Perry Mason (TV Series) The Case of the 12th Wildcat (1965) User Reviews

A solution like no other

[bkoganbing · 9/10 · 14 May 2014]

Mona Freeman is the Perry Mason client in this episode. She and husband Bill Williams are the owners of the Los Angeles Wildcats pro football team, but things aren't happy. All those around Freeman on the team, coach Robert Quarry, team announcer, Regis Toomey, equipment manager Karl Swenson, and business manager John Conte take her side against the unpopular Williams. As for Williams he's a boorish lout with a big gambling problem who keeps threatening to sell the team to pay off his bookies.

When Williams dies as a result of an arson fire there are a lot of alternative suspects, not just the ones I mention. But it's Freeman who is arrested.

When the Perry Mason series started there was a lot of antagonism between Hamilton Burger and Perry Mason. Over the years a certain professional respect grew between the two of them. But in this episode William Talman returned to the old days. But considering how Raymond Burr blew the DA's case apart, Talman can be forgiven a bit of hostility.

In fact the solution here was like no other I saw on the television series, but the same gambit was used in one of the Perry Mason films.

This episode is good in many ways

[kfo9494 · 9/10 · 29 December 2011]

This turned out to be a good episode. It involves a football team named the Wildcats. The team is owned by Burt Payne (Bill Williams) and wife Ellen Payne (Mona Freeman). Burt, an obnoxious drunk that treats everyone like trash, is in some kind of trouble with a bookie and agrees to sell his share in the Wildcats to a firm. However Ellen ,who must also sign, knows nothing about the sell.

On a train trip with the team, Burt is again treating everyone like dirt when he dies in a fire aboard the train. Needless to say not many tears was shed but through some evidence that Lt Drumm discovers Ellen is arrested for the death of her husband, Burt. ( I would have declare it justifiable homicide). However Perry believes there is more to this case than just what was presented by the DA's office and set out to find the truth.

And the truth will come to a shock for many people. When Perry and Paul set an almost comical trap at LA Memorial Coliseum after a Wildcat football game.. When the results of the trap are revealed- there will be gasping in the gallery.

The acting in this episode is top notch. Bill Williams, the wife of Barabra Hale, is again cast in one of Perry's mysteries. Bill does a great job of being the hated drunk man. His casting was perfect for this show.

Mona Freeman, as Ellen, is also a good cast. She is one the viewer can connect with in order to make the story more interesting.

But make sure you stay for the ending. It will clear up a very muddy river of accusations.

Wildcatters

[zsenorsock · 7/10 · 13 August 2008]

Perry gets a call in the middle of the night from Ellen Payne (Mona Freeman in one of her last performances) an old friend who owns the local football team the LA Wildcats (complete with Roman Gabriel and several other LA Rams!). Only Ellen is on a train on her way to LA and cannot complete the call. When Perry goes to meet Ellen's train he discovers there's been a fire on board and her husband, the drunken ex-football player Burt Payne (Barbara Hale's real-life husband Bill Williams) has been killed. Ellen is charged with the murder and Perry rushes in to find the real culprit.

There's a lot to like about this episode--the way the scene between lawyer and client is shot showing only their eyes, the location filming at the Colisium, the resolution of the case. But there's also some odd stuff: there's virtually no attempt to give the train cars any movement when the train is in motion, making for a very static and unconvincing shot; Berger wants Perry tailed so they have Lt. Drumm (someone instantly recognizable to Perry) follow him?; Berger is warned several times by the judge for his personal attacks on Mason--I thought they kind of developed a mutual respect years ago. What touched him off so much in this story? But Burr, Hale and the guest cast is in fine form, notably Mona Freeman. One wonders why she would ever have been attracted to a loudmouth loser like Payne the way Williams portrays him, and one doubts he could ever think of the things he comes up with, but it doesn't distract much from the enjoyment of the episode.

Lots of Memories for Football Fans

[harloon-68278 · 9/10 · 3 October 2020]

The members of the football team in this episode were actually members of the LA Rams - footballers playing footballers. They didn't have much dialogue but they had screen credit for depicting themselves

Relatively good episode

[fbm72751 · 9/10 · 15 May 2017]

For Los Angeles Rams football fans, this episode has some minor historical significance as there are several cameos by the 1965 Rams. The team would have a poor season in '65 but that would change the following year and the nucleus of this team would go on to a 7 year competitive streak. One close up shot is of signal caller Roman Gabriel who would lead the team during those years.

