nancy drew

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries: Will The Real Santa….? Recap.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

I have been recapping the old The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries episodes from 1977 to 1979 and this week I am skipping ahead a bit to a Christmas one from season two entitled just “Will The Real Santa…?”

Yes, there are just dots there.

This is the second to last episode Pamela Sue Martin was in as Nancy before leaving the show due to the writers making her role smaller and smaller each episode. Her last episode was one I will write about later and creeped me out a bit —The Lady on Thursday at Ten.

After The Lady on Thursday at Ten, the show featured actress Janet Louis Stevenson as Nancy Drew for four  more episodes. Then after Season 2 episode 21, Joe and Frank Hardy dominated all the episodes. In the next season, which was the shows’ last, it would even be rebranded as The Hardy Boys. It was canceled ten episodes into the season and replaced with The Osmond Family Hour.

This episode starts with a man with a white beard running to catch a train. He is pulled up into one of the cars with the help of another person and then we see two men running out of the darkness, guns pulled.

“This train will stop in River Heights,” the one man says. “We’ll get him there.”

The man with the white beard rides away in the train car and then we switch to Nancy decorating a tree with some woman. Her father, Carson Drew, is sitting on the couch.

Carson and Nancy call the woman George, but this is not the actress who played George before. The previous George had dark hair. This George is a blond.

The tree is huge and so 70s too, by the way. I don’t know how else to explain what I mean by it being “70s”. It just has a lot of red bulbs and popcorn strands on it and — it’s just has a 70s/80s look.

So, Nancy is up on a ladder that is perfectly capable of standing on its own because it is freestanding, but she asks George to hold it anyhow. Nancy is trying to place the tree topper on the top of the tree, when Carson asks George a question and she lets go of the ladder to show him an article in the newspaper. This happens about the same moment when the front door slowly opens, and we see a young man wearing a dark suit and with dark hair peering in.

His knock and him calling out “Mr. Drew?” wasn’t loud enough for them to hear him so he just walks in. It’s a good thing he does too, because at the same time he peeks in, Nancy starts flailing around like the ladder has been pulled out from under her (it hasn’t), yells “George!” and starts to fall.  

In rushes our hero to catch Nancy before she falls and say the words, “I never had a girl fall that hard for me. Not at our first meeting anyhow.”

Har. Har. Cue my gag reflex.

Carson introduces the young man as Ned Nickerson. Color me confused.

The problem with this is that there was a Ned Nickerson in the first season and this is not him.

Ned was his dad’s legal assistant and close friends with Nancy but clearly in love with her. He was in several episodes in the first season and disappeared by season two.

Now we are supposed to pretend that whole season never happened and this is the real Ned Nickerson — some dude who works for the Boston DA.

This new Ned is played by Rick Springfield (…I kid you not! ) and I guess the first Ned never existed. So, it was like they were trying to reboot Ned’s origin story like Marvel keeps rebooting Spiderman’s origin story and DC keeps rebooting Superman’s origin story. Sadly, poor Rick never got to flush out his role as Ned because Pamela Sue Martin left the show after the next episode and Ned’s character was written out of the show.

Also…. I guess Ned was more interested in Nancy than Jesse’s Girl at this point.  *Cymbal shot* Yes that was a bad joke.

[If you, like me, do not know a ton about Rick Springfield — he is a popstar from the 70s and 80s and has also acted. He also has either taken a youth elixir or had a lot of work done because at 76 he looks like he is 56.]

Okay, moving forward . . .

So, George is clearly enamored with Ned and is very excited when Carson introduces them. Then Carson says, “And I guess you’ve already met Nancy.”

Laughter all around and then Ned starts to mansplain to Nancy how to put a tree topper on.

“Beautiful tree but you’re putting the topper on wrong,” he says.

Ummmm…’kay….it’s just a topper. How is there a different way to put it up there?

Dude. Please.

So he puts it up there and says, “There. It’s how it should be.”

And Nancy shoots daggers at him with her eyes. Dashing? Maybe. Total arrogant jerk? Absolutely.

This is setting up the “enemies to lovers” trope that will continue throughout the episode.

Scene shift. Now there is a man dressed as Santa breaking into a house and stealing things while in the other room a white-haired man is on the phone asking Carson Drew, “Hey, cousin, where are you? The party is getting lit over here.”

He doesn’t actually say lit – I summarized for you. What he does say, in a sort of creepy old man way (and also sounding fairly drunk) is, “Ah, cousin, where are you all? The party’s flagging, especially without your beautiful daughter here to liven things up.”

Carson laughs and says they’re just getting ready to leave but wants to know if he can bring Ned along.

“Sure,” the unnamed cousin says. “The more people are here the more Christmassy I’m going to feel.”

Huh? Was that sarcasm or ….? I don’t know but it was weird.

So next scene we see the two men we saw at the train in a car. “I thought you said he’d get off in this town,” the one man says.

“We’ll find him and he’ll never see Christmas,” the other man says.

The man in question, white beard and all, shows up in the next scene but not near where the men are. He’s found a barn and he’s excited because he’s about to crash in the straw for a snooze.

Before he gets there, though, he looks over his shoulder and sees the burglar Santa climbing down some vines (that would not have supported his weight actually) from a second story window of the house. We aren’t sure whose house this is yet, but earlier scenes hinted to us that it is Carson Drew’s cousin’s house.

The white-bearded man shrugs and says, “Dejevu. Christmas Santas.”

He staggers to the barn, unspotted by the Santa who is still busy climbing down, goes inside and lays down in the straw to take a nap. He isn’t there long, though, before two rich kids are looking down at him and saying “Daddy doesn’t allow anyone in the barn.”

The man tells them they wouldn’t want to chase Santa away right before Christmas, would they?

Nooo. They wouldn’t want to do that.

But we scene switch again and the police are at Carson’s cousin’s house, and I don’t know how far away this guy lived but in the time that Carson was in the car to when he got there, the burglary has already been discovered and the police are investigating.

The cousin hands Nancy a card that thanks the man for his generosity and signs it as Santa.

“Not again,” Nancy says.

Ned asks if this has happened before and Carson explains it has happened four times in a week and a cheery card is left at the scene of every crime.

Ned has to get in on the action and says Nancy shouldn’t have been handed the note and Nancy shouldn’t have taken it because fingerprints could have been lifted.

Nancy, of course, has to tell the detective on scene that he’s making mistakes and didn’t notice a footprint covered in glass by the window, showing someone kicked their way into the room.

Ned says something like, “Oh yeah? How do you know?” and Nancy rattles off some nonsense about wet footprints still being there and glass being embedded in his shoes and blah, blah, blah.  It actually didn’t make sense but it’s okay…it’s a fun show so will just go with it.

They all end up back at the Drew’s house where Ned acts like hot stuff and says he can call the DAs office and ask if anyone who is a known burglar has been let out recently or lives in the area. He doubts that it would be anyone local, which offends Nancy who says, “You don’t think this town is big enough to have thieves of their own? Some of the biggest thieves are in this town. I know. I’ve caught some of them.”

I don’t know that I’d want to brag about that, Nancy. It’s kind of like when my area became the Meth capital of the nation. It wasn’t a designation we really liked to tell people about.

Nancy says she’s going to go back to talk to the cousin’s wife and make sure she’s okay. It gives her a chance to get away from Ned who is just driving her bonkers.

Honestly, Ned is a huge jerk in the beginning of this episode, bossy and pushy and essentially acting like they have Nancy act in other episodes.

On the way over to the cousin’s, Nancy notices some lights are on at a house where the owners are supposed to be out of town. She wonders what is going on so she pulls over and, of course, finds the back door broken. We’ve been seeing scenes of someone dressed in a Santa costume stealing valuables and putting them in a big bag, so we know someone is in there.

She goes in and calls the police station, telling them to send the detective over because she’s Nancy Drew and she thinks a house is being broken into.

She makes her way around the house to see if someone is in the house, and is on her way back down the stairs when a man dressed in a Santa costume and wearing a scary mask (it creeped me out!) starts down behind her. A crazy chase scene ensues where the man throws is bag at her (by the way, when it hits the wall, it does not sound like it is full of valuables. Instead, it makes no noise and seems to be full of a pillow.)

Nancy runs into the living room with the man behind her and throws a chair through the patio doors to escape. The Santa is like, “Dude…no way…not dealing with her…She’s nuts” and books it out the back door with a flashlight and his bag.

He runs and finds the barn our “Santa” homeless man is in (so this must be in the same neighborhood as the cousin, which makes this burglar very bold and risky) and runs inside to hide the stolen goods behind some hay bails. He then leaves the barn, with the old white-bearded guy still sleeping in the straw.

When Nancy’s neighbor comes home (I don’t know who called him or how he knew to come home from being “out of town”) they talk to the police detective who says he’s going to get two dozen officers in the neighborhood to track the burglar down. It makes me wonder how much of a budget this little town has that they can afford that many police officers.

The neighbor invites Nancy in for tea (umm…what? Your house was just robbed and you’re inviting this young girl in for tea??) and then says he’s going to check around the house to make sure the guy didn’t try to hide there. Nancy makes her way to the kitchen and starts filling the kettle with water so I guess she’s been here before.

Suddenly, though, the two kids we saw in the barn earlier are in the kitchen with a huge jar of cookies and a loaf of bread.

Okay, so pause here. Nancy tells us viewers, that the family was out of town when she said, “I thought the Garbers were out of town,” when she drove by their house, but the kids were in the house? Alone?? Are these kids siblings of Kevin McAllister? Why didn’t they wake up when the burglar broke in and tried to kill Nancy?

So, I don’t get that part at all, but the kids let it slip that they are taking food to Santa in the barn.

Nancy wants to know if this Santa is the burglar Santa, so she follows them to the barn and meets the man who has been hiding there.

He’s just wearing a gray pair of pants and a gray jacket and looks tired but otherwise fine. The kids give him his food and then leave, which leaves Nancy to grill him about the burglaries. He has no idea what she’s talking about.

“You didn’t catch me the first time,” she says.  “Now you have another chance.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve ever met,” he says.

After some more conversation, he says he did see someone dressed as Santa climbing from a window of a house, but he thought it was a father having fun with his children.

He tells her his name is Griffin.

The police rush in though and start questioning the man, asking him where he’s come from. An officer finds the stashed jewels and other valuables and the man is arrested but says he can’t be arrested because the next night is Christmas Eve and he will be busy.

“You can’t do this to the children!” he says as he is dragged away.

Nancy watches them take the man away and sees a car pull out to follow the police car, as if they were waiting for Griffin to leave.

Back at home later, Carson is woken up by a phone call but no one is there. He tries to go back to sleep but Nancy runs in and says she can’t leave Santa Claus in jail over night, which puzzles Carson who says he actually just had a dream about the man she met. When he tells her the phone call woke him, but no one was there, there is a quick clip slid in of Griffin in jail, so I guess we are supposed to get the idea that this man really is Santa and he has powers to make phone calls or hear conversations or…is omniscient like God? I’m really not sure what we are supposed to be getting here.

