Death of a Diva
With her latest tour about to kick off in Denver, Terri Walker (Vanessa Williams) is tense and like the diva that she is ends up taking things out on those around them. It leads to a public fight between Terri and her husband/manager Jack (Tim Reid) which carries on back at their apartment before they make things up. But whilst Jack popped back to the office someone murdered Terri and following their public row Jack is arrested. Fortunately for Jack he is a close friend of Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) who immediately takes the case and sets about interviewing all those who witnessed Terri and Jack's argument to try and work out who had motive whilst Ken (William R. Moses) sets about trying to find the mystery man who called the police to report the murder.
As I sat down to watch "Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer" knowing full well I would review it I was already trying to come up with a way to try and write something different. I say that because "Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer" is like the other movies in the series and that is that it works to a formula; a public argument, a dead person, the most obvious person charged with murder, Perry goes around talking to witnesses whilst Ken goes around looking for the missing link and ends up getting in to a scrape or two. And so firstly let me reassure you by saying that once again this movie is driven by the Perry Mason formula and in that familiarity makes it easy to watch.
But here is the good thing about "Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer", whilst we have various suspects and we also see the guy who enters Terri's apartment with a gun we don't know who the guy is connected to. It means you do have to keep watching till the end to find out how everything comes together where with other movies in the series you can often take an educated guess as to who is behind it all.
What this all boils down to is that whilst "Perry Mason: The Case of the Silenced Singer" sticks to the formula it does a surprisingly nice job of keeping you guessing right up until the last as to who is behind things and why. Plus this Perry Mason features some familiar faces including Vanessa Williams and Angela Bassett.
Tags: TV Mystery Movie Crime Solvers, Perry Mason