The irony of this episode is several aspects of it would actually come true a little less that 14 years later when the real LA Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom died in a supposed drowning and the team would get a lady owner, being his widow Georgia Frontiere. That year they would go on to the Super Bowl.

There have been some theories over the years that Rosenbloom's death was not accidental but 38 years later nothing has ever been proved otherwise.

Beautiful Mona Freeman was excellently cast as both the widow and suspect and she really does look like a football team owner!

Okay, now I get it

[michaelprescott-00547 · 8/10 · 27 May 2021]

When I originally reviewed this episode in 2021, I found it confusing. I wrote: //It's possible I've missed something ... but (BIG SPOILER) if the man who "died in the fire" actually faked his own death, then where did the human remains at the scene of the fire come from?//

Having seen it again, I can only say, "Man, am I dumb." Because the answer is very clear (here comes another big spoiler). Judson Warner, the guy who supposedly disappeared with all that cash, is the dead body on the train, the one mistaken for Burt Payne.

With that cleared up in my foggy brain, I can appreciate the episode for its surprising plot twist at the end, and for the unusually intense battles between Perry and Ham Burger. Though I'm a bit skeptical that ol' Burt could dream up, much less pull off, such a complex scheme.

Interesting case

[daviddax · 8/10 · 9 May 2021]

Who really died in the fire? Maybe someone can reveal the answer.

Terrible Special Effects

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 1 March 2022]

Perry gets involved in football. Obviously, in 1965, things weren't what they are today. But a pro football team traveling to a championship game on a train. Also, there seems to be more animosity between Mason and Burger than I've seen in eight seasons. Sort of dumb, anything goes, ending.

Good episode

[lucyrfisher · 8/10 · 24 June 2022]

The Wildcats are taking the train to a match while the part-owner of the team drinks heavily in the bar. Footballers are played excellently by real footballers - and one can play the harmonica too. Bill Williams does a skilled drunk act - instead of slurring and stumbling like many less good actors he sways and harangues and insists on singing an old college song before collapsing. Just HOW skilled is the act we only discover later... After he has been burned to a crisp in a fire set off by a 25lb bag of a chemical used for preserving butterfly specimens which his lepidopterist wife has left in his cabin.

His wife is fingered for the murder, but Steve, Perry, Della and Paul are on the case.

Your honor I object to this! Mr. Mason is taking off on another one of his grandstand exhibitions!

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 3 May 2013]

***SPOILERS*** One for the books Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, episode with the murder victim part or minority owner of the football Wildcats Burt Payne, Bill Williams, such a pain in the behind and despicable swine as well as being Barbara Hale's, who plays Della Street, real life husband that you just couldn't wait for his demise which couldn't came ,within the first ten minutes of the show,soon enough. After insulting and humiliating almost everyone in the cast Burt took a quite cat nap in the sleeping car on the Glandale to L.A Express and ended up getting a hotfoot that immolated him. With Burt's abused wife Ellen, Mona Freeman, who as the last person to see him alive quickly arrested in his "murder" the Payne's lawyer Perry Mason gets on the case to prove her innocence.

Perry who usually love this kind of stuff, getting an innocent man or woman off on a fake murder charge,seems a bit taken back in who was Burt's murderer. In that Perry feels like almost everyone but Burt himself, who's not around to give an opinion,that he got exactly what he deserved. The guy screwed everyone he came in contact with so his fiery death showed that there is true justice in the world. But the totally surprise and mind numbing ending completely dispelled that.

***SPOILERS**** More like some kind of whacked out novelty then anything else this Perry Mason episode seemed so contrived that the writers, as well as Perry, realized that they had a turkey on their hands and did their best to end it as fast as possible. The best hope that they could have had was that everyone watching it either fell asleep or turned off the TV set so they wouldn't be around to see the ending and sue the TV studio for suffering serious brain and emotional damage in watching it!