All I know is that Carson and Nancy rush down to the jail and post bail for the man which I think is amazing since it is 3 a.m. and most jails wouldn’t let anyone in at that time of the day. When the scene first starts we see the outside of the jail and hear a voice say, “Alright, I’ll release the old man into his custody when he gets down here.”

The officer unlocks the cell door and Griffin says, “Ah, I’ve been expecting you.”

Carson is confused by this, but they move on and offer Griffin a place to stay at their house after asking him some questions.

He tells them that he arrived in their town the night before but will only say that the train brought him — also every time he answers a question music with a little bell plays to suggest he is magical or …whatever.

As they are all leaving, Griffin sees those men waiting in a car outside and while Nancy and Carson are talking, he disappears.

They can’t find him but in the morning, there is a newspaper article saying that Carson Drew is defending Santa Claus. Griffin had told the press that he was Santa, but Carson had no idea when he gave them that information.

Nancy and Ned get into an argument when Ned says this guy is clearly running from something, maybe a crime. Nancy says she has feeling and instinct that he’s a good guy. Ned just laughs at her “hunches.”

Nancy declares she’s going to prove Griffin innocent even if she has to prove he is Santa Claus. Ned scoffs at this as she stomps out of the office.

Next, we have Nancy looking at some fabric she found at the scene of the first crime under a magnifying glass.

She doesn’t see anything that will help her, so she and George start to list what the burglaries have in common. Nancy then tells George to get her a list of all the people who have worked in the homes of the people who were robbed.

Pause here.

First, what is she doing bossing George around? Second, how in the world is George supposed to get that info when she is not a police officer?

George, however, has no doubts. She isn’t the George from season one who was timid and worried all the time. (I mean she’s entirely a different actress even). She’s bold and says she will do it.

In the following scene one of the two men who are after Griffin is talking to another man on a phone.

The man is in a nice office, wearing a suit and tie and says he wants the old man caught and killed because he witnessed “the exchange.” I don’t know what that exchange was but he witnessed it so he orders the man to find him and take him out.

Then he says, “I don’t want a witness to an exchange of $5 million for drugs to be alive.”

Scene switch again and we are in a department store where kids are waiting in line to talk to a Santa who is clearly drunk.

The two children Griffin met in the barn see him and tell the store owners he’s the real Santa. All the kids run to Griffin, and the store owners ask him if he will be their Santa at that night’s Christmas Eve party. He says he can’t because he has a big job to do that night. The store owner thinks it is a joke and hires him.

Meanwhile, Nancy has her list of employees and sees a man named Pierre Cortez, who is the gardener for everyone that was burglarized on the list.

She wants to get his prints so she can prove it was him, but George suggests she call the police first. She refuses because she doesn’t want Ned to think she’s an amateur.

She instead heads back to the barn where Griffin had been staying to find more clues and catches this Pierre man looking for his bag of stuff. There is a standoff, and he threatens to kill her, but luckily, Ned bursts in and tackles the man because George told him what Nancy was going to do.

Somehow, he was also able to call the police in that short amount of time, and they burst in and take the man into custody.

Nancy then rewards Ned with a big kiss, which startles him (and me too, quite frankly) but he thoroughly enjoys. Apparently, they are no longer enemies. He asks what the kiss was for, and she says it was because he saved her life and he quips he will have to do that again sometime.

Now Griffin is off the hook, but Nancy still has to figure out who is following him and why.

Griffin is going to be in a Christmas parade that  night so the men who are after him decide they’ll shoot him, Nancy, and Carson to get them all out of the way in case Griffin told Nancy and Carson what they saw.

Before the parade, Griffin overhears Nancy tell Carson that there was a doll she saw in a store in Amsterdam that she wishes she could have purchased as a child. This will come into play later.

Flashing forward a bit, because this recap is getting way too long, we get to the parade and the snipers are ready to shoot Griffin, but he does some voodoo magic where he can see them through his mind and as Carson and Nancy are talking, Griffin disappears.

The men don’t know where he’s gone, but they shoot at Carson and Nancy anyhow and somehow completely miss them.

The police look for where the shots came from and run to the roof and find the two men unconscious, with their guns beside them, and handcuffed together.

Everyone is bewildered until Nancy sees hoofprints and sleigh marks in the snow. It’s at this point that Pamela Sue Martin lets out the weirdest giggle and smile, which makes me wonder if she was on something at the time of filming. I guess it was supposed to show how excited she was at the idea of Griffin being the real Santa, but it flat out scared me.

At the end of the episode, everyone is opening gifts, even Ned who should have gone home by now. There is one gift that no one saw before. It’s addressed to Nancy, from Griffin and inside is the doll she’d always wanted from Amsterdam. The doll, by the way, is some really small, weird looking doll in underwear. It is not what I expected at all.

Pamela does the weird smile again — and again I am frightened. She looks somewhat deranged. I’m sorry! But she does!

Also, she was sporting some really long, crazy nails for this one. I couldn’t figure out how she could get anything done with them!

Up next I’ll be recapping Pamela’s last episode where she has some more weird expressions but not as creepy as her smiles in the Christmas episode.

Book Review and Nancy Drew November: The mystery of the fire dragon

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

The first book I read for Nancy Drew November was The Mystery of The Fire Dragon. The cover of this one caught my attention a while ago, so I was excited when I was able to get a copy of it and start it.

This one takes Nancy and her friends (Bess Marvin and George Fayne) first to New York City and then Hong Kong, to investigate the disappearance of a young Chinese-American woman named Chi-Che Soong.

Chi Che’s grandfather, Mr. Soong, doesn’t know his granddaughter is missing. He thinks she’s gone on a trip with friends, so he buries himself in writing a manuscript about – actually I don’t remember what the manuscript about, but I think it was about Chinese artifacts or something.

Chi-Che worked at a bookstore of antique books when she disappeared. Nancy wants to help her aunt Eloise, Mr. Soong’s neighbor, find out what happened.

At the same time, her lawyer father, Carson Drew, is preparing for a trip to Hong Kong and wants to take Nancy along.  He sends her to New York to help his sister first though because he won’t be leaving for a week. I often wonder, by the way, where Carson Drew is going to investigate cases because sometimes the books don’t say. I always imagine he’s actually the lawyer for the CIA or something and is on big spy cases. I find it weird he often sends Nancy to solve cases on her own while he goes to investigate something else. She is often sent into very dangerous situations with just herself and her friends and this one is no different.

Anyhow, as soon as Nancy and her friends arrive at Aunt Eloise’s someone sets a large firecracker off in the apartment building hallway. Nancy and her friends try to find who did it but are unable to.

While at her aunt’s, Nancy notices how much her friend George Fayne, looks like the photos of Chi Che. She decides it will be a good idea to have George dress as her and then take her to the college campus and see if anyone thinks she is Chi Che and acts suspicious.

They will eventually meet one of Chi Che’s friends who is confused when she thinks Chi Che is on campus because Chi Che also told her she was traveling. The friend, Lili Allis, will work with Nancy and her friends by taking a job at the bookstore where Chi Che used to work.

Nancy is knocked out at least once in every book and this one is no different when she gets hit in the head with a flowerpot that falls out of a three-story window during this one. Ouch.

A friend, who studied Nancy Drew books in college told me that the Stratemeyer Syndicate only allowed for one knock out per character and only for a certain number of minutes. That absolutely cracked me up. I don’t care what the rule was, Nancy Drew definitely had some major brain damage from all the hits she took to her head over the years.

Eventually, Nancy’s investigation leads her to Hong Kong to search for the missing girl and find out if she found out about a crime that was going on in New York.

Two boons to her having to travel to Hong Kong for this case is that she will travel with her dad and that she will be able to meet up with her boyfriend Ned Nickerson who is studying at a college in Hong Kong. So many coincidences in this one — like Ned going to college there and when Mr. Soong’s brother is actually the ex-police chief in Shanghai so Nancy can meet up with him when she travels to Hong Kong.

I really enjoyed the history in this one. It was released in 1961 and mentions a lot of history about Hong Kong and China which I believe is accurate, though I didn’t look all of it up to double check. What I did look up is when China received control of Hong Kong again after British rule. In this book, the island is still controlled by Great Britain and the people have a great deal of freedom. The control of island went back to China in 1997, though I thought it was much later.

While Hong Kong was able to remain mainly separate from China even after control was handed back, the People’s Republic of China has begun to assert more control in the last five years.

The relationship between Ned and Nancy is cute with Ned always excited when her sleuthing stops and they can spend time together.

Some of the history was dropped while Nancy and Ned were spending time together. At one point they take in a Chinese opera and then visit a houseboat restaurant in a village called Aberdeen, which I thought was odd since it sounded Scottish.

I did look this up online and there is a real Aberdeen on the southwest side of the Island of Hong Kong. It is a fishing village and features a floating village and floating restaurants. It turns out the town is named after the former UK Prime Minister, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, which explains the name.

There is a scene where Ned and Nancy visit the floating village and unlike other books that don’t focus as much on descriptions, there is a more lengthy description of the village and the lights and how beautiful it all is. This makes me think that whomever the ghost writer for this book was, had visited Hong Kong at some point.

There are some rather “odd” sections in this book, such as when Grandpa Soong asks George and Bess if they believe in transference.

“They both admitted that they did. Then Grandpa Soong said” There are men in this world who are more dangerous than fire dragons. I am sure my Chi Che is being held by one or more of them and really was calling out in her thoughts to me and Miss Drew for help.”

Mmmmmkaaaay.

I also  didn’t understand the end of the book and why Chi Che was found where she was (maybe I’ve read too many darker mysteries and figured that in reality the ‘bad guys’ would have just killed her) but it was still an intriguing mystery with a lot of interesting characters.

I seem to like the books where Nancy travels out of the country or away from River Heights more than those that take place in River Heights. I think that is because the books away from River Heights feel more rounded or flushed out due to the addition of historical elements.

Another one of my favorites, before this one, was The Case of The Whistling Bagpipes, which took Nancy to Scotland.

I know a lot of my blog followers have not read Nancy Drew before but if you have read this one, let me know in the comments.

I enjoyed what Avery from True Drew Podcast had to say about this episode too. You can find that here.

The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom (Episode 2) Recap

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

This is part two of The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Hollywood Phantom. If you want to read the first part of my recap of this two-parter, you can find it here:

When we left off from part one, Joe had been snatched from outside a building he was snooping around, looking for his father and the other detectives who had been kidnapped from the conference. Frank was stopped by the security guard he and Nancy had a run-in with right after Weatherly disappeared. Nancy was on her way to the hotel to “get help” (cue the funny scene from Thor Ragnarok in my head.).

The security guards escort Frank to the head of security, and Frank takes them to the set.

