The Case of the Unwelcome Well

Perry Mason had no business drawing up the original legal contract between the property owner's wife and oil exploration company without consultation or signature of the husband. It was also a terrible contract in that exploration rights were assigned for a 10 year period. GIven the ederly husband, a shorter time frame contract would allow the man to enjoy the profits while alive. Mason should have been disbarred over this one.

We're rapidly getting close to the end, and it shows. This story can be summed up pretty well in one word: Greed. The circumstances in this particular tome are pretty far-fetched. While it starts off okay, it starts to unravel fairly quickly. Trying too hard, the writers have turned many of the players here into caricatures. An old hick rancher, his too-young and pretty wife, a diabolical oil man and a middle-eastern potentate get into a tangle that only the likes of Perry Mason can sort out. A few surprises lurk within, and of course justice wins out and leads to a happy ending. Isn't TV wonderful..?

A previous poster said Mason should have been disbarred over substandard legal work and poor ethics. LOL! He should have been disbarred for improper courtroom procedures and unethical investigations before the series even started! It's obvious Erle Stanley Gardner and the writers of this show never studied law or set foot in a real courtroom. (I don't think the writers ever studied writing - the idiotic dialogue throughout the series supports that theory). Just too funny! (But, Della looks fetching in this one)

Although this was not the best Perry Mason episode ever done, it certainly provided one of the meanest villains that Raymond Burr was ever employed by. Wendell Corey who if you take what Kirk Douglas says in his memoirs at face value was very much like his character he played here.

Corey is a wealthy oil millionaire who has no redeeming civic virtues like say the Rockefeller family. He endows no money anywhere I'd be willing to bet, I'd further bet his tax deductions were a fraud because as he says all he wants to acquire is all the money there is.

He's employed Perry Mason to negotiate a lease on Paul Brinegar and Gloria Talbott's land to drill for oil. Truth be told Brinegar and Talbott started spending money that wasn't their's yet because of the oil under the ground. They're facing ruin because Corey decides to cap the well and save the oil for later as he has a ten year option. Not helping to pay Brinegar's bills and Perry Mason feels used.

Corey is a guy who likes to make enemies for the sake and we have a cast full of suspects. The head of his drilling operation on the Brinegar land, James Best is the one arrested for his murder and Raymond Burr defends him as his obligation to Corey as a client ceased when Corey ceased breathing.

Kirk Douglas's memoirs The Ragman's Son describes the fact that at one time he and Corey had a good friendship, but politics and drinking drove them apart. Not just that Corey was a Republican, but he was going further and further to the right in his views. It cut him off a great deal from liberal Hollywood and Kirk says few came to his funeral. He came out of his respect for Corey's widow who he says suffered a great deal with Corey.

Still Wendell Corey dominates this episode playing a man that Will Rogers could hate with ease.

Others have already pointed out some of the stuff that just wouldn't pass muster. I also wondered who fired the rifle in the assassination attempt on Klee. Otherwise, the fact that Klee was a megalomaniac trumped just about everything. When you have someone for whom money is the only motivator, It's hard to come up with human motivations. This one ultimately gets down to hatred for a person with little soul.