***SPOILERS*** One of the most confusing of all the Perry Mason TV movies which in fact was the last of the bunch released some two months after it's star actor Raymond Burr, Perry Mason, passed away. The movie has Perry Mason take the case of his private secretary Della Street's ,Barbara Hale, goddaughter TV soap opera star Kris Buckner, Genie Francis, who's accused of murdering her co-star on the popular daytime TV soap "Mile High" actor Mark Stratton, Sean Kanan.
You can see right from the very start the case against Kris is very weak in that so many other people on the set of "Mile High" had it in for the brash arrogant and, what we find out later about him, blackmailing Stratton far more the Kris did! Stratton had a habit of manhandling his female co-stars with his sloppy on camera smooches! Despite his uncouth behavior on the set with a very angry and insulted Kris that as it later turned out was really the last reason anyone wold have wanted to do the self styled Casanova in. As we find out Stratton was allergic to walnuts and in what turned out to be his last kissing scene someone spiked his leading lady, who replaced Kris, and fiancée Charlotte Grant's, Krista Tesreau, lipstick with a swab of walnut oil! That had Stratton after planing one of his patented sloppy smooches on Charlotte get sick and then go into convulsions. Getting an emergency allergy or anti-walnut kit from his dressing room Stratton immediately gives himself an injection and then within seconds passes out and drops dead on the spot! As it turned out the needle didn't contained any anti-walnut serum in it by a douse of 100% deadly,to Stratton, walnut oil!
Being that Kris had a fight with Stratton on he set of "Mile High" the day before, after he smooched her on camera, and was the last person seen in the studio the evening before he mysteriously died she was immediately suspected in Stratton's murder. Perry with the help of his leg-man private investigator Ken Malansky, Robert R. Moses, together with "Mile High" groupie Peg Freeman, Arleen Sorkin, track the truth down about Stratton's untimely death that leads to his home town Ceder Grove. It turns out that Stratton made his way up the ladder of success in the world of TV soap operas not by his acting talent but his blackmailing of people in high places!
As you would have expected Malansky,known as the human punching bag, gets the hell beat out of him but as usual gets the goods that his boss Perry Mason wanted him to get in getting his client Kris Buckner off! Malansky does have the daffy Peg, whom at first he didn't have any use for, save his butt a number of times who in the end has Perry or actor Raymond Burr, who looked like he had one foot in his grave, save the day by keeping the bumbling Ken Malansky from getting his brains blown out!
***SPOILERS*** Wild final with a fight breaking out in the courtroom between two of the main witnesses as well as evidence being brought out about a video fencing ring inside the "Mile High" studio. All this had to do with the studio's night watchman Mort Aberdine, Richard Riehle, being too busy stealing the show's rushes and selling them to an unscrupulous video distributor who duplicated and then sold them, for a hefty price, to eager "Mile High" fans before they were even shown on TV! The question is what did all that have to do with Mark Stratton's murder? The answer is that it made it possible for the killer to sneak into Stratton's dressing room to plant the walnut oil in his emergency kit! The killer himself is broken down under cross-examination by Perry Mason in revealing his reasons for doing Stratton in. And as you would have expected it all had to do with greed and success and the fact that Stratton was blackmailing him that the killers very reason for living, in his mind, was in jeopardy with the only option left open for him being in murdering the blackmailing swine!
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