Nancy has run back to the hotel and finds Fox talking with a police officer. She tries to tell them what happened, but the police officer rolls his eyes for a bit before agreeing to go with her to look at the photograph.

You know what’s going to happen, right?

The photograph is gone when everyone gets there — Frank with security and Nancy with the police. It’s been switched to a normal photograph. Dun-dun-dun. I don’t know why they didn’t just take the framed picture with them.

So now no one believes Frank and Nancy even though Joe hasn’t come back yet either.

Back at the hotel, Frank is pacing, worried about his dad because there was blood on the ring that was sent to the hotel.

“That means they ripped it off him,” he tells Fox.

Fox assures him that his dad will be fine, saying he’s known him since he was a lieutenant with the NYPD (huh…I haven’t read enough Hardy Boys to know this yet).

We switch to Joe tied up somewhere and trying to get loose and then back to Frank saying he’s going to look for his brother.

Nancy, who by the way has been without a sidekick this whole time, which is weird for her, says she’s going with him, Frank says she needs to stay behind.

Nancy goes to talk to the police and Jason Fox and they tell her to keep her nose out of things.

The manager of the hotel is also upset at her because she suggests that someone from the staff could be involved in the kidnapping and the ransom note.

She goes back to Studio 24 to look for Frank and Joe and this time she sees a photo on the floor and when she stoops to get it a man in a mask begins to chase her. This is the creepy masked man we’ve been seeing throughout the two episodes.

She hides behind a set, and the man runs by, and I thought she was safe but nope, he finds her and she climbs a scaffolding, which was so stressful for me to watch.

She escapes, though and finds an exit on the roof. Girl is running in her heels this whole time too.

Then she manages to balance across a wall and jump to another building (in heels!) and run inside and down a flight of stairs and out into the street, where she runs into Casey Kasem again. Whew.

He asks her if she’s okay and she says the sound stages are just scary at night. Why can’t she just tell people the truth? “A man was chasing me! Holy crud! It was scary!”

They chat a few minutes and he says something about leaving the country for an acting job. Nancy is like, “yeah, that’s nice. Okay…gotta go…” and starts running back to the hotel.

Next, we flip to Frank who is still wandering around looking for Joe. While wandering he stumbes onto the Charlie’s Angels set where Cheryl Ladd is being told she’s going to have to kiss the extra as soon as he comes around the corner. Ladd is up for it, but hasn’t met the extra yet.

Of course, Frank walks around the corner instead of the extra and bam…he’s suddenly making out with Cheryl Ladd.

He’s distracted though so he pulls away when the director yells “cut” and says, “Any other time I would discuss spending my life with you because that was nice but right now, I’m in a hurry. Thanks.”

I can’t help admiring Frank’s bellbottoms as he walks and as someone pulls up behind him in a car and starts chasing him. Frank is running well but hits a dead end. He’s sweating and his hair is all 70s wavy and now I get why the girls back then wanted to watch the show.

Anyhow, it’s the security guard and he tells Frank he’s taking him back to the main gate. Again.

Next, we see Joe waking all the way up and looking around him. He manages to scoot and roll to the door and open it with his feet.

Scene switch again — Nancy is grilled by the police and Fox who say she needs to tell them where she’s going  from now on. (There are so many scene switches in this one and they are like three minutes apart.).

Back to Frank who is climbing walls back into the sound stages to find his brother, who is rolling out of his prison area and trying to find a way to get the ropes off his hands while we see the guy in the mask driving toward him.

Joe manages to get himself untied and hides under a wagon and sees the security guard and the masked man get out of the car and go look for him.

He runs to the car and climbs in the trunk but leaves the license plate number scrawled on the wagon for Frank.

Nancy is with the police officer looking in a microscope at the negative she retrieved from the sound stage and says she sees makeup on it and a fingerprint.

“Your forensics guy should be able to pick that up,” she says (sort of arrogantly).

So the guy is taking orders from a very young woman now? I have no idea how old they are supposed to be in these shows but they don’t go to school so I would guess early 20s.

The police say Frank is back at the hotel now after being picked up so Nancy goes back to the hotel.

After we see Joe sneaking around and finding his dad and the other men, right before he’s knocked out yet again, we switch to Nancy looking out a window and someone sneaking up behind her.

Is it the bad guy? Has he found her?

No. It’s Frank and he scolds her for leaving her hotel room door open.

“It could have been anyone!” he says.

“I can take care of myself,” she says with a whispered tone.

“You’re not doing a very good job of it,” he responds, somewhat breathlessly, standing close to her and I think… Oh my gosh, they’re going to kiss!

But the scene cuts away and suddenly (whiplash!!) Nancy marches into the room where the police officer and Fox are and thrusts a piece of paper in the officer’s hands. She says the kidnapper only wants her to come, no police, with the ransom money.

The officer says he won’t let her do it and she says he will because the kidnapper will know if he switches to someone else.

Not only that, but Frank says he’s going to go too.

The officer says he will not be going and Frank snaps, “I’ll go whether you allow it or not. It’s my brother and dad you’re rescuing.”

Honestly, these kids are hindering an investigation and should be thrown in jail, but the cop just sighs and says, “Fiiiiine.” Or something like that and they start to concoct a plan to set up the exchange.

Everyone heads out soon after that and there is a zoom in on the hotel manager’s face so now we have to wonder if he is involved.

Nancy and Fox get on a tour bus with the briefcase of money and head off to meet up with the person for the exchange.

Scene switch and Joe in the jail cell with his dad and the others.

Suddenly he remembers a nail file in his sock. Yes….Joe has a nail file in his sock and begins to pick the lock. How very convenient.

Another scene switch and Nancy and Fox are going through a tunnel on the tour and then a warehouse. Suddenly the doors close in the warehouse and the woman leading the tour gets nervous. The masked man grabs Nancy and pulls her down and when Fox turns to say something to her, she’s gone.

Nancy is being put in an elevator by the fake security guard and the masked man.  They check the money in the briefcase they stole, and then smuggle her out into a car and make her lay on the floor. Meanwhile, Joe has broke out and comes out the door and sees the men leaving with Nancy.

He finds his way to security to tell them Nancy has been grabbed and suddenly a police chase ensues. I don’t know how Joe got to security so fast so they could tell the police officer, but he did I guess and Frank and the officer take off after the car. The only problem is that the water is drained from the fake lake enough for the bad guys to drive the car over but the masked man pushes a button and the water fills in again so they can get away.

In the end, they won’t get away, though, because they come around down a street where shooting for a show is going on and can’t turn anywhere, which means the police corner the car. The masked man jumps out, pulling Nancy with him, and Frank leaps from the car and then leaps over the hood of another car and tackles the masked man. He flips the guy over and rips his mask off and it’s — oh my gosh! Casey Kasem!!!

He’s the kidnapper?!! Well, there’s some American Top 40 for you.

But Casey isn’t down yet. He flings his arm back and knocks Frank back off him and tries to take off. Sadly, he takes off right into the fist of Robert Wagner, who knocks Casey flat on his back.

Robert cockily says he’s always glad to help, “especially when there’s a beautiful girl in distress” while watching Nancy.

Nancy runs up to him, all mooney-eyed and says, “How can I ever repay you?”

Robert smirks and says, “We’ll think of something.”

Gag. He’s old enough to be her father. He always was a dirty old man. *wink* (I really have no idea…I’m just messing around. I won’t mention *cough* Natalie *cough* Wood *cough* here.)

“I don’t believe it,” Frank cries.  “I did all that and she hugs him.”

“You’re not a movie star kid,” the cops says.

But he does have good news for Frank. His dad and brother have been found and are safe.

Joe Fox is happy with the outcome when the kids go to visit him at his hotel room the next day, but they say it’s not all good news because Casey (Paul Hamilton) wasn’t the only one involved. Yes, the security guard was but so was…yes! Joe Fox!

“You engineered this whole plot,” Frank says. “Hamilton wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own.”

Joe and Nancy lay out their case with Frank, pointing out how Hamilton and the guard were always one step ahead of them. Someone must have been on the inside, they say.

“What motive could I even have?” Fox says with a smirk.

Nancy tells him they’re sure if they look things up they will find out that he is flat broke.

“That’s why you were insisting real (cash) ransom money,” she says.

Frank says they have one piece of evidence. It’s Bronson’s medallion which showed Fox’s fingerprints on the bottom of the medallion, showing he’d ripped it off his neck during the kidnapping.

Fox smirks again, can’t say anything to refute them so tries to leave the room. Unfortunately for him, the police are waiting for him at the doorway. He congratulates the kids on their sleuthing.

“You are three of the most remarkable detectives I’ve ever worked with,” he says.

He’s taken away by the police with another smirk.

At the end, Fenton is discussing what happened with the boys and then Frank decides he is going sightseeing.

Nancy marches up and demands to know where he’s going.

“I’m going sightseeing. There’s more to LA than just this hotel. Is that alright?”

“No, it isn’t,” Nancy says sharply. “You didn’t ask me.”

“I didn’t know I had to clear it with you first,” Frank snaps.

“No, you didn’t ask me to go with you,” Nancy says.

Frank laughs and smiles and asks if she’d like to join him.

“What I’d like to do is thank you,” she says with her tone softening.

“For what?” Frank asks and now we are getting the profile view of them.

“For saving my life,” Nancy says tenderly.

Oh. My. Gosh. Are they going to kiss??!!! Are they????

Yes. Yes, they are because Nancy gives him a very tender kiss on the mouth.

Swoooon.

Joe steps behind them and asks where they are off to, essentially making him the third wheel.

End episode. Sadly, we are never to see Nancy and Frank shipped together because soon the show’s name will changed to Hardy Boys and, alas, there will no longer be a Nancy included.

That’s the end of this recap.

I haven’t decided which episode I will recap next because I watched one where the Hardy Boys went to Egypt and … wince …. It was pretty horrible.

If you want to read my other recaps you can find them here:

Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom (Episode 1) Recap

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977 to 1979. This month it’s perfect because it fits in with my Nancy Drew November event.

As I’ve mentioned before in previous recaps, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, which is the season I am in now, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also stared as Nancy part way through season two when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the lack of parts that were being written for her character.

According to trivia on IMdb: “Upon Janet Julian replacing Pamela Sue Martin in the second half of season two, Nancy Drew was only seen teaming up with the Hardy Boys, and never any solo stories. ABC however, did continue to air Martin’s episodes over rerun periods. For the third season, Nancy Drew was completely eliminated from the series, which was re-titled simply “Hardy Boys.””                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

I haven’t decided if I will watch the episodes that are just Hardy Boys, but I probably will.

This time around, I am tackling The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom.

This is the second two parter I am writing about, with the first being The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula.

This time around I am going to share my recap in two posts, instead of one.

In this first episode, Nancy and the boys fly, separately, to Hollywood to take part in a detective conference. As Nancy is walking into the terminal, we see someone cutting a pol polaroid picture of her, removing her head. When she pauses at the payphones to call Bess (her sidekick for this season, but who does not show up in these episodes other than that call), we see someone cutting across a photograph of a man wearing a cowboy hat, and removing his head (in the photograph, I mean) as well.

