Perry Mason - La dame du lac

Perry Mason: The Case of the Lady in the Lake finds America's most formidable defense attorney taking on David Hasselhoff as a client who is being accused of the murder of his wife. Hasselhoff is a retired tennis player now just hanging on in the tennis circles and is thought to have just married wife Doran Clark for her money. Everyone that is but family attorney John Ireland who retains Perry on behalf of Hasselhoff.

There's another part to this story, when they were teenagers Clark and her sister were kidnapped and thrown in the lake by the suspect just before a shootout with the local sheriff and his posse. The suspect was killed, the sister drowned and her body never recovered, and Clark was traumatized. It took her years to resume a normal life. And now her body is thought to be in the same lake.

The cases are indeed connected in a complicated scheme worked out by the murderer and an accomplice. The ending is a bit of a variation on the Perry Mason format. But Mason fans can rest assured that Hasselhoff didn't kill his wife. Perry just doesn't defend the guilty.

With an intricate twist in the plot and outcome, The Case of the Lady in the Lake is one of the better Mason films. Good, but don't expect Raymond Chandler either.