Paularoc It is not a Perry Mason movie, really - it's Warren William playing yet another devil-may-care, debonair, witty character who is a lawyer but spends most of his time as a detective. The movie aims to be a comedy mystery and does pretty well with that but falls far short of The Case of the Lucky Legs. In part, this is due to a rather bland supporting cast - Claire Dodd as Della Street and Eddie Acuff as the unfortunately named "Spudsy" Drake are both bland and unmemorable. Their predecessors in Lucky Legs (Genevieve Tobin and Allen Jenkins) were better served by the writers and gave sparkling performances. The acting highlight goes to Clara Blandick as Judge Mary F. O'Daugherty, the judge who marries Della and Perry. Blandick is only in a couple of scenes but makes the most of them. She is probably best remembered for playing Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz. The Velvet Claws plot is a bit convoluted with Eve Belter hiring Mason (at the point of a gun) to stop the local gossip rag from publishing a story (that's both untrue and could ruin a politician's career). The rag's publisher is murdered, Belter accuses Mason of the murder - even though this accusation is not true (Belter thinks she actually committed the murder), Mason is a very forgiving sort and continues to defender her. The humorous overtone in the movie is the fact Perry and Della get married and that their honeymoon keeps getting interrupted; oh, that and the fact that Perry has a bad cold he gives to everyone he meets. This is an entertaining little programmer with the always highly watchable Warren William. Not the best in the series but it's still recommended.

csteidler Perry Mason and Della Street burst into the courtroom, a noisy crowd at their heels. Boldly interrupting proceedings, Mason announces that he wants the judge to marry him and Della immediately. They're going on a honeymoon then he's giving up his criminal law career: "I have promised Della to become a sober filer of briefs." –Alas, when they get back to his apartment, there's a woman hiding in the bedroom with a gun, and the honeymoon is off.A good balance between humor and suspense keeps this picture zipping along. Warren William dominates proceedings from start to finish in a flamboyant performance that is alternately silly and clever.Of course there's a murder, and the strong plot has the murder victim's wife—who may be guilty herself—accusing Mason of the crime, forcing him to hide out in a hotel and rely on assistant Spudsy Drake to do research and legwork. Eddie Acuff is more comical than serious as Spudsy; he and Claire Dodd (as Della) are both very good.A rather wild climactic gathering-of-the-suspects has Mason passing around kleenexes—over the course of the picture, just about everybody has caught his cold!Great fun.

sol1218 (Some Spoilers) More like a 1930's screwball comedy then the serious and overly complicated courtroom drama that your used to seeing "The Case of the Velvet Claws" has Perry Mason, Warren William, acting like a chicken without a head not knowing what crimes are exactly going on in the movie much less knowing how to solve them.Perry himself is implicated in the murder of business tycoon George Belter, Joe King, by his estranged wife Eva, Wini Shaw. The funny, if you can call it that, thing about all this is that Perry was in fact hired by Eva, using a phony name, to get George's sleazy exploitive rag "Spicy Bit's" to kill a story that it's about to publish. The story has her, or the other woman, having an illicit affair with happily married and straight as an arrow State Senator Peter Milnor, Kenneth Harlan.Perry who at the beginning of the movie tied the knot with his long suffering, in putting up with him, and faithful private secretary Della Street, Claire Dodd, never got a chance to spend his wedding night together, in blissful harmony, when he was kidnapped by Eva Stuart, really Eva Belter. Eva afraid of her lover, Peter Milnor, being exposed by her husbands, who runs the paper from behind the scenes, tabloid tries to get Perry to go see Spicy Bit's editor Frank Locke, Madison Richards, and talk him out of publishing the story. Perry finds out second-hand from Locke that Mr. Belter is the one bankrolling the paper and goes to see him at his mansion only to get himself kicked out by Digley, Stuart Holmes, the butler.It's a few minutes later after Perry was given the heave ho Eve shows up and after trying to get Belter to kill the story about her and Mr.Milnor ends up, we don't really know for sure since it all happens off camera, killing him with a single gunshot from her .32 pistol. Perry caught completely by surprise in Belter's murder and being the last person seen leaving his mansion, before he was murdered, is now the #1 suspect in his death! What makes things even worse for Perry is that he's been fingered by the person who not only was at the scene of Belter's murder but is his client as well Mrs. Eve Belter!Even though Perry looks and acts totally confused, as well as having walking pneumonia, he's given a break by the very favorable script at the end of the movie by solving Betler's murder by having it pinned on someone who had absolutely no reason for murdering him. ****SPOILER ALERT****With him, Belter's killer, knowing that he's, instead of his cheating wife Eva, to inherit all of his millions he suddenly pulls out a gun and plugs a shocked and surprised Betler not wanting to wait for the old man to die of natural causes! He just couldn't help himself!This brainless action on Belter's killers part opened him up to being blackmailed almost as soon as the gun-smoke even cleared by being spotted by Betler's maid Mrs. Veite, Ruth Robinson. Here the killer murdered someone, Geoge Betler, who was only going to help him by leaving his estate over to him and on the other hand doesn't murder the one person, Mrs. Veite, who can implicate him in Betler's murder!With the guilty party taken away by the police Perry can now carry on with Della as man and wife but not after he gave everyone in the cast, including Della, a serious case influenza by sneezing his head off, and in their faces, all throughout the movie and not at all bothering to see a doctor to treat him!

jaykay-10 Clearly influenced by the contemporaneous Thin Man films, this entry in the Perry Mason series meets with no success in attempting to duplicate the tone, atmosphere and style of the former. Warren William tries for the casual glibness and offhand wisecracking that came so easily to William Powell, but lacks the light touch such a role requires. The story is a familiar sort of B-mystery jumble: false leads, dual identities, double and triple crosses, shady nephews, lurking housekeepers - all presented at a furious pace, with dozens of brief scenes flashing by in rapid succession. Unfortunately, they don't pass quickly enough in this flimsy effort lacking in wit, sparkle and coherence.