We then see the Hardy brothers walking through the airport and picking on each other.

When Nancy looks across the airport, she sees a man trying to put a polaroid in the bag of the man with the cowboy hat. She runs to stop him, but the other man gets away and the cowboy thinks she’s the one trying to put something in his bag.

Frank and Joe see the interaction and rush to her rescue, telling the cowboy that they are with the airport police, juvenile division. Joe says to Nancy he thought he told her not to show up at that airport anymore.

The cowboy isn’t buying it and tells them he thinks they are all in on it together and were trying to steal from him.

As usual, Nancy is a bit uptight about it all when the cowboy leaves, but laughs a little at the boys. She catches a taxi and leaves them behind, being somewhat rude as usual.

The Hardy boys figure out she’s going to the same conference and will see her at the hotel.

While in the taxi, Nancy pulls out the photo of herself with the head missing. That means someone was able to shove a photo into her bag too. On the back are the words, “No one will shed a tear when you’re gone” written in sharpie.   

Back at the hotel famous detectives are arriving but then we also see Fenton Hardy’s head being cut off in a photo too. Someone is using a typewriter to write, “The best shall also go.” The camera pans up, and we see a person wearing a creepy blue rubber mask.

A detective named Jason Fox arrives and the media all rush to talk to him. Fox chats with the media some, then brushes them off and see Fenton and goes to talk to him while the cowboy — Arlo Weatherly  — comes in behind Fox and grabs him in a bear hug. They are all old buddies, I guess.

Weatherly sees Nancy, excuses himself, and approaches her. Nancy says she’s an investigator and Weatherly asks her why she put a photo of him with his head missing in his bag.

Nancy says she didn’t put the photo there and shows her own photo.

The Hardy Boys show up and together they all decide that this must be some sort of prank, even though Weatherly’s photo says,  “You’re first, Cowboy.”

The boys later find similar photos in their room. “Brothers can disappear too,” is written on the back.

Soon Fenton, Nancy, and the boys are all comparing their photos.

Nancy says she thinks it is something important and dangerous and the boys laugh it off, because, you know, chauvinism.

Jason Fox shows up, and he says the same thing, reminding Fenton of all the pranks they’ve pulled in the past at this, and other, conferences.

The boys and Nancy start to walk back to their rooms later and Nancy says she still feels like something bad is going on. Frank pulls the sexist line, “Is this what you call women’s intuition?”

Then Nancy throat punches him. Oh. No. I mean. She should have.

Instead, she just roasts him by saying, “It’s called detectives intuition. Don’t you have any at all?”

Joe and Frank watch her leave and are like, “Girls. Psht. Whatever.”

Next, we are on a tour with the attendees. They are touring the sets and various sites of the movie and television making industry. Part way through, though, Nancy announces that Arlo Weatherly is missing.

She asks the boys if they remember the threat he got. That he’d be the first to go?

The boys brush her off yet again.

“Please, Nancy, don’t start on all that again,” Frank says with an eye roll.

Nancy shows them there was a polaroid on Weatherly’s seat and it’s the second half of his photo, his head.

The boys still aren’t buying it. Because they are stupid and don’t remember she helped solve the mystery with Dracula the last time they met her. Duh-uh!

So, Frank and Nancy go off to look for Weatherly and run into Columbo or Peter Falk who is shooting his show but wait — that’s not really Peter Falk. It’s an imposter! Something is off.

Oh, because that isn’t really Peter Falk. It’s ….. Casey Kasem?!

No. It legitimately it is. But his name in the show is Paul Hamilton and he eventually tells them that is who he is.

He does impressions and used to have a show in the 1950s called The Raiders, he says.

“Ever heard of it?”

Nancy and Frank have no idea what he’s talking about.

On the other side of the park Joe and Fenton are trying to find the Cowboy too but Jason Fox shrugs it off again and says it’s just a prank.

We see it isn’t a prank in the next scene when we see Weatherly sitting in a chair with his hands tied behind his back in a dark and empty cell.

Back in the park, a security guard questions Frank and Nancy about what they are doing there and escorts them out of the park.

Later that night at the conference, the boys ask Nancy if she’s heard anything on Weatherly.

She hasn’t but she has found a shooting schedule for a movie called The House on Bracken Moor.

The boys are confused and she explains that it is based on a book where eight people are stranded in an old house on an English Moor and they each receive a photograph of themselves and then each one disappears. (This is similar to the plot of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, by the way).

The boys are still not convinced that it has anything to do with Weatherly’s disappearance but Nancy points out that they were on a studio tour when he disappeared and that studio is shooting The House on Bracken Moor.

To keep the plot going, the boys dismiss her again and she says she’s going to go find the set herself and investigate.

I don’t blame her this time around. I find Pamela’s portrayal of Nancy overly aggressive on a god day, but the boys are being absolute jerks this time around.

To speed things up a bit, Nancy goes to the studio were the movie is being shot and finds a set with a picture propped up that features photos of all of the main detectives at the conference. Someone laughs and she runs after him, chasing the down a dark alley. She eventually finds herself on a set that looks like a dock and soon is tilted off a platform into some water. A fake shark chases her (think Jaws style), but she’s able to get out of the water. Staggering down the sidewalk, much less soaked than she should be if she’d really fallen into water, a truck attempts to back over her, but she is rescued by a man on horseback.

That man turns out to be Dennis Weaver who was acting in a show called McCloud at the time.

He takes her back to the hotel where the boys meet her, and Weaver tells them someone tried to run her over.

She tells the boys about the picture and as she goes in to change her clothes, she is thoroughly annoyed at them. After she leaves, they talk amongst themselves and finally agree that she’s been right all along after all.

They see Bronson, one of the detectives at the conference, get an envelope with a photograph and Frank goes to find Nancy. Nancy opens the door to her hotel room, but says, “Turn around, I’m getting dressed,” after he comes inside. Ummm…so what was she wearing when she opened the door?

Let us not think about that.

Anyhow, they confront Bronson and he says it’s a photograph of his son, not of him. They’re barking up the wrong tree, he adds.

He says Jason Fox is trying to play pranks on people and not to worry about it.

Nancy feels like the boys still won’t believe her now and they all go downstairs and see Jason Fox who is looking for Fenton because it appears that he is now also missing.

Joe, Nancy, and Jason start to go to look for Fenton, but Franks sees a photo in Bronson’s mailbox. He says Bronson sent him to get it. It’s a photo with Bronson’s head cut off.

They can’t find their dad and meanwhile we’re shown that Weatherly and Fenton are tied to chairs. Fenton says, “We should have believed Nancy. This guy’s crazy.”

Fenton’s ring, Arlo Weatherly’s watch, and some pendant belonging to Bronson are in a box given to Jason Fox. They all decide it is time to call the police, even though a ransom note in the box with the items says not to — just to bring money.

“Three of your detectives already gone,” the note reads. “$500,000 will free them. Don’t call the police.”

Jason says he will call the police and the boys apologize to Nancy for not believing her and they all agree to combine their forces and find out what is going on.

There is an argument between Frank and Nancy because Nancy was pushed into water earlier and could be in danger, but she points out she came there alone without them before because they didn’t want to believe her so she will be fine.

After Joe urges them to put their argument aside, they go onto the set and find the same photograph that Nancy told them about.

As they are talking someone begins to laugh again and they see the person’s silhouette outside the set window.

They all take chase. Joe gets onto a golf car type thing, while Nancy runs for help, and Frank gets stopped by studio security. Joe is busy searching an abandoned set when he is also snatched.

That ends episode one.  I’ll share about episode two in a separate blog post tomorrow.

Before, I close, I will share what I liked about episode one: I liked the intrigue and how everyone was blowing off the idea that something dangerous was really going on util Fenton and Bronson disappeared along with Weatherly.

What I didn’t like was how all the men treated Nancy like she was a hysterical girl. I think that they could have moved the plot of the show along even if they had believed her.  They really didn’t have to be so rude to her all of the time.

Even though, again, I feel Nancy is often rude in these shows. I think the writers, and Pamela herself, were trying to make Nancy appear confident, but instead I feel like it makes her look curt, abrupt and dismissive.

If you want to read other recaps from this show you can find them here:https://lisahoweler.com/old-tv-show-recaps/



The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula Part 1 and 2 Recap

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.

As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, which is the season I am in now, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also stared as Nancy part way through season two when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the lack of parts that were being written for her character.

This time around, I am tackling The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula. This was a two-part episode with both Nancy and the Hardy Boys, so it was essentially a movie.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get back to rewatching and then writing about these two episodes. I know that most of my blog readers do not read these recaps, which really makes the fact that I still write them a bit sad, (haha!) but I can’t seem to stop writing them. Writing them is a funny and light distraction from the tougher parts of life so I shall keep writing them.

I was watching the first episode of this two-parter last week to get ready for this blog post, when I saw that one of the podcasters I listen to had also watched these episodes and was sharing her own view of them on her most recent  I thought that was neat timing. Yes, I wrote the word neat. Yes, I am old.

The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula was the start of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries  second season. The two-part character crossover aired on September 11, 1977, and was the first (but not the last) time the sleuths teamed up on the show.

Our story starts in Transylvania with Fenton Hardy, the dad of Frank and Joe. He’s being driven up to the entrance of a very creepy castle at night. Why at night? Who knows…maybe the taxi driver wouldn’t take him up during the day. Either way, he arrives at night. On the way up a very rocky, out of shape road, the taxi driver complains about some American rock singer coming to the castle to perform.

When they arrive at the castle, Fenton gets out and starts to walk up to the front with a flashlight. The man tells him not to go in, but when Fenton mocks him, asking if he believes in the living dead and Dracula, he says it’s just an old building and he doesn’t think he should go in. Fenton asks the driver to wait, but the driver says he will drive to the bottom of the hill and wait for him. Fenton rolls his eyes and heads inside.

Inside Fenton is sneaking around, clearly looking for something, and being followed by someone wearing boots and who has a very white hand with ruffled sleeves and a ruby ring.

Eventually Fenton almost falls into a hole with human bones and drops his flashlight. This leads him to pick up a torch on the wall and light it with the lighter he apparently carries around with him.

He is making his way down a flight of stairs when he is hit on the back of the head by someone and falls down the stairs.

(Avery from the True Drew Podcast said she always hates to see the dad figure in a show get hurt because it makes her think of her own dad and I have to agree. I didn’t like the way Fenton Hardy fell or the way his head bounced on the way down.)

Next, we switch to Paris with Frank and Joe. It is June 9th we are told. We find out that Fenton has now been missing for two weeks.

“We’ve got to follow every lead, no matter how thin,” Frank tells Joe.

“You’ll forgive me if I pray this one doesn’t work out,” Joe says.

