The Case of the Jealous Jokester has recurring weakness of movies

One plot point really bothered me about the final Perry Mason movie. Ken Malansky does his usual legwork, which develops into a series of chases after a person who was on the murder scene. The big problem is from the start is the character attempted to do Malansky great bodily harm if not outright attempted murder, while someone snapped away with a camera of the scene--and the violent crimes continue throughout Malansky's pursuit of his quarry. Wouldn't common sense dictate that the next time Malansky ran down this guy, the police would be called in to put him into cuffs, so some of Tragg's successors could put him on the griddle?

And frankly, after the magical plot twists and innovative courtroom strategies that helped make the novels and TV show so beloved, it was a bit aggravating that the Silverman/Hargrove regime kept on running the same formula into the ground movie after movie--Perry Mason agrees to defend client, Paul Drake Jr./Ken Malansky would look up a potential witness who would proceed to keep leading him on a chase throughout the movie while Perry quizzes possible suspects and begins courtroom proceedings. The chase ususally ends with Drake/Malansky's quarry getting killed, but Mason somehow comes up with evidence to clear his client and pin the murder on the guilty party (yes, Perry did that in the TV shows too, but not in the ponderous way he did in the movies). Not to mention, it stretched credibility that Perry would be satisfied with his legwork being done by a beginning one-horse detective agency or legal assistant after making heavy use of a very large top-flight detective agency. (Now, Matlock, that was another matter. At least Sliverman/Hargrove established that character as being so cheapskate, that it was very believable that he would leave the legwork to low-level PI, partner, legal assistant or even himself to save a buck--the very thought of ordering a pack of detectives do round-the-clock surveillance the way Perry routinely did would probably be enough for Matlock to suffer a checkbook attack and faint dead away.)

The sad thing is, one flaw in the old TV shows was that they would open plot holes or drastically alter the storyline in order to squeeze one of Gardner's novels into the space of an hour-long episode. With the movies, they finally had time to do justice to a few of Gardner's storylines--instead, they made the movies sluggish by throwing in endless chases and interrogations to stretch out the time.