The Case of the Fugitive Fraulein

I was surprised that the other three reviewers gave this episode a good review. I am an addicted fan of Perry Mason and had high expectations of this episode but was very disappointed. Bottom line, this episode fell well short of the usual standards I have come to expect from the program.

To begin with, the script was naive and implausible. It was obviously an attempt to exploit the cold war tensions that existed between the east and west at that time. Good idea but very badly handled. There are just too many plot defects to even try to list.

All the fake accents were bad enough but what made it a complete farce was the court hearing being conducted entirely in English. Even if all those East Germans involved could speak English .... next to impossible at that time... they would speak German in a German court, and Perry would have had to utilize an interpreter.

Had the plot been even remotely believable, I could have overlooked that glaring defect, but it wasn't. There was little regard for what we Americans take for granted as justice in East Germany. There was essentially no concept of the right to a fair trial. Being accused of a crime was usually sufficient cause for being imprisoned or facing a firing squad. Thus the lame attempt to depict an American style trial in a communist bloc country was bad enough. But to do so in English.... laughable.

Another very bad episode due to the director - 99% and writers 1%. Every episode that Marks directed was badly done. The actors were not believable from start to finish.

I'm not sure if I can pan this one any worse than any of the other reviewers have -- the whole storyline would have been impossible in the Cold War timeline of East Germany. None of the characters here are the least bit believable, the court scenes are a joke, and apparently the E German psychologists are the dumbest people on the planet (from the country that was attempting to lure the best of the best in every profession). The melodramatic solution was not only completely unrealistic, but would never have occurred at the time (at least in the presence of a Western enemy). The ending was far too saccharine but it fit in with the rest of the ridiculousness. Preposterous on its face...

Perry takes on the commies in this dated episode as he travels to East Germany to dish out some justice- Mason Style.

Professor Hans Ritter (Wolfe Barzell) and his wife Emma Ritter (Jeanette Nolan) have been contacted by the East Berlin authorities that their grand-daughter is in a orphanage. And if Prof. Ritter agrees to return to East Germany they will release the child to Emma so that she may live in the United States.

The Ritter's contact Perry to see if he could help in the exchange of the child. Perry does not agree with the decision for Prof. Ritter to return so he goes over to East Berlin to help negotiate a a better deal and to also prove that the child in indeed their grand-daughter.

And because the Ritters did not take Perry's advise- Prof. Ritter is in the hands of East Germany and Ms Ritter is in the East Berlin Jail accused of murder. Plus the child is still in the orphanage. So it went from bad to worse.

However through some nifty work, Perry is able to make everyone in the NATO region happy and everyone in East Berlin disappointed.

I am sure that at the height of the 'cold war' that this episode played well to viewers. But for todays audiences it played as well as watching a silent movie. It was not a bad script but just so out-dated and unreal. It was so far-fetched that at times seemed almost comical. About the only thing interesting was trying to find out who in the crew was providing information about the Ritters to the East Berlin authorities. Other than that we knew at the beginning how this was going to end.

Not one of the better episodes.

In this episode Perry Mason takes on a client in a different venue than the Los Angeles County Court. The clients are Wolfe Barzell and Jeanette Nolan who are after their granddaughter whom they've never met and who is behind the Iron Curtain. She's being used by the East German government to leverage a defection east by scientist Barzell.

The People's Court in East Germany does not have the protections of one in where the Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence is used. And he's up against a ruthless public prosecutor in Gregory Morton. Still when Nolan of all people is accused of murdering one of those Ugarte like scoundrels played by Ronald Long, Mason if not actually in the court itself where he has a much limited role in that rigged system does prove who actually did the deed.

Perry Mason still triumphs in a rigged system. And beats the Communists at a propaganda game. Who could ask for more?