Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer (1990)

Overrated

A Disappointing Continuation

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

THE CASE OF THE SILENCED SINGER is a solid addition to the PERRY MASON series. The story is fast-paced and the mystery actually feels mysterious instead of just going through the motions. I did like the solution to the mystery as well, which manages to feel fresh albeit a little unbelievable. This episode has a blaxploitation feel as a singer is murdered, apparently by her husband, and the episode takes place in the music business. William R. Moses spends his time flirting with a pretty nightclub singer while grappling with a slasher-like brawler so there's plenty going on to enjoy here.

***SPOILERS*** Coming to the defense of his good friend and former law student Jack Barnett, Tim Reid, in the murder of his wife rock singer Terri Knigt, Venessa Williams, Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, can't make heads or tails in who would want to have murdered her! The sweet kind and lovable Terri didn't seem to have an enemy in the world. Sure things weren't exactly going right for Terri in her relationship with her hubby Jack but that seemed to have been ironed out with Jack now in charge of Terri's upcoming L.A live concert that's to net her, and Jack, a cool million dollars. Terri in fact hasn't been herself the weeks before her death becoming impossible to both work as well as in Jack's case live with. Something was on her mind that was eating away at her and made her a paranoid personality! Was it the upcoming L.A concert that she may have felt she wasn't 100% ready to do or was it something else! Something that was just too depressing for her to confide in with the many friends who were around and more then willing to help her out with! Checking out all the clues in Terri's murder Perry's assistant PI Ken Manlansky, William R.Moses, doesn't come up with the reason Terri was murdered but come up with who's the person or hit man who was hired to murder her! It still takes a while for Perry to unearth a motive for Terri's murder and when it finally comes to the surface in his cross-examining of Terri's good friend Becky De Leo, Marilyn Jones, it's absolutely mind bending! ***SPOILERS**** No doubt about it Terri Knight was brutally murdered but the reason behind her murder is so out of the ballpark or courtroom that it made you, as well as Perry Mason, feel that in Terri being killed was in fact the best thing that could have ever happened to her! That in preventing Terri from facing the horror she was to face in what was waiting for her in the very near future!

Another very good Perry Mason film where a singer, with a changing personality, is murdered and her second husband is arrested for this.As always, Perry uncovers a slew of others who could have done the victim in.You know that something is really amiss when of all people, Alice Ghostley, is killed by the killer as she same him at the scene where he didn't want people to know that he had been there.Other potential suspects include the woman's first husband, and two female friends.The ending, as always, is a real shocker. You'll almost feel empathy for the killer until you realize that he or she tried to blame the first husband out of revenge for his previous affair.As the singer, Vanessa Williams sparkles. Her singing, in flashbacks, is absolutely sparkling. Wonder if she did her own singing.

Off the bat I will say that Perry Mason: The Case Of The Silenced Singer is one of the more unusual entries in the Mason film series. It has a different twist to the normal ending that we expect from a Mason film. The Perry Mason team is defending another attorney Tim Reid who is married to Dinah Ross like pop star diva, Vanessa Williams. Things haven't been going so good in the marriage of late, in fact Vanessa's becoming one royal temperamental piece of work. She's alienating a lot of her close friends. Which makes for a lot of potential murder suspects besides Reid when she winds up shot to death in their hideaway apartment.It's the 911 tape of an anonymous witness calling in about a disturbance that sets Raymond Burr to thinking the police have the wrong man. Of course the discrepancies there might also have invoked some interest even among the satisfied homicide cop James McEachin. But then we wouldn't have the film.When Burr sends Billy Moses off to investigate the discrepancies in the tape he has a very nice and whimsically funny scene with Alice Ghostley who's confronted the killer without realizing it. It's the highlight of the movie.I think you'll like the different twist on the usual Mason ending here.