Errol's fourth movie role, and first in the US, for First National Pictures. His first three include the rather strange and amateurish In the Wake of the Bounty, and the now lost UK Teddington Studio's I Adore You and Murder at Monte Carlo. Not much of a role - he plays a dead body on a slab, and in a three minute flashback scene with no lines. With a rather cheesy mustache. Oh well, we all have to start somewhere.
As for the movie, it was not your father's Perry Mason. Early Perry Mason movies have a completely different tone than that brought to TV by Raymond Burr in the role. With William Warren in the lead as Perry Mason (Warren played a lot of villians in the silent and pre-Code era), Mason isn't Burr's stuffed shirt do-good lawyer, but rather a partying, hard-drinking bon vivant man-about-town. The type of guy who invades his favorite restaurant with his drinking buddies to cook his own lobsters in the kitchen. He also has a significantly less upright view of the law, as he convinces the sister of a death row inmate to perjure herself, among other rather questionable legal tactics. And based in San Francisco (very good location shooting for 1935), rather than Mason's more familiar LA stomping grounds.
Good movie overall, though. Very well directed by Michael Curtiz, with skillful fade ins/fade outs and fast editing. This was the second Perry Mason film made, and in addition to the different persona of Warren (vs Burr) as Mason, there are other differences. Della Street is closer to a love interest, and his relationship with the District Attorney is more confrontational, less professional. His best buddy is the local coroner, who is the comic relief in this movie. Cool stuff overall, and a pretty good 1935 detective yarn, and a curious entry in the Flynnfest quest.
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