Raymond Burr died, but Hale's real-life son William Katt played the role of Paul Drake, Jr. The movie was so successful that Burr made a total of 26 Perry Mason television films before his death. Many were filmed in and around Denver, Colorado. By 1993, when Burr signed with NBC for another season of Mason films, he was using a wheelchair full-time because of his failing health. In his final Perry Mason movie, "The Case of the Killer Kiss", he was shown either sitting or standing while leaning on a table, but only once standing unsupported for a few seconds. Twelve more
Raymond Burr in "Pitfall" as "both reprehensible and pathetic", a characterization also cited by film historian Richard Schickel as a prototype of film noir, in contrast with the appealing television characters for which Burr later became famous. "He tried to make you see the psychosis below the surface, even when the parts weren't huge," said film historian James Ursini. "He was able to bring such complexity and different levels to those characters, and create sympathy for his characters even though they were doing reprehensible things." Other titles in Burr's film noir legacy include "Walk a Crooked Mile" (1948), "Borderline" (1950), "Unmasked" (1950),