User Reviews

"The Case of the Capering Camera" is a decent seventh season episode of "Perry Mason." The episode is notable in that both Karyn Kupcinet and Ray Collins-Lt. Tragg himself-make their final appearances. Indeed, when the episode aired on 16 January 1964, Ms. Kupcinet, like Judy Tyler before her (in Season One), was already dead.

And both ladies' last appearance, like that of Mr. Collins', is a good episode.

The case essentially involves a photographer and blackmail, and we have a situation involving two weapons being switched, one being the murder weapon. There's a good chase scene at the beginning, showing Los Angeles at night some time in the latter part of 1963.

On the whole, a decent entry, and good final appearance for an aging Ray Collins. He is clearly looking haggard here, but it's clear he remains a trouper!

This is gonna be brief. I think that almost everyone is missing the main turn in this episode. The defendant is not bellowing threats, lying to Perry, pushing people around or proving that she is "Dumb as a Mud Fence". She tried to save her sister from a blackmailer, and when things went wrong, went to Perry with her side of things. Diametrically opposed to the normal client of the model of legal Mensa (as I've said before, he is a genius), whose interests are almost always fouled with their own failure to respect the truth. I forget which episode it was in which Della said "The truth will out", but it stands; at least in our desire for justice, if not in life. I liked this one a lot. As usual, the acting is what deserves the attention of the audience; it's some of the best possible. As far as Karyn Kupcinec's murder, it is interesting to read what they DO know about her last time on earth, and saddens us for her loss.

****SPOILERS*** Going to see fashion model photographer Jacob Kandar, Eric Eldary, at his studio one evening model Judith Blair, Margo Moore, gets into a dispute with him over a number of photos he took of her kid sister Penny, Karyn Kupcinet, in very revealing cheesecake poses some time ago. Penny who's husband Norman Ames, Mark Dempsey, is up for an ambassadorship in the US State Department chances will be nil if it's found out that his wife pose nude or semi nude with the photos in Kadar's possession for him to blackmail her with.

Pulling out a gun on Kandar and threatening to shoot him if he doesn't give her the photos and negative of her sister Penny a shot rings out of nowhere and kills Kandar! It's later determined by the police that Kandar in fact killed himself. With all the evidence pointing to suicide Judith still goes to see attorney Perry Mason instead and tells him that Kander was in fact murdered and she was at the scene of his murder!

Perry faced with the dilemma of client attorney privilege in not reporting the crime of his client Judith Blair to the police as well as having to uphold the law is saved from that when with new evidence Judith is later arrested in Kandar's murder. It's then that Perry gets to work in finding Judith innocent and the key is that it's been discovered by Perry that two guns were involved in Kandar's murder! One with real bullets and the other with blanks. But what turned out to be the real reason for Kandar's murder is that he was not only going to use the nude photos of young models, who are now making big bucks in the fashion model and TV and film industry, to blackmail them but also blackmail the person whom Kandar had secretly worked with who set them up as well!

Unique Perry Mason episode known mostly for it being the last time it had actor Ray Collins as police Lt. Artur Tragg in it. Collins who at once had a photographic memory was already losing his mind, because of senility or Alzheimer's disease, in not being able to remember his lines and was no longer able to preform on screen: Even with dozens if not hundreds of takes and retakes that cost the CBS TV studio both time and money.

And there's also the unsolved murder of actress Karyn Kupcinet who played Penny Ames in the Perry Mason episode that turned out to be her last TV or film performance. It has been suspected that Karyn who's father Ivr was a top columnist for the Chicago Sun Times and had personally known JFK's accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's killer Jack Ruby. It's been suspected by many JFK assassination conspiracy writers that she had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination that ended up costing her life! And in fact it's been reported that Karyn revealed that in a mysterious telephone call some 20 minutes before JFK was killed on November 22, 1963. Karyn was found murdered a week later in her Hollywood home on Thansgiving night November 28,1963. And her murder still now some 50 years later was never solved.