SimonJack This is the second of Erle Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries put on film. Warren William again stars and does a great job in the role. This is also the first of two appearances of Claire Dodd in the role of Della Street. She is by far the best in the early film roles. This Street plays off Mason's witticisms with equal wit. The repartee between the two is quit good and sprinkled throughout this film. Dodd's Della is equally attractive, intelligent and quick on her feet, yet also proper and not so flirtatious as others who play her in the early films. Dodd also imbues her character with a deep attraction to her boss. "The Case of the Curious Bride" is also the first look with some depth at Mason's epicurean side. The opening scene has him with a friend selecting the best crabs – probably at the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. He later is going to prepare a dish he calls "Crab ala Bordeaux." Those are huge Dungeness crabs they are picking over. In my years of crabbing on the Oregon Coast, we seldom got crabs that large. A note for those not familiar with these Northwest crabs – they are cooked as soon as possible. The crabs Mason and friend are looking at and handling have all been cooked already. The audience can clearly see steam and the top of the cooking pot to the left. The mystery in this film is another excellent brain-twister that only Perry Mason and his team of detectives can unravel. And all the cast are very good in their roles. Allen Jenkins is a hoot as Spudsy Drake and Olin Howland is very good as Coroner Wilbur Strong. One other small smile comes with a very short appearance of Errol Flynn. I won't give away any of the story here, but have to mention that there is a tear gas scene that is riotously funny. True, these first movies of Gardner's famous lawyer-detective have a quite different character than millions of TV viewers and later movie fans saw with Raymond Burr. And, the Mason creator, Gardner, apparently didn't like these early films. But he was developing the character as he went along, and Perry Mason evolved after a few books into the courtroom centered mysteries that millions became familiar with from the 1950s on. But I think these early films – especially the first four with Warren William at the helm, are great entertainment. They provide some spice and humor. And they may more accurately reflect the people, customs and behaviors of the various social groups of the time. Toward the end of this film, Margaret Lindsay's character, Rhoda, says to Perry: "You're so wonderful. If only you couldn't cook."

Neil Doyle A bland script makes THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE more of a curiosity rather than a good Perry Mason film. WARREN WILLIAM is the famous sleuth and CLAIRE DODD is a blond Della Street, the secretary always one step ahead of her boss. This time the action centers on the mysterious death of a man called Gregory Moxley (ERROL FLYNN in what amounts to a bit role). He is talked about but not seen until the last few minutes when the mystery is wrapped up.MARGARET LINDSAY is the damsel in distress who calls upon Mason to help solve the mystery.What makes this curious is why they didn't write the Moxley role into the script, given that they had Flynn under contract and would soon be grooming him for stardom. He makes his debut as a corpse lying on the floor beneath a sheet! DONALD WOODS has the leading supporting role, but the story is never involving enough to maintain suspense. ALLEN JENKINS overplays his Paul Drake role.Surprisingly, Michael Curtiz was the man behind the camera--but the script is the real problem.

sol (There are Spoilers) After making headlines by getting an hatchet murderer off in the courtroom defense attorney Perry Mason, Warren Williams,is planning to sail off to China and check out some new recipes to add this his collection of exotic Chinese foods for him to cook up. It's at Luigi's Restaurant on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf that Perrys traveling plans suffer a major setback when he runs into an old flame of his Rhoda Montaine, Margaret Lindsey.Rhoda is very upset in the fact that her late husband is very much alive and blackmailing her in threatening her marriage to multi-millionaire C. Philip Montaine, Charles Richman, son Carl, Donald Woods,to be annulled. It in fact turns out that Rhoda's late husband Gregory Moxly, Errol Flynn, is indeed very much alive when he's reported spotted on a San Francisco street. Moxly's coffin is exhumed and it's found that he had a wooden Indian replace him in the pine box. Perry getting a telegram, with the senders name mysterious ripped off, to where Moxly could be found finds him dead with a stab wound in his back and his client Rhoda, who's keys were found at the scene, as the prime suspect in his murder.In an effort to save Rhoda from being both indited and convicted in her now late-late husbands murder Perry has her turn herself over to the custody of the local newspaper "The Enquirer" until he can get all the fact together in the case. Rhoda not listening to Parry in keeping absolutely quite to the D.A and police is later tricked by the District Attorney Stacey, Henry Kolker, into signing a statement that she was at the scene of her husbands murder thinking that it will help her case but in effect put her one step away from being convicted.Perry Mason now having his hands full uses all his skills as a defense attorney as well as private investigator to get to the bottom of Moxly's murder. Perry finds out that Moxly has been pulling this sort of underhanded stunt, faking his death and later blackmailing them, for years to some half dozen women that he married. Moxly married women whom he tricked into thinking that he later died and then when they remarried a rich new husband he suddenly popped up blackmailing them into not revealing himself as their legal husband thus keeping their marriage as well as husbands money from being legal!The ending is a bit of a letdown****SPOILERS**** in the fact that Moxly's death was not really a murder with almost everyone in the cast, who's suspected of killing him, at the scene of his demise. This all makes Perry a bit reluctantly take on the person who was there with Moxly at the time of his accidental death as a client. Instead of cooking his signature classic seafood dish "Crab A'la Bordeaux" and ignoring Rhoda back at Luigi's Perry has not only postponed his trip to China but is now committed to stay in San Francisco for at least another year in the new criminal case he unwittingly picked up there at the restaurant. P.S There's also the fact that by the time the case that Perry is to take on is over a trip to China wouldn't be such a great idea in the first place with the China/Japanese war about to break out with the Marco Polo Bridge incident in July 1937.

tedg Together with the noir and the musical, there isn't anything more important to the shape of film narrative than the detective story. And among that, you have two poles, represented by the two greatest sellers of mysteries ever: Christie and Gardner.Christie by far the more sophisticated of the two, engaged in a guessing game with the reader from page one. Each of her stories toys with some element of assumption, of perception. Gardner's approach was to set up an impossible situation, then surprise the reader at the end with an elaborate ballet of comings and goings around the corpse.Gardner's work was extremely formulaic, in fact he actually used a circular slide rule of sorts to make up stories. There were other devices employed in his rather automated "fiction factory." His template of formula and avoidance of challenging the audience was a more popular fit for movies, alas.This is his first movie. He hated it because it tinkered with his formula to create a Perry that compared to Nick Charles, the breakout character of the previous year. So we have an effete humorous character, a gourmet cook overlain on our original mechanical mind. And — good luck for us — the setting is San Francisco only a generation after it was destroyed.The direction alone is worth it, even if you don't appreciate the grand struggle for control over the shape of film narrative. Curtis moves this thing along with a rhythm that matches the cheery elite meals referenced in the dialog.Perry watchers will be particularly interested in how Della Street is handled here. In the stories, she is a loyal machine, as efficient in her way as Drake and Mason. We always know she is in love with her boss (just as Gardner's secretary was) but it is only hinted. Not so here. She's so mooneyed she's almost drunk.Oh, the story itself is tepid. Philo Vance would be doing much better.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.