Perry Mason: The Complete Movie Collection

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

To be clear, I give Perry Mason, all Perry Mason, five stars. This is about the set, not the content.

What you need to know here is as follows:

First, the thirty films appear here, unedited, just as you remember, or, if you are like me and still have a VCR and old tapes, as you are used to seeing.

Second, the quality is on par with bootleg DVDs recorded off of premium cable mystery networks, not that anyone would ever buy such a thing but we all have friends who magically possess such things. To clarify, the picture is, essentially, a clean, largely unblemished picture, that is by no definition clear and bears striking resemblance to a VHS tape being upscaled by an HD television set or a digital streaming copy of a film you know to have only ever been released in 4:3 on VHS. The picture is marred in identical ways to VHS recordings that have been transferred to digital format for Amazon Video viewing, right down to the slight fading line that can be seen on several films over on the right side of the 4:3 picture.

Third, while these were filmed to be 4:3, with intent, as they were telefilms, they were filmed. The fact that the source material was not resurrected for transfer is horrifying but that source material was, for the record, not resurrected. These are actually, though they look like upscaled 280 VHS images, from the 480 resolution television masters. That having been said, the original film could have been transferred in high definition, had they wanted to bother with it.

Fourth, for anyone who doesn’t know, these are the same discs that appeared in the volume sets and have no special features or differences in picture or audio quality.

I evaluated two sets, as one had damaged discs, and can say that the picture is consistent across most of the films as the original source elements were clearly degrading. The last few films have significantly better picture as they were, simply, not as old. The lines down the right side of some films appeared identical on both sets and were consistent as to when and where they appeared. There were no significant sound distortions or problems but the sound is fainter than you will be used to if you are used to higher quality DVDs and lower quality Blu-Rays. If you are used to high quality Blu-Rays (me), you will be annoyed that they didn’t try harder with these releases.

– Rae

This collection contains all 30 Perry Mason movies in one set. The first nine movies have William Katt playing Paul Drake, Jr., a private investigator like his father but he likes the business better than is father did and then the rest have William R. Moses playing Ken Malansky, who is a law student who is accused of murder and represented by Perry and then he becomes an associate and law partner able to try cases and even ask witnesses questions while on the stand. He also does the investigating for each case. Raymond Burr is in all but the last four movies due to passing away and The first movie without him has Paul Sorvino playing Anthony Caruso a friend of Mason’s who brings five ex-wives together and has to find out which one is a killer. The last three have Hal Halbrook playing Wild Bill McKenzie and works with Malansky to find the truth and keep the innocent out of jail and bring justice to those who are guilty.

– rdaaamg

When it was announced back in 1985 that Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale would be reprising their roles as Perry Mason and Della Street in a new series of “Perry Mason” TV movies I was ecstatic. Even though I was a bit too young to have enjoyed the original series during its prime time run from 1957 to 1966 I had become a huge fan when the series moved into syndication in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. I simply could not get enough of this compelling, well-written series. Beginning with “Perry Mason Returns” in the autumn of 1985 these classy two hour films became “must see” TV for me. I saw each and every one of them.

-Paul Tognetti

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Format: Box set, Color, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Number of discs: 15
Rated: NR – Not Rated
Studio: Paramount
DVD Release Date: August 9, 2016