The next thing we see is a door to the morgue. The boys are both dressed in suits and a man is telling them a body was pulled up from the river.  Thankfully, the body is not that of Fenton’s.

The boys are relieved and head back to the hotel where their dad was staying to see if they can find out anything else about where he is.

They see a band performing across the street and that will come into play later.

When they go back to the hotel room, they hear someone searching their father’s room. They break in and find an older man with a very thick Romanian accent who asks them who they are and why they are in the room.

“Isn’t that our line?” Frank asks.

“Only if this is your room,” the man responds.

“It’s our father’s room,” Joe says.

The man double checks who their father is and then introduces himself as Inspector Hans Stavlin (portrayed by Lorne Greene – a well-known actor from the original Battlestar Galactica, Bonanza, and many other shows).

He says he is with the Romanian police and Frank says he’s a long way from home.

The inspector is looking for their father too and tells them he will fill them in on what he knows. After the “commercial break” we are at a small café and Stavlin is telling the boys that their father was working on a case with Interpol of “international importance.”

“A series of spectacular thefts of paintings which emptied the museums in Europe,” Stavlin says. “I believe you father was on the verge of a breakthrough when he disappeared.”

He says he received a phone call from their father saying he had a lead in Paris and then the phone went dead.

The boys want to know why Fenton would call him and Stavlin says their father was the liaison between all the police departments in Europe. (Ummm..ooookaaay. If he says so.)

Stavlin encourages the boys to go back home and wait for news on their father.

They aren’t very interested in that but ask him how they should reach him if their father does reach out. He says he is going home to a small town in the provinence of Transylvania and they can reach him there or through Interpol.

The boys discuss the fact he just said Transylvania and say they weren’t even aware it was a real place. They go back to their dad’s hotel room and look where he normally hides things — under the dresser drawer. There they find his notebook and a list of dates and locations. Each one corresponds with the robbery dates.

“Meet at Ritz Hotel, Munich, 5 o’clock,” Frank reads in the his dad’s planner. “Book for 301 in the name of Fredericks.”

They also see a note about the town Punare and a “Dracula Festival.” It’s the same town Stavlin just said he was from.

The boys decide they need a cover to get into the festival and offer money to a band they see performing outside to travel with them across Europe.

The band agrees, saying they’re going to the Dracula Festival to perform with American Rockstar Alison Troy, who in real life is singer Paul Williams. Nope, never heard of him either.

The group hops in a little 70s-style van, first to Munich to meet whoever their dad was meeting at the hotel and then on to Transylvania for the festival. As they travel we listen to them singing Ob-la-de-obla-da by The Beatles and as the scenery flies by them I had to laugh a bit and wonder if that is the only song they sang the entire drive.

Anyhow, they arrive at the hotel on June 10 and I thought this was probably impossible but a quick search online revealed that they could have driven from Paris to Munich in that time frame.

They check in at the hotel and get another room for their band friends.

So here is where things get weird with the people at the hotel. The bellman is repeatedly calling the man at the front desk “capitan” and then saying “Ooops.” He also gives him the Nazi salute more than once. I am truly not sure what this was all alluding to — other than these are former Nazis who have escaped being punished? I have no idea.

It’s just weird.

 The boys get to their room but still have two hours before the person who was supposed to meet their dad is due to show up so they head downstairs to get some lunch.

While they are gone in enters Nancy Drew looking stylish as all get out with a long white cape, matching calf length skirt, knee high black boots, and stunning reddish-brown hair.

She turns a lot of heads as she confidently marches to the front desk and asks to be taken to room 301.

The man at the front desk lets her know the other five have arrived. She’s taken aback. “There are five people in room 301?”

He tells her there are only two and three are on the second floor.

She is, of course, bewildered and even more so when the man points out that she forgot to mention a rock-n-roll group would be arriving with them.

Nancy acts like this is all normal and requests a bellman to be sent up with  her. She then turns and calls out, “Bess.”

Aha. So now we get George’s cousin Bess Marvin.

In the books, George and Bess are a package and help Nancy solve her crimes. George is a bit of a tomboy and more bold and Bess is plump and more timid.

In the first season of this series, they didn’t show us Bess and  George took on more of Bess’s character of being afraid of everything and a more cautious confidant to Nancy — warning her to be careful or suggesting she avoid going here or there.

We didn’t see Bess at all.

I’m not sure if this means we will be getting Bess this season or not.

I will say that I know we will be getting a different Nancy later in this season when Pamela Sue Martin chooses to leave because she felt the Hardy Boys were getting more airtime — and they pretty much were because Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy were teen heartthrobs at the time.

 Back to the show, though. Nancy is taken to the room and instructs the bellboy (who is actually an old man) to take the Hardy Boys bags away. She says she’s pretty sure the hotel has been pranked by the rock band who is trying to get a free room.

She tells Bess that she was to meet a man with the last name Fredericks, who is really Fenton Hardy, at 5 p.m. and that Fenton Hardy is clearly not a rock band. She was to meet Fenton because her dad sent her since she was already on vacation in France and Fenton needed help with his investigation.

Down in the restaurant, the boys are trying to get some food when Frank sees their luggage being carried to the lobby. He takes off while Joe (always the hungry one) is trying to order.

Frank tells the bellman to take his luggage back upstairs. When he and Frank reach the room they find Nancy and Bess’s luggage and Frank tells the man to remove their luggage.

He does and then we switch back to the restaurant where Joe is still trying to order. He finally gets a hold of the waiter but Nancy swoops in with Bess and tells the waiter they need to get food and fast.

Joe stares at Nancy in bewilderment all while Frank comes back down in a huff. Nancy and Bess then see their luggage being carried down by the overworked bellman. Nancy rushes off to stop him and orders him to take them back up. Back in the restaurant Frank declares there is no time to eat because they have to meet with whoever their dad was meeting with. He snatches the menu from Joe and off they go. Nancy tells Bess she’s going to meet with Fenton Hardy in the room.

The three meet in the elevator but don’t know who each other is until they end up walking to the same room.

An argument ensues and Nancy threatens to flip Frank on his back if he tries to move her bags. He puts his hand on her luggage and she flips him onto his back.

The boys are bewildered by her aggressive behavior but want her out of their room.

After some back and forth, and showing of passports, the trio finally get to the truth about why they are both there.

Calming down some (Pamela certainly played Nancy highstrung, but….well…she was that way in the books too), Nancy explains what information she has about the case and the boys tell her that their dad is missing.

She tells them she was attending a summer extension course with her friend when a friend of her fathers was also in Paris to pick up a rare painting he had purchased to donate to a museum back home. The painting was stolen so the client called Carson Drew (Nancy’s dad) to ask for help. Carson learned that this was one of many paintings that had been stolen for the past six months.

Nancy explains she does investigative work for her father and came up with some pieces to the puzzle that Fenton was interested in.

She was going to meet and compare notes with Fenton. Now the boys show her Fenton’s notes. She says the dates in Fenton’s books coincide with concerts held by Allison Troy.

The boys scoff at this. Allison Troy has tons of money. Why would he want to steal paintings?

Nancy says that the paintings were always stolen during an Allison Troy concert so the theory was that maybe it was someone from his entourage.

Nancy tells them that once she solves the case they’ll be able to find Fenton. This gets their back up and they say she’s threatening their dad’s case. Nancy doesn’t like to be challenged, so when they tell her they are sneaking into Transylvania and Allison Troy’s concert with a rock band and will report back to her what they find, she tells them she’s headed there on her own to do a thorough, well-thought-out investigation like her dad taught her to do.

She flounces off with a confused Bess in tow.

“What was all that about?” Bess asks as they reach the exit to the hotel.

“Amateur hour,” Nancy says. “Come on we have an appointment.”

“With who?” Bess asks.

“Dracula,” Nancy responds as creepy music and a wolf howl plays out the scene.

Next we see the boys pulling up to the castle in their van but they decided to head back to the little town because they are a day early and the castle is creepy.

The next scene we see is Stavlin telling the town council that the rock concert shouldn’t be held. The kids coming in will trash the town, he claims. Frank and Joe overhear him and then approach him and he smiles, though he looks a little uncomfortable with their appearance.

The concert will be filmed by an American television station (we see later it is ABC, which is where the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries aired, the mayor of the little town tells them. Allison Troy has leased the castle for a week and during that time the town does hold a festival Scavlin says. It is a tradition he says.

The castle was owned by someone called The Prince of Wallachia or The Beserker or “Count Dracula” because he killed thousands of people in the 1400s.

He was not actually a vampire, but he was a torturer and dictator and horrible man and committed many of his crimes at his castle. He was later killed by the Turks, Scavlin says.

Scavlin says that some say the monks buried his body on an island near there and others say his body was brought back to Transylvania to rest there and then rise again.

Meanwhile, Nancy and Bess have also snuck into the caverns and eventually find Frank locked in the cell.

Greene, by the way, is amazing in this role. I know this show can be cheesy at times but this episode is fairly good because of him. He is downright creepy with his Transylvania accent and makes the viewer wonder what his real story is. What is his connection to the castle? To Dracula? Is there any?

When the boys sign in they see their dad’s code name “Fredericks” in the sign-in log and know he was staying there. They feel the are on the right track to finding him.

The next night we are at the Allison Troy concert, or at least one of a couple that will be held at the festival. The real singer, Paul Williams, is singing some weird song about a man who was “bad in bed and would be better of dead.”

I don’t know what all that was about but the rest of the song talks about how so much of our life is a waste and “that’s the hell of it.”

While he sings, adults dressed as various monsters and creepy creatures are dancing while ABC cameras film it all.

Joe and Frank arrive with their band and eventually talk to Allison who is pretty arrogant. There are a few things he wants them to know. First, he wants them to help with music so there is music going on all night and ABC will be  filming them as well but when the final show airs it will be 90 percent him because he’s the star. He also wants them to know they can’t go beyond the main hall of the castle, into the caverns below. The owner said it was one of the rules for the castle being leased.

The boys immediately know that they are going into those caverns to search for their dad, though.

Eventually, Joe will stay with the band to sing (what’s a Hardy Boys episode without teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy singing??), while Frank sneaks off to find out what is in the basement of this castle. The mayor and other council members have already set off to find out what is downstairs. This is when the taxi driver/castle caretaker from before reappears and gives them a tour. Problems arise when he accidentally leads them to a closed door with the coat of arms of Dracula on it. He tells them they must get away fast and they mayor chuckles. When they leave we see the door open and the leather boots we’ve seen before step out.

Before long, though, the council members realize they’ve lost one of their party.

Frank, wandering around on his own, stumbles onto the lost member unconscious in a cell. When he goes to check on him, someone closes the cell door and locks him in.

My daughter (who I call Little Miss on here) watched this scene, including when Frank tried frantically to open the door to the cell. She said, “Bro didn’t even try to act. He was like ‘how do I make this look realistic’ I know let’s hold the door and then violently shake my head instead the rest of my body.”

