This is the second Perry Mason episode with the guest-lawyer, this time law professor Edward Lindley is played by Michael Rennie. But he has no 10 foot robots in tow this time and nobody to yell "Klaatu Barada Nikto", whether to tell a 10 foot robot that can destroy the Earth to back off, or to open a book of evil in "Army of darkness".
What sets people off about this episode is that the guest-defendant Janice Norland is played by an unremarkable Patricia Manning in a very wooden, stiff, and unconvincing performance. I hate to say this, but really, she was not very good. I had seen this woman in other TV shows in the 60s, but she is most noted for playing Anne Russell in "the hideous sun demon" in 1958, which was written directed and starring Robert Clark.
In fact the script actually calls this woman a wallflower, that is accurate at least. I don't know if the "actress" was picked specifically for that quality, but it worked. If she had been a better actress, it would have been better. Perry Mason had a literal gaggle of middle-aged woman that played all kinds of interesting crooks and "Housewife/Maid Fatales", but this actress was not good enough to be accepted into those honorable ranks of black widows. In fact this is the only Perry Mason episode that she ever did, and that is saying a lot, as Perry Mason employed every single actor that worked in Hollywood at the time- so if somebody was not ever invited to come back, it must have been for extraordinary circumstances.
What is interesting about this episode is that Rennie, as a lawyer defending Janice Norland- is also chasing something very interesting about himself in relation to the mother-in-law of Janice, Maureen Norland played by Patrice Wymore.
But the way this conundrum unfolds is interesting as this episode starts off with a gag put on by crooks Ruta Lee and Carlos Romero... Who have some kind of blackmail racket involving hidden cameras. This is where the gag about the "9 foot tall Martian" comes in, and it was known even on February 7, 1963 this was a reference to "The day the earth stood still"
I am rating this as high as I can because regardless of any of the other flaws in this episode, the mystery was good, the story was good, and Michael Rannie really played his part- this was a man with secrets, who finally had to risk bringing them out into the open to clear his client- and at the same time clearing himself.
I think Perry has graduated from being in a hospital bed to wearing a bathrobe in this episode.