script doesn’t give her as much to do later, which is too bad, but she’s solid to the melodramatic finish.

Speaking of the script, Anne Collins does an excellent job juggling all the characters and all the expository dialogue. It’s not a great murder mystery, but it’s smooth and digestible writing.

Technically, the movie’s a bit of a disaster because of different film stocks. It’s even worse because camera setups figure into the story and so Shooting Star invites the viewer to think about how poorly the setups are working in this movie. Satlof’s direction isn’t as bad as I was expecting. He’s still weak on coverage, but he is giving his actors more space to move around here.

Oh. Yeah. Speaking of the lead actors. Burr’s good. He’s got some character stuff, not always successful but usually, he’s got the lawyer stuff, not always successful but usually, and he’s got a decent enough teleplay to get him through. Unfortunately, Barbara Hale gets nothing to do in this entry. Otherwise, it delivers on all promise a Perry Mason TV movie can offer.

Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun (1986, Ron Satlof)

So Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. It’s not good. It is not a good TV movie. Even if the writing were better, Satlof is a lousy director. And Héctor R. Figueroa’s photography is quite bad. The lighting in the courtroom finale changes between shots. The editing is already graceless–more because of Satlof’s weak composition and blocking than the editors–and the lighting just kills it.

But the real problem is something else entirely–Joel Steiger’s teleplay is bad. It’s kind of ambitious, but it’s bad at it. The design of this Perry Mason is as follows, there’s Raymond Burr doing stuff, there’s William Katt doing stuff, there’s Barbara Hale sometimes doing stuff with Burr but not really anything consequential except provide emotional support to Michele Greene (the titular Notorious Nun), and Green’s crisis about taking her final vows. Steiger gives all the character development to Greene and it’s awful. Greene tries with it too. She really does try to make this material work and maybe if Satlof weren’t terrible, it’d go better.

Then there’s the guest stars. Timothy Bottoms as an honest, priest stud. Jon Cyphers as an arrogant doctor. Tom Bosley as a sweet priest. Arthur Hill as a prick lawyer. Not much inventive casting, but sturdy acting. Of those caricatures, Cyphers does the best. He has the most to do. Decent villain in Hagan Beggs. He gets a lot of Dick DeBenedictis’s craziest thriller music. Can’t forget to talk about the music.

But real quick on the cast–David Ogden Stiers as the D.A., James McEachin as the cop. These character slots aren’t really important–McEachin does get to show some personality opposite Katt, but none in the expository-only scenes. And Stiers is competent but the material’s bad. You watch him and wonder if he knows his legal reasoning lines are stupid.

Burr’s fine, of course. Katt’s a little bit too much of a jackass this time out. And Hale really doesn’t have enough to do.

Oh, right, the music. Dick DeBenedictis does some crazy music for this thing. Slasher movie, gothic horror synthesizer music for the main cast’s theme, melodramatic tripe. It’s all over the place and occasionally awesome.

There’s not a good reveal at the end, which is all a Perry Mason needs to be a success. Steiger backloads the thrills and it ruins to momentum. It’s a TV movie, it’s got to keep you occupied through commercials, only Steiger and Stalof haven’t got any momentum. Only DeBenedictis does. And the cast could be charming with better material. But it’s still not successful, not at all.

Perry Mason Returns (1985, Ron Satlof)

The most impressive technical contribution to Perry Mason Returns has to be Dick DeBenedictis’s music. He lifts thriller style music, some horror, some whatever, then applies it to this somewhat bland TV movie. Albert J. Dunk’s photography is too muted and director Satlof, though very capable of setting up sequences, is mediocre (at best) at the talking heads and he doesn’t do the courtroom scene.

It’s Perry Mason Returns. Raymond Burr barely does anything for the first hour of the movie except be a jerk to William Katt for being not being miserable and consoles Barbara Hale. Hale’s on trial for murder. Hence the importance of a well-directed courtroom sequence. But Satlof tanks it. Dean Hargrove’s teleplay isn’t exactly outstanding, but the reveal is fairly solid. Satlof tanks it. The entire finale is a disaster. While Burr stalls in court, Katt has to reason with evil rednecks.

There’s some solid acting–Kerrie Keane, Holland Taylor, James Kidnie. There’s some not so solid acting. It’s a TV movie. Burr and Hale are likable. Katt’s sort of a dork, but Hale seems to like him so why not give him a chance, wasn’t he in Carrie? But Burr and Hale have undeniable chemistry and Burr’s best scenes are his moments with her. He’s the title character and he barely figures into the narrative. It’s the last scene before he finally shows some personality. Satlof’s inept direction of Burr’s scenes hurt Burr’s performance.

It’s a really lazy script though. Katt doesn’t even do the private investigator bit, he just inexplicably annoys cop Paul Hubbard into doing all the work. Katt’s probably got the most screen time in the movie too; it’s boring Glen A. Larson TV show p.i. action. Katt’s maybe likable as a sidekick to patient and older Burr and Hale, not as a lead. He’s not unlikable, but he’s clearly out of his depth. Because dumb writing and bad direction.

Still, it’s a good reveal, the principals are likable, Keane’s good, Taylor’s good. It’s just a poorly directed Perry Mason TV movie, it doesn’t have to do much but divert.

Godzilla, King of Monsters! (1956, Terry O. Morse and Honda Ishirô)

Morse didn’t just direct the added American scenes for Godzilla, King of Monsters! but also did the hatchet job editing it.

The concept–adding in footage of a reporter reporting on what would be an international news event–isn’t bad. But Morse (aided, undoubtedly, by Al C. Ward’s awful scripting) contrives a way to shoehorn Raymond Burr’s American reporter into all of the original Godzilla story. Even though Burr doesn’t have a single scene with Hirata Akihiko’s scientist, Monsters makes them old college chums and Burr inexplicably talks to Hirata’s stand-in on the phone.

I suppose Morse and Ward thought it was necessary to tie plots together, but at most it added two and a half minutes of runtime. Morse could have just recycled the “stairs to the hospital” shot a fourth time.

As for Burr, he’s not very good. The cheapness of his scenes–particularly the one where he’s in a helicopter but sitting in an office–probably hurt the performance. For example, when he’s actual in a torrential downpour, he’s convincing. However, Morse could have spent that money better making sure Burr had a real presence in the third act instead of standing in the background.

The voiceover cast is uniformly terrible, ruining the performances of the original actors. The other American cast is fifty-fifty–Frank Iwanaga is great as Burr’s sidekick (Monsters‘s should’ve been focused on them), but Mikel Conrad’s atrocious as his boss.

With the original version readily available, Monsters should be avoided.