Perry Mason The Case of the Velvet Claws (1957–1966) watch online HD

This may not have been the best Perry Mason episode, but it is sure one of the wildest going. Perry does not even get to court on this one. But he does give zealous representation to his client Patricia Barry who if she can't get acquitted one way, she'd even frame Raymond Burr for the murder of her husband Richard Webb.

She might have even known that Burr had a client who committed suicide over over items printed in Spicy Bits (read Confidential). She was out stepping on her husband and she got caught at it. Her husband is getting ready to fling her out anyway and in fact he owns the rag. So when he winds up shot to death, she's an A Number 1 suspect. Good thing Barry has a good lawyer.

The ending is something more out of an Agatha Christie story or a Thin Man movie when everyone gathers at the scene of the crime and Raymond Burr tells them he will and then reveals all.

Get them acquitted any way you can.

Eva Belter (Patricia Barry) hires Perry to keep a tabloid gossip magazine from running a picture of her and congressional candidate Harrison Burke (James Philbrook). Soon Perry discovers the tabloid is actually owned by Belter's husband, George. When George turns up dead, Eva says she swears she saw the man who ran away from the scene of the crime...Perry Mason! This is a rare episode in many ways. For one, they never manage to get to a courtroom. For another, Perry gets a (awkward) kiss from Eva at the end of the episode and its not exactly sisterly. Perry also has an adversarial relationship with his own client for much of the episode.

Unfortunately, the show suffers from what seems to be a recurring season six problem: the casting of an unsympathetic, annoying actress as the woman Perry is supposed to defend. Patricia Barry chews up the scenery but good as she goes from hysterical to angry. Sometimes this sort of thing can be amusing. Not here. You want Anderson to take Burke away and stick her in solitary before too long. If Mason ever lost a case, this one might have been one worth losing.

Virginia Gregg puts in her usual good performance as a red herring housekeeper and Anna-Lisa is cute as her beautiful daughter, but their effort is in vain.

I don't think I ever have seen a Mason client more worthy of being convicted by Hamilton Burger and sent to the gas chamber, if only for her duplicity and artifice. What saves her behind is, this show never makes it to court. Andy Anderson (Wesley Lau) puts in a great performance here, thinking the evidence is pat but beginning to have his doubts as Eva Belter (I would have loved to do so!) laid on one, then another layer of lies to the story...until even he decided Mason had it figured out, and decided to hear him out. The denouement to the story was a bit of a curve ball. Regular viewers of this series may put their finger on the real killer, and the mastermind behind the events which transpired. (It's up to you, to figure out whether the killer and the mastermind were the same person.)

Miss Barry should have been a villain on Batman - and may have been, three years down the road. From the very start of the show, she connives, manipulates and flat-out lies her way through the entire show. (One thing I did find rather amusing,though, was Della Street's obvious disdain for this transparently-fake woman.) I was tired of her by the third time I heard her call Mason "Perry!" in that saccharine voice. Another ten minutes of this and I would have shot her, myself.

A lot of the reviews here seem to miss the point. This was a very funny show.

Patricia Barry shines as a conniving wife and suspect who lies with abandon and even tried to frame Perry for the murder. Unlike the usual wilting flowers and goody good guys, Barry's Eva is a manipulative force of nature. She is so mendacious that Perry clearly suspects she's guilty as sin, and it's not even clear that she is actually a client, though Perry lets her think she is despite the fact he is much more concerned with who did the murder, and quite ready to believe it's her. I half expected that it WAS her, and that Perry would say, as she's hauled away, "I never said I'd represent you. I said, 'SUPPOSE I represented you...'" And Della is a gas to watch - she convey more through her silences and skeptical looks than any words could, and she owns every scene she's in.

So many people here were disappointed that it wasn't a bog standard episode. But it wasn't. It was much, much more.

No matter how strange the plot or story is, it's the character as played by the actors that pulls the show along to a satisfying conclusion. Patricia Barry is very good looking, and she is a good actress, but her character is just too conniving and too willing to throw anyone else to the wolves for me. I mean, when even the still waters of Della's personality are roiled, well, .... I can't say I liked it.

My rating is based on the standards I would apply to a theatrical film. Considered as a TV show, it would rank slightly higher.

The story is taken from the first Perry Mason novel. It seems strange Jackson Gillis waited six seasons to adapt it. But, as other reviewers have pointed out, Eva Belter (what a name!) is not merely unlikeable, but seriously annoying. It's amazing no one defenestrates her. It's even stranger that Mason represents her, even when it's obvious she's lying. (Gillis should have added a scene with Perry telling Della why he's not certain she did it.)

I suspect Mr Gillis left it sitting on the back burner until he felt comfortable in adapting what is, for TV's Perry Mason, an odd and uncomfortable story. It does, however, provide welcome variation in a formulaic TV series.

With most 'Perry Mason' episodes, we get a person that has been wrongly accused of a crime and they come to Perry for help. The viewer feels a connection with the client as anyone would when being wrongly accused of a crime. This episode goes against the grain. We get a obnoxious backstabbing vixen that does everything but tell the truth as she makes her way of trying to protect herself and bring down everyone else. The viewer is left feeling more dislike for Perry's client which in-turn produces an almost dislike for the entire script.

When Eva Belter is photograph leaving a speak-easy with a politician, she goes to Perry to try to put a stop to the story that is suppose to run in the local gossip paper called 'Spicy Bits'. Eva puts on a show as a little sweet victim and Perry agrees to take the case. But Eva left out one small bit of news- she is married to the owner of 'Spicy Bits'.

