Jerry Oddo Movies

The latest quarry of Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) is Ed "The Duke" Monte (Torin Thatcher), who has broken out of a Federal penitentiary to bump off the stoolie who turned him over to the Feds. Monte suspects that he might have been betrayed by his own son-in-law Lou Sultan (Paul Richards), but he doesn't want to run the risk of alienating his daughter Barbara (Peggy Ann Garner) by killing Lou himself--especially now that he is slowly dying from a bullet wound. Thus, Monte dispatches his henchman Janos (Karl Lucas) to determine if Lou is guilty--and if so, to turn Barbara against her husband. But Barbara claims to be loyal to her husband and renounces Janos' story...until an unexpected incident transforms her from innocent bystander to "giant killer". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is the first of four consecutive episodes in which Perry Mason appears only briefly, while a "guest" lawyer handles the case at hand (Raymond Burr was at the time recovering from minor surgery). No less than Bette Davis is cast as female attorney Constant Doyle, the widow of famed defense attorney Joe Doyle. Taking her late husband's place, Constant agrees to defend young Cal Leonard, who is accused of burglarizing the offices of Otis Industries and beating up a night watchman. Actually, Constant doesn't like Cal very much and was thinking of dropping the case until her curiosity was aroused by the fact that Lawrence Otis was all too willing to drop the charges against the boy. As it turns out, Cal is lucky to have Constant on his side when he charged with the murder of his cousin Steven (Jerry Oddo). Removed from the original Perry Mason syndicated rerun package in 1966, this episode remained unseen until it was telecast on cable TV in the mid-1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Victor Salazar (Pat Hingle) is a "junk man" in every sense of the word, using his scrap-metal business as a front to distribute illegal drugs. In his efforts to get the goods on Salazar, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) gets into a fracas with the junk man's torpedo Barney Howell (Pat Hingle), unaware that Howell is actually an undercover Federal narcotics agent. But even though Salazar unwittingly has a Fed in his operation, he may actually less to fear from Barney than from his "trusted" associate Steve Ballard (Edward Binns), who is plotting to double-cross Salazar and skip town with all the profits. Character actor Than Wyenn is particularly repulsive in the role of crooked chemist Martin Pegler, who peddles heroin-laced candy to innocent schoolkids. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the darkest days of World War One, four French soldiers (one of them played by a young, pre-Bonanza Pernell Roberts) see a strange light in the sky--whereupon they throw down their weapons and apparently desert their posts. Assigned to defend the soldiers during their court martial, Capt. Emil Tremaine (Bruce Gordon) can neither believe nor sympathize with the defendant's claims that they were motivated to "desert" by circumstances beyond their control. Only on the eve of the soldiers' execution does Tremaine undergo a paranormal experience, proving that there is sometimes a "greater truth" than what meets the eye. (Curiously, "The Vision" is misidentified as the earlier One Step Beyond episode "Emergency Only" by several public-domain DVD merchants). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide