GManfred I liked this one because it was mysterious - and mysteries should be mysterious, don't you think? Lots of pictures billed as mysteries really aren't, especially when they give away the murderer too soon. That doesn't happen with "The Howling Dog", which goes right down to the wire before all is revealed. Warren William makes his debut in this, the very first Perry Mason movie, He is very good, especially with his authoritative, stentorian voice. Most everyone else is just a supporting cast member, including Mary Astor, who is better than the rest.Warning: if you watch this movie, pay attention! You will be lost if you get up and go to the fridge, as the plot is intricate and can be a chore to follow. There are two couples involved but they become so intertwined you will need a road map to keep things straight. There a couple of curves and knuckleballs toward the end - information we didn't have while the story was unfolding. Ordinarily, you could yell foul, but the picture is so entertaining and the mystery so confounding that, if you are like me, you'll just go with it.

BaronBl00d The Case of the Howling Dog, the first of the screen's Perry Mason movies moves quickly with pep and zip, has a rather ingenious plot line, and has Warren William give a good portrayal of the most famous lawyer of all time - real or imaginary. Warren William plays Mason in this film with an aloofness that disappears in later films where he played the same role, but in this first film it is primarily used to show us how important Mason is in San Francisco. The story has a nervous wreck of a man go to Mason to ask two questions - what can he do to stop the incessant howling from the next door neighbor's dog and what does he have to do to set up a will(with some further odd questions). Perry now has a case and we get some good old-fashioned mystery here as Mason and his corp of assistants work for their client. The end mystery's unraveling - though hardly realistic - is done with style and creativity. I have not read the Erle Stanley Gardner book, but I am sure that much of the mystery part of it is probably still intact. Beautiful Mary Astor stars as a woman in need of Mason's services. She gives her typical woman-in-peril performance with solid acting. The rest of the cast also all do fine jobs with Helen Trenholme(apparently only making two films in her career) doing a very fine job as a perky and pretty Della Street and Gordon Westcott excelling as the nervous man in a rather brief role. As first films in a detective series go, this one is a fine start to a good series. Warren William, playing the screen's Philo Vance that same year, does his level best to make two distinct characterizations which may also account for the Mason character being a bit stodgy here. In the next film he becomes much more fun and human so to speak.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** "The Case of the Howling Dog" is the film that introduced legendary defense attorney Perry Mason, originated on the screen by Warren Williams,to millions of movie goers and some twenty years later, with Raymond Burr in the title role, TV watchers.Perry Mason, Warren Williams, is contacted by a nervous Arthur Cartwright, Gordon Westcott, claiming that his next door neighbor Clinton Foley's, Russell Hicks, German Shepard police dog Prince is driving him crazy. Prince has been howling his head off the last two nights causing Arthur to almost have a nervous breakdown. A bit taken back on what Arthur is telling him Perry is then asked to write out his will leaving everything Arthur has, and it's a lot, to Foley's wife Evelyn! It turns out that Evelyn is not exactly married to Clinton Foley she's only living with him as a mistress in his mansion.The story get's even more complicated when later both Arthur and Evelyn, who it turns out is actually Arthur's estranged wife, disappear from sight leaving Foley to suspect that they planned this all along from the start. Perry now stuck in representing Foley's actual wife Bessie, Mary Astor, whom he dumped for Evelyn Cartwright in that legally she's the woman whom's Arthur, through Perry being his lawyer, left his estate to.Were lead through a maze of subplots in not just the connection between Arthur and the Foley's, Clinton & Bessie, but their dog Prince who's the key to what is later to happen in the film. Bessie Foley is later on the scene at the Foley's mansion where her ex-husband Clinton and his dog are shot and killed by either Bessie or someone hiding inside the house. With Foley's housemaid and what turned out to be his lover Lucy Benton, Dorothy Tree, seen by one of Perry Mason's assistants private detective George Dobbs,James P. Brutis, running from the premises to an awaiting taxi it's assumed by everyone that she may well have shot and killed both Clinton and Prince. Telling Bessie to keep her mouth shut about her being on the scene of both Clinton Foley and Prince, a dog but a murder victim never the less, murders Perry is now committed in not only defending his client but possibly, in his defending her, covering up a crime: Murder. The really out of the blue surprise ending is what makes "Case of the Howling Dog" so ahead of it's time in that it doesn't tie all the loose ends together. The surprise ending does in a very intelligent and realistic way show that the law despite being written in granite is not at all perfect and that there are times when bending it, like Perry Mason does in the film, is really the best way to get justice done.P.S The movie "The Case of the Howling Dog" is such an excellent example of Amercan, or any other free and law abiding country, jurors prudence that it was remade some 25 years later in 1959 as a Parry Mason TV crime/drama episode. The story was so ahead of it's time in depicting the pitfalls and inconsistencies of the law that even then, 25 years later, it shocked the TV audience in it's totally out of the norm, for TV and the movies, surprise ending!

rarpsl Plot Spoiler Follows - Read at your own Risk ** * * * This is the infamous "Perry has a Guilty Client" story. It is based on the FIRST Perry Mason Story and Perry is not yet the character we are used to (he is still willing to cut corners to defend his clients - a habit he loses in later books when he defended them but did not create fake evidence or tamper with existing evidence).If you can find the movie or the book, do so and enjoy the original version of Perry Mason.