One evening Perry gets a call from Eva saying that her husband had been murdered. Eva gives another one of those performances that only a mother could believe- as she tries to get Perry to rid the scene of the gun. In fact she goes as far as indicating that Perry may have had something to do with the murder and she is willing to go to the police.

For some reason Perry continues to represent this chick as she lies, covers-up and conceals any evidence that will help solve this crime. Perry is very suspicious that his client is the true murderer and hopes to prove the fact before taking the entire case to court.

For the second episode in a row, we get a client that the viewer cannot relate. There is no pity for Eva and her world of lies which makes for an unpopular show. And with a ending that is so far out in left-field that some would say is across the street from the stadium, the show mercifully comes to an uninteresting close. Not one of the better mysteries.

***SPOILERS*** Perry Mason, Raymond Burr,plays a private detective or Philip Marlow type character in this episode uncovering a murder that he in fact was set up in taking the rap for. And even stranger it's Perry's client the daffy and a bit off the reservation Eva Belter, Patricia Barry, who's the one who sets Perry up! Desperately wanting Perry to keep a photo taken of her and Congressman Harrison Burke, James Philbrook, sneaking out of an illegal gambling den from becoming public Eva keeps the real truth from Perry in what she really wants from him. Her husband George C. Belter, Richard Webb,is the owner of the yellow rag and sleazy supermarket tabloid "Spicy Bits" who's destroyed many a persons lives in both blackmailing and exposing their secret lives that's going to publish the incriminating photo. And if George C. finds out that Eva was in the photo with the congressman they'll be hell to pay on her part!

As things turn out the very violent hot tempered and quick with his fists George C., who's always seen working out in his private gym, at first tried to get his goons to work Perry over is later found shot to death in his home with all the leads to his murder leading straight to Perry Mason's door: courtesy of his crazy client Eva Belter! Still for some crazy reason on his part Perry decides to defend Eva whom he knows is really a bit nuts but may know who her husbands killer is! Even though she now, for reasons known only to herself, admits to shooting him. But Perry is so interested in solving her husband's murder that he lets the fact of Eva's confession, that he feels is total BS, slip by him!

Don't bother to try to figure out the ending of this Perry Mason episode because I don't think that even Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlow could figure it out themselves. That's just how off the wall and confusing it is. Just watch and enjoy seeing Perry out of his league playing a private dick who couldn't find an elephant in a telephone booth even if his life depended on it. Yet he's able with the help of the show's screen writers to solve this baffling murder case but it's up to us in the audience to figure out just how Perry solved it! And what the killer of Geroge C. Belter's motive in murdering him was! Because it's never fully explained in the episode not just by Perry but the killer, who when exposed did a good job in doing a number facial distortions and impersonations of comic book hero "Plastic Man", himself!

And she does it perfectly!

I think we've all known women who were in real life exactly how Eve Belter is here. I've know many. Which was why I could almost predict what was happening in this episode, this crazy woman was trying to cover all of her escape routes, in doing so, traps herself into a corner. But worse yet, she abuses Perry's trust.

This is one of the Erle Stalney Gardner ones.

You can always tell when an episode has his stamp on it, because it is generally about 50 times crazier than a regular Perry Mason episode.

It's not that Perry is a simmering, boiling pressure cooker that will eventually explode, it's that when he does explode, he knows exactly how to do it.

But the difference between a TV ESG Episode and the original book is this: The book would have used phrases and linguistics not allowed by the overly religious TV censors of the time. But this particular episode manages to bypass these restrictions with great direction and writing and, of course, script supervision probably by Cosmo Genevese (who was also the script supervisor for Star Trek: The Next Generation 29 years later, and then even 8 years after that, he worked for Voyager and even had a character "Cosimo" named after him on that show).

I'm not even done with this episode but this woman's performance was so great I had to write this all down while it was fresh. This episode fools you, you think Perry has reached a solution and that all that is left is the denouement, but in fact there is a nice surprise twist at the ending, and it's just one of those Erle Stanley Gardner things that explains everything.

Wesley Lau has pretty much taken over for Ray Collins at this point, don't know if Ray is in any more episodes this season.

These episodes also serve as a time capsule of the year and month when they were broadcast, Perry is driving a wonderful Lincoln Continental with the rear doors that swing opposite of the front doors.

I signed in to IMDb just to review this particular Perry Mason episode. I've read the other reviews, and I can only half agree with the lot, but after watching these episodes now for the last forty plus years, the who, what, where, why, and how these stories unfold is no longer the issue. Now I see the depth of character development, the waning interest in the principle p[layers over the years, and the adherence of the writers to the changing influence in tastes of the sixties culture. I have to say, this particular episode has remained one of my very favorites, if not for the spectacle of Patricia Barry, then the interesting and unique situation Perry faces. I loved the first couple of years or so of this series; every once in a while a gem of an episode emerges. Oh, the web of lies this woman spins and expects Perry to swallow, which he doesn't; but where I think some reviewers get it wrong is why he continues with this less than compliant client. He states it at the beginning of the episode, and he states it at the end. He is far more interested in shutting down Spicy Bits, than proving his client innocent. We see a master manipulator work his way through his client to the end point of getting what he wanted all along. Anyway, that is my take on this episode. Again, a unique one for the series, and a must watch if not for Patricia Barry's histrionics.