She cracks me up.

Meanwhile, Nancy and Bess have also snuck into the caverns and eventually find Frank locked in the cell. Frank tells Bess to go upstairs and get help and Nancy works to pick the lock. Frank is impressed with her work. Then they both inspect the man and find out that he has –dun-dun-dun….a bite mark that looks like fangs on this neck!

Episode one ends with the words ‘to be continued.’ I am going to plow ahead with part two in this same post, though, because my daughter said she hates when you have to go somewhere else for the second part of a story and advised that I recap both parts in the same post. Yes, I take advise from a 11-year-old. You’re point?!

I’m “stealing” this next section from Avery, the host of the True Drew Podcast. I like when she shares in her episodes what she liked or didn’t like about the book or episode she is talking about.

What I liked about episode one :

I enjoyed the verbal sparring between Nancy and Frank and Joe. I loved Nancy’s outfit. I thought the dancing in the castle was fun and quintessential 1970s. I enjoyed the music even though it was a bit cheesy.

What I didn’t like:

I wasn’t a huge fan of the weird “Nazi-like” behavior of the characters in the hotel.  I’m not sure I like that they have gotten rid of George and replaced her with Bess, instead of leaving them as a team like they were in the books. Otherwise, I didn’t have a ton of dislikes in this one.

Part 2

We start right where we left off on part one. Scavlin and others arrive after Bess called them. Frank shows them all the bite marks and Scavlin orders an ambulance because the man is not dead, only unconscious.

At this point, Nancy says she and Frank and Joe should start working together and Frank agrees.

Upstairs, the teen heartthrob is singing his heart out and shaking his hips while all the ghosts and ghouls dance away on the dance floor.

When Nancy gets the two together, she lets them know she has some news for them. She’s found their father and he’s at a monastery. The monks found him and called for a doctor. The doctor advised them not to move Fenton, but said he was in stable condition and would recover.

Nancy drives them to the monastery and a touching scene unfolds as the boys look down at their unconscious father in a small, plain bed with a monk standing next to them.

The monk, Frank, and Nancy leave and Joe has a tender moment with his father, telling the sleeping man to hold on.

“We need you dad.”

They do too because in this iteration of the series, their mom is dead. In the books, however, their mom is still alive.

Before the boys leave the monk tells them the only thing their father has said since he’s been there has been the word “caverns.”

This makes the boys think they need to inspect the caverns more thoroughly, but when they go back there isn’t much to see, other than a door marked Dracula. They’re still leaning toward Allison Troy, the singer, somehow being involved with the thefts of the paintings, but their tired and go back to the hotel.

The figure with the boots, ruffled sleaves, and ruby ring is following them this whole time as well.

The next day Nancy, Bess, Frank, and Joe walk the streets as the townspeople put garlic up outside their homes and business, sure that Dracula is coming back.

That night at the next concert performance of the festival they split up and inspect Troy’s room and car.

Nancy and Frank go to his room and while there a bit of flirting unfolds as Nancy excitedly discovers a lock picking kit.

“Do you always get like this when you’re excited?” Frank asks her.

“When I get excited, you’ll know about it,” she responds.

“I’m looking forward to that,” Frank tells her with a grin.

To speed things up a bit I’ll list what happens next:

There is more dancing with Allison Troy (Williams) singing;

The people of the town grab pitchforks and march to the castle to demand the concert be stopped because it is a descretation of Dracula’s resting place and he will come back for revenge for that desicration;

Scavlin tells them all to go home and he, as the inspector of the town, will keep them safe (even though he was against the concert in the beginning);

Scavlin tells them that there is no vanmpire and that there have been accidents but no deaths;

Finally the town people leave;

Nancy and Frank ask the mayor if they can meet with him and he agrees but brings Scavlin because they were already talking;

The mayor says his home is part of an old jail and it could protect him but he’s not afraid of anyone hurting him;

The four talk and then Nancy, Frank, and Scavlin leave and urge the mayor to lock his doors. The mayor laughs but after they leave he does lock his doors.

Later the mayor is found unconscious in his locked office and, yes, he also has the bite marks. When he is hospitalized, Scavlin temporarily takes over as mayor.

Mixed in the middle of all this will be an incident where a bat suddenly shows up in Nancy’s locked room, terrifying her and causing her to scream for help. Frank comes to her rescue (much to the joy of those of us who would like the two to get into a relationship) and she falls into his arms before remembering she’s tough-girl Nancy Drew and pulls away.

Skipping ahead some, we will eventually see Scavlin arresting Allison Troy fr the thefts. He says he has found the lock picking kit in the hotel room and plans of the museums where paintings were stolen from in Allison Troy’s car.

Joe says that’s ridiculous because he and Bess looked in Troy’s car and didn’t see any plans, so the plans have to have been planted.

Reluctantly, Scavlin agrees and then suggests that maybe there are supernatural things unfolding in the community. He releases Troy and the foursome return to their hotel, with Joe and Frank dropping the girls off at where they are staying first. While sitting outside in the boy’s van, with Nancy and Frank in the front, and Joe and Bess in the back, an awkward and giggle-inducing scene evolves as Frank and Nancy say, “well” a few times to each other and Joe comments on how articulate his brother is.

He then announces that he knows how to say goodnight properly to a lady and leans over and kisses Bess.

Nancy and Frank never get further than a couple more utterances of “well, well…” before the scene ends and we fans are denied our Nancy and Frank kiss.

The boys head back to the castle and while there go right to that door with Dracula’s coat of arms on it. They enter the room and find a fully furnished room, a lit fire, and a coffin, but also a pile of stolen paintings.

Just as Frank is about to open the coffin, Scavlin walks in behind them and says in a very creepy, Dracula-like voice, “You should not have come here.”

Ah-ha! Scavlin! He’s the guilty party. He’s been following Allison Troy on his tour and stealing paintings to get  himself some money since he was being forced out as the inspector. He was using the castle so he could play Dracula and scare everyone away from it since that was where he was storing the paintings.

Stavlin was making marks on people’s necks and tried to remove Fenton Hardy from the equation so he couldn’t find out about the stash. He didn’t want anyone to die, but he did want them frightened enough to stay away from the castle.

That’s why when the people from town wanted to burn the castle down, he had to stop them.

Stavling says the boys are correct in their assumption and now they have to go too. That’s when he opens a trap door in the floor. The boys move aside and it is Stavlin who starts to fall when he’s startled by the mayor, Fenton, and Nancy and Bess rushing in to confront him.

It turns out that Nancy came up with the same theory as the boys and ran to get the police and mayor (and I guess Fenton too?) to go to the castle to see if they found Stavlin there.

The police officer has handcuffed Stavlin to him but Stavlin wants to get his hat from the wardrobe before he leaves and when he opens the door — are you ready for this?

Joe notices that he can’t see Stavlin’s reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door.

No kidding.

Joe begins to stammer, overwhelmed by what he is seeing.

“F-f-rank…”

Frank ignores him and Stavlin makes some comment about not being in jail long.

He disappears down the hallway with the officer and they all watch him go while Joe continues to stammer. They walk down the hallway after them and the door with the Dracula coat of arms closes slowly.

Cue scene and episode.

What I liked about episode two:

There was a lot to like about this one. Nancy and Frank flirting. Joe and Bess’s kiss. Lorne Greene’s great acting as “Stavlin/Dracula.”

There was a couple of fun songs too.

What I disliked:

 They listed Pamela Sue Martin as a guest star when she was supposed to be a star of the show. Ummm…..no wonder the woman finally left the show. Otherwise I thought this one was pretty good.

That brings us to the end of this one. Like Avery on True Drew Podcast, I will probably continue to watch season two, even though Pamela Sue Martin leaves part way through and we get a new actress for Nancy. Avery says she thinks it is interesting to see how different actresses portray Nancy and I tend to agree with her.

Yes, Avery has become my Nancy Drew guru, apparently.

So up next for our recap will be The Mystery of King Tut’s Tomb with The Hardy Boys.

If you want to catch up on my other recaps, you can catch them here:

Old TV Show Recaps

A couple of my favorites:

Episode Recap: The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Mystery of the Fallen Angel

Hardy Boys Episode Recap: Wipe Out (Did the Hardy Boys just rob the hotel?!)

A recap of the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries episode: The Mystery of the Solid Gold Kicker

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 2 Comments

For the past several months, I have been writing about or recapping episodes from the 1977-1979 TV Show The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. For the first season, the episodes would flip-flop back and forth between featuring The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and eventually the two would join forces before they began to phase Nancy out all together.

This time we are discussing The Mystery of the Solid Gold Kicker with Nancy Drew as the main investigator.

The episode starts with Nancy at a college football game. She’s inside the controller’s booth at the TV station broadcasting the game and it is never explained why.

Later, though, she’s at a party with the kicker of the team — a surprise guest star, who back then probably wasn’t a star yet.

Yes, that is Mark Harmon as star kicker Chip Garvey

He and Nancy are chatting while Nancy’s best friend  George dances with Pete Miller (Martin Kove).  The man is clearly old enough to be her dad, but I digress. He admits he is older and says he came to scout out Chip for Chip’s manager because he thinks the kid will go far as a professional ball goes.

Chip suddenly feels a bit woozy, things are going black. Nancy tells him to sit down but before he can a blond struts up to him and starts telling him off about abandoning her after inviting her down from Boston. Then she suggests that he’s going to hit he again.

“How could you do this to me, after all that you promised?” she asks as Chip’s manager tries to pull he out of the room. “After all we meant to each other?”

Chip is completely bewildered by the outburst and says he doesn’t even know the woman. She leaves and soon we are in the car with Nancy and George saying they can’t believe that fight and saying they don’t think they really know Chip at all.

When George drops Nancy off, she realizes she forgot her purse. She goes back to the house where the party was, which we eventually figure out was the house of the manager. Before she gets there we viewers are shown the manager, Ben Halstead (Terry Kiser), standing with the blond girl, Paula, and they are looking down at an unconscious Chip. Paula asks Ben how much he gave him.

“Just to knock him out for a few minutes, that’s all,” Ben answers. “He’ll come around when we want him to.”

So he and Paula set up a scene where Paula is unconscious on the floor and just before they do that, Ben says that Chip is like his own brother. Paula is worried he won’t be able to “come out of this” but Ben says, “He’ll be fine. He’ll be scared, but he’ll be fine and do the right thing.”

Ben says he has to do this to save himself.

Then they position Paula with broken glass around her so it looks like she’s been severely injured and wake Chip up.

He’s lead by Ben to believe that he actually killed Paula. Chip freaks out and says he doesn’t remember anything and that he couldn’t have hurt her.

The hiccup in all of this is George has come back for her purse, looks in the window and sees Paula “dead” on the floor.

She freaks out and drives back for Nancy.

Meanwhile, inside the house, Ben is telling Chip he’ll take care of things for him.

