Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has picked Dec. 1 as the home entertainment launch date for the new “retro” series of Perry Mason: The Complete First Season. Both double-disc DVD and double-disc Blu-ray editions featuring all eight episodes will be available.
Starring Matthew Rhys (Emmy-winner for his performance as Philip Jennings in The Americans television series) as Perry Mason, Juliet Rylance (A Dog’s Purpose) as Della Street and Chris Chalk (Gotham) as Paul Drake, this new cable series goes back to the Erle Stanley Gardner roots of the Perry Mason novels of the 1930s (Warner Bros. had made a series of films with Warren Williams beginning in 1934 with The Case of the Howling Dog).
The “classic” Raymond Burr television series was actually updated to the present day (circa 1957), whereas this new series give us Los Angeles of the 1930s. Angles’ Flight, for example, from the 1930s, which had apartment buildings bracketing it, has those old buildings “restored” digitally, plus there are numerous shots in and around Los Angeles that give it a “Chinatown” flair … very solid production values.
The great news is … Perry Mason has been renewed for a second full season.
As to bonus goodies, there is a video session with producer Robert Downey Jr. and actor Matthew Rhys and a separate video session with Downey and his co-producer wife Susan Downey (who also produced the Sherlock Holmes movies … among others), plus there are two featurettes — “The Characters of Perry Mason” and “Under the Fedora.”
In other release news this past week from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, there have been new Blu-ray releases added to the studio’s October release calendar.
Up first on Oct. 6 is the Blu-ray debut of director Michael Patrick Jann’s 1999 black comedy hit, Drop Dead Gorgeous, starring Kirsten Dunst and Denise Richards as dueling contestants in the Teen Princess Pageant, with their respective mothers, Ellen Barkin and Kirstie Alley, re-visting past “beauty pageant” grudges.
Heading to Blu-ray on Oct. 13 are director Barbet Schroeder’s film adapation of the Alan Dershowitz’s book of the same name, Reversal of Fortune, which earned Jeremy Irons the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Claus von Bulow, and director Howard Hawks’ Best Picture nominee, Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper (who won Best Actor laurels … he would also win the Best Actor Oscar in 1952 for High Noon).
Oct. 27 brings us the Blu-ray debut of Vincent J. Donehue’s 1960 film adaptation of Dore Schary’s Tony-winning play, Sunrise at Campobello, teaming Ralph Bellamy and Greer Garson as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (Garson would be nominated Best Actress for her performance … her seventh, having won in 1943 for Mrs. Miniver).
And the month of October wraps up on the 27th with Blu-ray releases for both director David Miller’s film adaption of Clare Boothe Luce’s stage play, The Opposite Sex, starring June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller and Leslie Nielsen and Mervyn LeRoy’s 1940 drama, Waterloo Bridge, starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor.
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