Such a frustrating disappointment

A Masterpiece!

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

The Perry Mason series of mysteries from the 1930s are some of the best mysteries one could watch. One needs to pay attention to details throughout the film to follow the twists in the plot, which in this movie is very complicated. The movies closely follow the Erle Stanley Gardner mystery novels on which they are based. The Case of the Stuttering Bishop holds one's interest from beginning to end as Perry Mason cleverly addresses the case of a murder committed over a will, inheritance and the fraudulent identity of a key player. Donald Woods does not play the role of Perry Mason as well as Warren William did in this series. William plays the role with panache and wit, whereas Donald Woods plays the role straightforward with no flair—serviceable but not exciting. Ann Dvorak plays the role of Della Street straightforward also with none of the sassiness and cuteness of Genevieve Tobin and none of the glamour and screen presence of Helen Trehnolme in other movies in the series. If you are a fan of old, intriguing mysteries, you won't be disappointed with this gem.

The sixth and final Perry Mason film from Warner Bros. once again features cast changes. Perry is now played by a mustachioed Donald Woods, a stiff leading man that I have never been particularly fond of. The guy has the charisma of wet socks. Perry's secretary Della Street is played this time by Ann Dvorak, an actress I actually do like a lot and think she could have been bigger than she was. She's the best part of this. Playing Perry's investigator Paul Drake this time is veteran character actor Joseph Crehan. The rest of the cast features familiar faces such as Anne Nagel, Frank Faylen, Tom Kennedy, and Veda Ann Borg.The plot this time has a Bishop (supposedly from Australia but you wouldn't know it by that accent) asking Perry to help an heiress. This is the least enjoyable of the WB Perry Mason movies. It is watchable but awfully dry and routine, not helped in the least by such an uncharismatic lead. Dvorak helps, as does Tom Kennedy as comic relief. But not enough to make this anything more than a middling B detective picture that's only worth seeing once.

As with "The Case of the Black Cat," this film has an almost completely new cast, including the lead. Some reviewers have panned the plot of this one, but I think it is an excellent story – and the only reason I give it six stars. But what the producers did to the plot is a mess. As with Black Cat, this is the case of a good actor just not fitting in the part. Donald Woods comes across as Wooden at times. And, again, the acting seems very amateurish, and the directing and editing are poor."The Case of the Stuttering Bishop" is one of the dozens of Erle Stanley Gardner's mysteries. All of which were made into great episodes of the Raymond Burr Perry Mason series in later years, and/or TV movies. I too enjoyed the long run of Perry Mason on TV, and the many movies through the early 1990s. But I can't agree with those reviewers who pan these early mystery films – comparing them to the later Perry Mason. I think the first four, with Warren William, were very good and highly entertaining. Yes, they were much more comedic, and not the way Gardner wrote the character. But I enjoyed the humorous approach of those first four films. Had the makes been able to stay with William and keep the humor but refined it some, I think many more of the early Perry Mason films could have been made and would have been successes. We only have to look at other films that were hits during the rest of 1930s and into the 40s. MGM had real winner with the Nick and Nora Charles films of the Thin Man series. And, William himself was excellent in some later films as detective Philo Vance and as the Lone Wolf, Michael Lanyard. I'm one who enjoyed the Raymond Burr Perry Mason, with the steadier cast over the years. But I also find very enjoyable and entertaining the earliest four the Perry Mason mysteries that starred Warren William. I think anyone will enjoy the first four films for themselves – if they don't try to compare them to the later films and TV series. Unfortunately, the last two of the early films, weren't up to the standards of the sharp, crisp and witty scripts of the first four.

You can often tell when a studio is losing interest in a film series when they start replacing the entire cast. In this instance, they did it twice in 2 films-- and by the time of THE CASE OF THE STUTTERING BISHOP, we'd not only seen 3 Perry Masons in 6 films, but 5 different Della Streets! Donald Woods does his 2nd PM film, having played one of the suspects in ...THE CURIOUS BRIDE, while William Clemens directs his 2nd PM film, having already done the relatively sober ...VELVET CLAWS. Clemens would go onto quite a few series films, including a Torchy Blane, 4 Nancy Drews, a Dead Ends Kids, a Philo Vance, and 3 Falcons. There's nothing especially flashy or stylish about this film, and it starts out very confusing, but it is a solid mystery film, and gets better as it goes.For example, you have the boastful house detective who Perry winds up hiring part-time, and as the story goes on he proves to be genuinely helpful, rather than "merely" comic relief. It seems the murder takes forever to happen in this one, but once it does, the story FINALLY kicks into gear, and the courtroom sequence at the end is probably the BEST in all 6 films. Unlike when Perry rattled off confusing info nobody but HE knew in the previous installment, the quick stream of witness testimonies actually help to pull all the threads of the story together neatly. And at last, there's the patented "blurted out confession" seen in so many PM stories-- only in this case, NOT from the person being grilled on the stand.It's been said that sometimes casting actors very accurate to novels can lead to dull films. Some of the most popular versions of characters are quite unlike their literary sources-- good examples being Sean Connery's JAMES BOND and Stacy Keach's MIKE HAMMER. In this case, I find myself wishing Warren William had done more films like this one-- his version of Perry might not be thought of as so much of a joke then.