Chip is saying he doesn’t feel right about it and wants to call the police.

George found a phone booth and called Nancy and the police and now she and Nancy are racing toward Ben’s to find out what really happened.

The sheriff, Sheriff Foley, bangs on Ben’s door and tells him what George says she saw.

Foley uses the whole, “Sorry, Ben, but this crazy girl thinks she saw a dead woman on your floor…”

Ben says George is crazy and invites the sheriff to search for any evidence there was a girl lying on the floor.

The sheriff finds nothing and tells the girls they have to go.

Nancy doesn’t let up, though, and wants to see Ben’s vacuum cleaner. She wants to prove that there is broken glass in it.

There isn’t so Nancy and George are forced to leave.

On the way out, though, Nancy notices that Ben’s car is warm. She knows he lied so they drive off to find out where the trash might have been dumped. She drives to a less residential area (I mean how big is River Heights anyhow? I guess it’s plausible there is a less residential area where trash is dumped.)

Miracoulsy, while digging in the dumpster, they find the bag with the broken glass and a vacuum bag.

This is the time for a little humor too as a garbage man almost picks  them up while they are snooping.

George wonders if they could have dumped the body in that dumpster too and that has Nancy thinking. It is clear there isn’t a body there but if the woman really died — where is her body?

Next we see Ben talking to Pete. Pete says he’s back in Boston and asks what the issue is so Ben tells him about the deputy sheriff showing up with Nancy and George.

Pete laughs. “What? It’s not like they found a body.”

Ben tells him Nancy Drew is involved.

“Yeah?” says Pete. “So what?”

“She’s a part time investigator with the instincts of a bulldog,” Ben says. “I don’t think she’ll let go.”

I don’ really think bulldogs have much instinct other than drooling and trying to lick their bottoms, but..okay….we’ll go with that analogy I suppose.

Pete says, “Ben, we might have to do something about her.”

Uh-oh.

In the next scene we are at a cemetery and Paula’s name is written on a tombstone. Ben is comforting Chip who is saying, “I just can’t believe it. How can she be dead?”

Ben is telling him it’s going to be fine. It was an accident. Chip did nothing wrong and soon he’ll get over it.

“No, I’ll never get over it,” Chip says.

Then he sees Pete. “What’s he doing here?”

Ben said he couldn’t handle it by himself so he had to have Pete help him.

Pete said he was willing to help an up and coming football superstar. “It isn’t fair his career should be derailed over something that wasn’t his fault.”

Ben then asks if he got the other situation figured out and Pete says he did. That he got “them to compromise.”

Chip says, “Compromise? What’s all this about?”

Pete says others know about it but they won’t run to the cops as long as Chip pays them $500,000. Chip says he doesn’t have that money so Pete says he can get it by throwing Saturday’s game and giving those who bet on it their money that way.

Chip says he’s going to go to the police but Ben and Pete talk him out of it  because they threaten  his family when they realize Chip doesn’t mind going to jail or even getting beat up by the gamblers.

Nancy tries to tell her dad about what she thinks might be happening but, once again, Carson Drew frowns at his daughter, while holding his pipe, and says, “Now that’s a pretty serious charge without any evidence, Nancy.”

Hello? Your daughter was right in the past so maybe, I don’t know, back her up this time?

But nope, he says that there needs to be more evidence. Nancy says she’s already taken the glass to a lab to be tested and that there was carpet on the glass and that can be checked out too. I don’t know what lab would take work from an 18-year-old girl, but, okay, once again, we shall suspend belief.  

After Nancy argues with her dad we switch scenes to the lab where an older man with white hair is looking under a microscope right when a man dressed in all black clothes, including a mask, bursts in.

We don’t see the doctor or professor or whatever he is get tied up, but we do see Nancy come in to check on him, cry out when she sees him tied up, and enter the room while the man comes up behind her. Then we go to a “commercial break”. When we come back from the commercial break (there isn’t actually one in the episodes I watch on YouTube), Nancy escapes the man, runs around the island in the lab, grabs a chair and fights the man off, forcing him to flee after she tosses the chair from the window to get attention. This scene had me almost biting my nails — a habit I don’t really have but do when I am a bit nervous.

Despite Nancy’s fight, the man escapes with the evidence.

The doctor did get a chance to look at the glass though and found no evidence that anyone had been hit with it. This has Nancy even more confused.

Then she realizes that someone wanted to steal the evidence because it would show that no one had actually been hit with the vase.

“Dad, I’m going out of town so don’t wait up!” she declares before leaving.

When Carson asks where she is going she says “Boston!” and just hops on a plane. I kid you not.

Maybe Nancy is supposed to be older in this show…I would think so but she goes ALONE to CREEPY PETE’S apartment to confront him!!!

She says she’s looking for Chip but noticed he was staying there. Nancy tells him she needs help with Ben.

Pete asks if it is about Paula and says that the last he saw her was when she left the party. Nancy thanks him and leaves, saying she has a plane to catch. Huh, so she flies in and out of Boston to ask one question. After she leaves Paula shows up to have some “cuddle time” with Pete.

Now we are back in the car with Nancy and George and George is complaining that she got tickets on the 50 yard line and they should really be there. Nancy says she understands but that they need to stay on the case.

So instead they go to see Skipper, an older man who cleans her dad’s office. Nancy tells George she’s on to the plan and believes Paula is alive and Ben and Pete made it look like she died to blackmail Chip.

Inside she talks to the salty Skipper who once traveled all over. She wants to know about the time he was knocked out with a knock out drug and what the symptoms were.

“It’s more like a sail ripping apart in a typhoon,” Skipper says. “It screams through your ears.”

Obviously Nancy is starting to figure out that Chip was drugged.

She and George head back to the football game, with Nancy hoping to be able to talk to Chip after she saw him miss two field goals on the TV that Skipper was watching the game on.

Nancy bursts into the control room and demands – hold on I need to laugh a bit here. Whew. Need to wipe my eyes now. Okay so she demands that the man in the control room bring up a video from the game the week before because she wants to see if Paula was sitting with Ben, who she’s sure she saw on the screen when she was in the control room last week.

“It’s terribly important,” Nancy whines.

Eventually the man agrees and they look through – during halftime. While they are looking, Pete calls the bad gambler/mob guy and tells them it looks like it’s in the bag since Chip missed two field goals. The mob guy says he just found out Chip moved his whole family out of town so it looks like maybe Chip isn’t actually going to throw the game.

“Maybe this girl Nancy Drew is the probl’m ‘ere, Pete, see? I told you she need to be watched, see?” That isn’t actually what the guy says. I’m just making it more gangster-like for you.

Okay, so Pete says he’ll take care of it.

Now we are back to Nancy and she sees Paula and Pete together. She asks how to get to the field so a good-looking man helps her but only gives her a pass to get past the guard. In the meantime, Pete sees her running and he starts to follow her. He calls to her but she starts running even faster to get away. She’s able to escape and get to the entrance of the field but is stopped by security.

Eventually she breaks through and then we see Paula in a black wig in the stands sitting next to Ben. They see Nancy run to Chip and they are definitely nervous.

Nancy tells Chip that Paula is possibly alive and tells him not to throw the game. He says he isn’t going to throw the game.

“People miss sometimes and that was just my time,” he tells her.

It’s time for him to kick and she tells him good luck but he says, “If I miss this, who is going to believe me?”

He doesn’t miss, though, and Nancy meets Ben and Paula trying to leave with Pete in handcuffs behind her. I think she saw Ben and Paula in the stands in the control booth earlier and that’s why she knew where they were sitting, but I started to get confused, so don’t take my word for it.

She confronts Ben and shames him for taking advantage of his friendship and then confronts Paula and rips off her black wig. Paula is like, “Wha’eva!” Okay, she isn’t — she just scowls in snobbery.

The episode ends with Chip telling Nancy, George, and Carson that he is out of the bowl game but will at least be able to finish his degree. He feels awful for not going to the police before. Skipper comes in and gives an encouraging speech to Chip about him becoming his own man, “which is much more important than any point after touch down….” He then tries to launch into a bawdy story about “a man who meets a wench in Hong Kong,” but Carson quickly stops him. Skipper shifts gears and says his next story is much cleaner and then — what happens? You must be able to guess by now if you’ve been reading these recaps.

Yes, everyone laughs and the episode ends.

This one also guest-starred Howard Cosell, the famous sports broadcaster.

For whatever that is worth.

So next up — taking a deep breath — I am so excited — is a two-part episode that features Nancy and The Hardy Boys together.

I don’t know when I will be sharing that recap but I am super duper looking forward to it because I am a super duper dork.

If you would like to read some of my other recaps you can find them at the top of the page under “Old TV Show Recaps.”

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Episode Recap: The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Mystery of the Fallen Angel

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.

As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.

This time around I am writing about a Nancy Drew centered episode called The Mystery of the Fallen Angel.

*Disclaimer: These posts do spoil the entire episode. Also, I do joke around a lot about the cheesiness or plot holes or the “weird” 70s hairstyles, clothes or music, but please know it is all in good fun. I have fun watching these and the mysteries are often very interesting. Please don’t leave me comments enraged that I am making fun of your favorite show. *wink* I make fun of my favorite shows too!

To me, this was one of the better episodes I’ve seen so far. It was fairly well written, simply put together, and Nancy’s character was less whiney or rude than in other episodes.

We start out at a carnival. George and Nancy are playing a carnival game and they are winning. The man running the game isn’t altogether pleased with them winning and reminds them that the event is for charity.

Nancy lets him know she’s going to give the toys they are winning to the children.

Next, we find Ned in with a fortune teller. She looks at his palm and tells him that’s “too masculine.” (Snicker).

“You’re too dominating of a man for the average girl to handle,” she says.

Ned blushes and scoffs. Laughing nervously he says, “Oh…so that’s my problem.”

The fortune teller suggests that his forcefulness is what causes women to run from his advances.

“Oh. That’s because of my forcefulness?” Ned says with wonder.

The fortune teller says, “Yes, trust me.”

Switching scenes, we see a glass of champagne being poured for Carson Drew, Nancy’s dad. He’s telling a man named Robert that this is the best benefit they’ve had so far.

Robert thanks him and says the benefit is one excuse to “keep the old place” now that all the kids have moved out.

The wife laughs and asks how they could possibly downsize anymore.

“We’re already down to 18 rooms a piece,” she says.

Jocular, rich-people-laughter follows.

Outside we see a young man with long dark hair and a sports jersey sneaking around in the dark. He knocks on the back door and a woman lets him in. Both looked panicked and she says, “We’re going to get caught, Henry. If only you could tell people who you are.”

And – oh! Who is this young man? He looks very, very familiar.

Now I shall confess that I took a photo of the actor while I was watching this the first time and asked my husband who it was. I knew he looked very familiar.

The answer I got back was, “A. Martinez. Longmire.”

Yep. A Martinez was in this one. Maybe one of his first shows? Not sure, but he was very good and it was a sign of good acting to come, in my humble opinion.

