How are you running the script? If 'perl scriptname' then you probably have a problem with the perl binary, and other perl scripts would not run.
If you are just typing the name of the script, then check that you do not have any weird characters on the #! line. perl on UNIX should read Windoze style files (\r\n lines), so I doubt that is your problem (or is it a very old version?). Try deleting the first line and typing it again, or do an od -xc scriptname|more and take a peek.
Failing that, run it under strace (strace perl scriptname) or truss (truss perl scriptname) which should indicate which file it is complaining about.