A bland script makes THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE more of a curiosity rather than a good Perry Mason film. WARREN WILLIAM is the famous sleuth and CLAIRE DODD is a blond Della Street, the secretary always one step ahead of her boss. This time the action centers on the mysterious death of a man called Gregory Moxley (ERROL FLYNN in what amounts to a bit role). He is talked about but not seen until the last few minutes when the mystery is wrapped up.MARGARET LINDSAY is the damsel in distress who calls upon Mason to help solve the mystery.What makes this curious is why they didn't write the Moxley role into the script, given that they had Flynn under contract and would soon be grooming him for stardom. He makes his debut as a corpse lying on the floor beneath a sheet! DONALD WOODS has the leading supporting role, but the story is never involving enough to maintain suspense. ALLEN JENKINS overplays his Paul Drake role.Surprisingly, Michael Curtiz was the man behind the camera--but the script is the real problem.

"The Case of the Curious Bride" is one of the Perry Mason films of the 1930s that starred Warren William as Perry. Erle Stanley Gardner hated these films with a passion. His 1930s Perry in the books was a passionate young man given to intense speeches. He mellowed later on, of course, and it was Gardner himself who saw Burr at the audition for Hamilton Burger and said, "That's Perry Mason." (The original star of the series was supposed to be Fred MacMurray.) So it's easy to see why Gardner despised everything about this particular Mason incarnation.Regardless of how Gardner felt, this film is a lot of fun, thanks to a breezy performance by Warren William, who flirts shamelessly with every woman who crosses his path and fools the DA time and time again. The dialogue is fast and witty, and Curtiz keeps the action going at a breakneck speed. Allan Jenkins is Paul Drake like you've never seen him - Perry calls him Spudsy -- and Della is the beautiful Clare Dodd. Margaret Lindsay is the woman Perry is defending, who comes to him with a marital problem, i.e., the husband she thought was dead is alive - at first. Later, he winds up dead, in the person of...Errol Flynn in his first American appearance - and his wife is accused. Flynn doesn't have much to do except appear in flashback. For some reason, instead of Los Angeles, the story is set in San Francisco - more atmosphere, perhaps.William seems to have had the same approach to this character as he had for Philo Vance and the Sam Spade character he played in Satan Met a Lady, but he's so delightful, it doesn't matter. He always looks like he's having a blast, and the audience does too. Hard to believe that until he hit B movies in the mid-'30s, he generally played heavies, but he did, and played them well. When his leading man days were over, he continued in character roles until his death in 1948. How great that we can see his talent now on Turner Classic Movies.This film is a great reminder that during the Depression, Hollywood gave audiences films that to enjoy and watch to forget their troubles for awhile. I'm not in the Depression per se; I'm just depressed, but "The Case of the Curious Bride" put a smile on my face. It will yours, too.

this is a well directed film with clever dialog and a not so great story line . the acting is more than adequate. Allen Jenkins , warren William , warren hymer and Olin Howard play their stock characters with their usual aplomb.i was especially interested in the scenes of san Francisco in the early thirties without the bay or golden gate bridges.the screen writers obviously enjoyed themselves ie.naming a flop house hotel in south san Francisco the "fremont hotel" as a play on the plush "fairmont" hotel on knob hill.the film also is noted as Errol Flynn's first appearance in an American film wherein he played a stiff which some might consider a precursor of his acting style.

This is the only Warren William Perry Mason movie I've seen so far, and I thought it was a lot of fun! It gallops along at a breakneck pace, partly thanks to its super-kinetic (and rather disorienting) editing. William and Dodd bring a really delicious tongue-in-cheek camaraderie to the roles of Perry and Della, while Mayo Methot (was she already married to Bogart?)has a lot of fun with the small part of Florabelle. The coroner is not to be missed, by the way!It is fascinating to see what a different interpretation of the character of Perry Mason William gives; he seems to be drawing as much on his previous performance as Philo Vance as on anything in the books. Naturally, this makes him nothing at all like Raymond Burr's Mason. (And he's in San Francisco, by the way, not Los Angeles.) I certainly missed the gravitas and moral authority that Burr gave the part, but William is hilarious and highly professional, pulling off a performance not unlike that of a drunken tightrope walker working without a net with aplomb and smooth daring-do.The murder (of Errol Flynn, no less!) is incidental.