***SPOILERS*** Trying to become a respectable journalist despite working for a supermarket tabloid like the Confidential Informer reporter Michelle Benti, Susan Wilder, has this big story that she's dying to write about a major nursing home scandal that her boss the sleazy and unethical owner of the paper Harlem Wade, Robert Guillaume, is dead set against. It may very well be that Wade being the lowlife creep that he is may be a silent partner in the nursing homes that Michelle want's to report on and doesn't want the cat to come out of the bag in implicating him as well as the nursing home owners in bilking the old folks out of their life savings.
By not doing her job in digging up dirt on celebrities like her boss Wade wants her to and insisting to go full-tilt on reporting the nursing home scandal has Michelle get her walking papers from the Confidential Informer courtesy of her boss Harlem Wade. This later leads to an explosive confrontation between Michelle and Wade that evening outside the Wade Mansion by his swimming pool. Mchelle after giving Wade a piece of her mind and then driving away, at 70 MPH in a 50 MPH speed zone, Wade's body is later found dead by his head of security Nick Mortetti, Eugene Butler, with his skull split open floating in his swimming pool. Michelle in her being the last person to see Wade alive and not having anything good to say to him is later picked up by the police as the #1 suspect in Wade's murder.
Indited for the cold-blooded murder of Harlem Wade has Michelle's boyfriend Paul Drake, William Katt, get the person he works for as a private detective defense attorney Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, to defend in her upcoming murder trial. Perry soon finds out that whoever killed Harlem Wade deserves a medal and a ticker tape parade down Broadway not a jail sentence. Being the insensitive and ruthless creep that he was Wade hardly gets any sympathy from anyone in the movie but being that he had the goods, that he was going to publish in his rag, in his office safe on a number of important people in the news their all suspected in his murder including All-American hero the blood & guts and grab the enemy by the nuts General Sorenson,Yaphet Kotto.
As Drake is about to open, with a warrant from the court, Wade's office safe he's attacked by a guy with a silk stocking pulled over his head who's later identified as the Animal, Dennis Hayden, who works him over and then escapes with Wade's hot-file on a number of prominent people. Whoever paid the Animal to do this is obviously using that information to blackmail those in the hot-file that he stole. After being again confronted by the Animal and almost getting run over as well as getting his teeth kicked out Drake finally tracks down who hired the Anamil and it's non-other then reported Nick Connors, Dan Cooper, of the Confidential Informer the very paper that Michelle used to work for!
Rick heavily in debt hired the Animal to steal the files in order to blackmail for as much as $100,000.00 apiece each of those persons in them but only ended up getting the hell beat out of him by a group of tugs hired by international banker Oscar Otega, Rene Enriquez. Ortega was implicated in Wade's files for laundering drug and mob money through his bank. At Michelle's trial Perry Mason goes on a fishing expedition in not really knowing which of the persons that Harlem Wade was screwing was the one that did the sleaze-ball in!
***SPOILER ALERT*** It takes a while for Perry to come up, after almost being slapped with a charge of contempt by the trial judge, with someone who was not in Wade's hot-files at all but who in fact did in the gun-toting and obnoxious Wade in self-defense as he tried to shoot him the evening he was found dead floating in his swimming pool!
This is the only Perry Mason episode or TV movie where the killer was probably the real hero with him doing away someone, Harlem Wade, who really got exactly what was coming to him. In fact Wade got just what he deserved since he was about to kill his intended victim, with no provocation on his part, who ended up turning the tables on him! I for one feel that Wade's killer would have gone free, maybe he did at the conclusion of his trial, if he just stood up and told the truth about his actions which in anyone's mind who saw the movie were totally justified!
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