Anyhow, without giving us much more information we switch to another scene of a group of bikers pulling up and a woman scolding them for not being there to help run the carnival.

“Where have you guys been? I pay you to work for the carnival, not to go joyriding,” she says in a thick New York accent.

She tells them to all get back to work and tells the one girl to go home. The young girl says she’d prefer to stay there, she’s having fun.

When the woman leaves, the man says they’ve got important work to do later.  He hugs the young girl, squeezes her face and tells her to lighten up but she says, “I’m just not used to all this.”

“There’s a lot you’re not use to, but you better get used to it,” he says. “Tonight’s your first lesson.”

We don’t know what that means but we are certain to find out at some point.

Later Henry is caught leaving the house by the rich wife who asks if she can help him.

He says he got lost and Robert says, “You’re Henry Salazar, aren’t you?”

Henry doesn’t reply but says he has to be going.

When he leaves, Robert tells Carson he’s the kid who used to work in Foster’s drugstore until old man Foster caught him with his hand in the till.

“That was never proven, as I remember,” Carson says.

“Still,” Robert says. “I don’t like him hanging around here.”

Henry sneaks back to say goodbye to Tina and makes her promise she won’t say anything about who he is or who she is. He says she’ll get into big trouble if she says anything and we aren’t sure if that is a threat or a reminder.

Next, we see the young carnival girl looking worried outside, a window opens in the mansion and the other carnival workers are — gasp! Inside the mansion!

The girl blows a whistle at the moment that Nancy, George, and Ned walk by. Ned is telling a joke, and they are laughing but hear the whistle, which I gather is to alert the carnival workers it’s all clear.

Ned, Nancy, and George shrug the whistle off and keep going and then we see all the carnival workers nonchalantly returning to their places at the carnival…somehow no one noticed they were gone. Hmmm…

 Oh well. Back to the mansion where chaos has ensued because the rich lady, Clara, went to put a pin back into her safe and  discovered all of her jewels are gone. She let out a scream like she found a dead body and George, Nancy, Ned, and Carson go running.

Clara and John clarify that the jewels weren’t worth a ton but they were insured for over a million dollars. The sheriff comes rushing in not long afterward and greets Nancy and Carson then asks if anyone touched anything.

“Of course not!” Nancy says, clearly offended.

The sheriff is immediately apologetic. “Sorry. I forgot who I was dealing with for a moment.”

He’s been in similar situations with them before, after all since Nancy can’t keep her nose out of police business.

The sheriff wants to know if they saw anyone suspicious walking around or in the house and — Of course! Snap! Robert and Clara immediately think of Henry. He was in the house. He must have taken the jewels!

Carson backs up the couple by saying that Henry did seem suspicious, which he adds he hates to say since he seems like a good young man who Nancy went to school with.

We don’t know how the sheriff finds Henry but after the commercial break (though they are cut out of the YouTube videos I watch) we see Nancy in a jail cell with Henry, telling him she works as a part time investigator for his attorney, Carson Drew.

Carson is going to take on his case and she wants him to tell her why he was in the mansion.

He refuses. He didn’t steal Mrs. Jordan’s jewelry but he won’t tell Nancy why he was in the house.

She wants to know if had anything to do with seeing Tina.

“Tina who?”

“The Jordan’s maid. I thought you two knew each other.”

(Um…how did she make this connection? I’m not sure but I think I missed a scene where Nancy saw them together in the house.)

Henry says he doesn’t know here and never met her and there is no reason to get an innocent person involved in anything.

(If he doesn’t know her then how does he know she’s innocent. Right? Right?!)

“I do not know her. I did not rob the Jordans,” he tells Nancy.

Nancy tries Tina. She won’t say anything either.

The Jordans are pleased that Carson is going to defend Henry. The sheriff doesn’t know why the man would care about defending a man who might have stolen things from him.

“If he’s guilty, the law will take its course without my direction,” Robert Jordan says. “If he’s innocent, I don’t want to be responsible for destroying anyone’s life.”

The sheriff wants to look into Tina now. Nancy, though, says there were tons of people there the night of the carnival, including the carnival workers.

While leaving with Carson, Nancy says she wants to check into the carnival workers and see if they could have been involved in the theft of the jewels.

Carson is one of the most laid-back dads I’ve ever seen (in the books and the show) and sometimes expresses concern for Nancy’s safety but usually only sends her on her way with a small laugh and a “You be careful now,” like she is playing make believe in the backyard.

This time around, though, Carson actually expresses concern!

“That might not be too safe,” he tells Nancy.

“I’m just going to go ask a few questions,” Nancy assures him.

Carson isn’t buying it. “Nancy, people don’t like having their lives pried into.”

Right?! Yet your daughter is doing it all the time, dude, and usually you don’t seem to care too much, just letting her gallivant around, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. (Remember I am joking around in these posts, not actually slamming the show. Just having a little fun.)

“I’m not going to pry,” Nancy insists. “Just observe.”

“Well, you be careful while you’re observing,” Carson says with a nervous laugh.

Nancy’s idea of observing is dressing up in a bikini top under a buttoned down shirt, and pretending she’s a runaway to try to get a job with the carnival.

Ned and George don’t like this at all and warn her against it. In true Nancy fashion, she ignores them and moves forward, but does thank them when they say they’ll be showing up to the carnival later in the day to check on her.

Nancy struts into that carnival with an attitude. Her hair is all feathered, her cleavage is showing, and the mom in me is like “Oh no. No. I don’t like this one little bit.”

But I can’t do anything about it so I just have to watch Nancy try to make herself fit in by  jumping on a motorcyle and taking off when a guy tells her he bets she doesn’t know how to ride it. Then, after the carnival owner hires her, I have to keep watching when these creepy dudes later put her in the cage of a ride and spin her upside down up in the air to try to get her to admit she’s a narc.

I’m telling you these guys are creepy! They are definitely the r-word type and Nancy is truly putting herself at risk. If she was my daughter, I’d be flipping out on her. I don’t care if she is 18 now. I think she’s 18 in the show. I’m not actually sure. She’s still my child and I’d be fuming mad if I saw her doing these things.

So, after these guys try to get her to confess who she is, the young woman we met earlier )who was afraid she was going to blow their mission – whatever it was) says she knows Nancy. Nancy, she claims, is a friend of her sister’s and that she’s there to try to bring her home since she ran away from home.

She’s lying of course. We also learn her name is Anne.

Nancy thanks Anne when they are alone, but the girl tells her to get lost because she is in danger.

“You be gone by tonight or you’re on your own!” she tells Nancy.

This whole episode had me anxious. The creepy guys, Nancy putting herself at risk and being away from friends and family, the young runaway girl.

Boy was I relieved when Ned and George showed up and the three of them joined together to find out if the carnival workers are the real thieves of Mrs. Jordans jewels. They don’t find the jewels, but they do find a van full of stolen televisions and other electronics. These carnival workers might not be jewel thieves, but they are thieves of some kind.

Ned and George also let Nancy know that Henry was let out on bail, but he jumped it. The cops are looking for him. Just lovely!

Nancy tells George and Ned to write down the serial numbers of the electronics before they leave to try to find out if the items are stolen. The three of them then part ways, Nancy back to her ruse and Ned and George to find out if the TVs are stolen.

Nancy runs into Henry while he’s snooping around the carnival. He tells her that her dad told him she was following the carnival to try to find out if the workers were involved and that he also found the van with the TVs. He tells Nancy that Tina was arrested as his accomplice.  He has to find out who really stole the jewels so she doesn’t have a crime pinned on her that she didn’t commit. He admits he knows Tina but won’t tell Nancy how.

 They part ways and Anne finds Nancy at the game booth she’s working at later and says that Vince, the head bad guy, knows someone was in his van. They found out who the person is and they’re going to find out why they think Vince is guilty of something.

Nancy isn’t sure what that means and then Vince’s creepy henchmen tells her that shes’s taking a ride with them so they can show her how they deal with spies.

Nancy is put on the back of a bike and driven to a rural area where Henry is in the middle of a circle of motorcycles while they taunt him.

Nancy watches this for a while and then she has had enough. She jumps on the bike the other guy (essentially her kidnapper) got off and roars toward the other bikes, somehow knocking them all over (it’s television, people). She gets Henry on the back of her bike ,and they take off toward the carnival, all the bikers soon in pursuit (once they get their bikes back up). This leads to a windy and twisty chase among the carnival booths during which a lot of the bikers crash out.

Eventually the cops show up and stop the highspeed bike chase. Ned and George are with them. Nancy stops her bike and thanks Ned for calling the police. As an aside (yes, I do a lot of these), I noticed that Nancy was a lot nicer to Ned in this episode than previous ones. She even compliments him by saying, “Ned, you are without a doubt the smartest, neatest, most…”

“Most forceful?” Ned asks, harkening back to the fortune teller’s comments at the beginning of the show.

“Most forceful man I know,” Nancy agrees.

Anne, the young woman who tried to help Nancy, says she was forced to help the burglary gang. She’s scared to go with the police, but Nancy says Carson will help her. This poor guy. Nancy is always finding people for him to help, and he rarely gets paid by them, which will actually be commented on at the end of this episode. It does have me wondering how this man has time to make money with all the pro bono work he does.

To wrap things up with the Jordans, Carson and Nancy visit them, and Nancy asks Mrs. Jordan to open the safe in front of them. The Jordans are a bit offended but agree. While working on opening the safe, Mrs. Jordan breaks down and confesses she doesn’t know how to open the safe. She never has. The safe was already open when she came in the room.

Nancy says George and Ned uncovered in their investigations that the Jordans are broke (how did they find this? I have no idea!) and says she believes the couple sold the jewels off and then when they had no more to sell, they pretended the jewels were stolen so they could get the insurance money. The Jordans admit that this is exactly what they did and are ashamed.

Nancy says it was very convenient for the couple that Henry walked into the house that night. She asks if they were willing to let Henry go to jail for their crime of insurance fraud and they said they were sure Carson would find out that Henry didn’t do it and if he didn’t, they were going to confess before Henry’s case went to trial. They even asked Carson to represent him so he would find out that Henry wasn’t guilty, they say. Robert asks Carson to not only forgive them but represent them in their insurance fraud case. He agrees, saying he can’t let their 20-year friendship end over this mistake. (Carson is way too nice.)

Another aside — does George have another job? I mean Ned works for Carson but what does George do? She doesn’t go to school. She doesn’t appear to work anywhere. She runs around with Nancy solving crimes so does Carson pay her too? And if he does, how does he since he keeps taking cases on for free for Nancy? Of course, he does have wealthy clients like the Jordans so maybe that is how.

There is also a final wrap up scene with Henry and Tina. It turns out that Tina is Henry’s sister. She’s in the United States illegally from Mexico and Henry was helping her get her green card and papers so she could stay legally. He didn’t want anyone to know who she was so she wouldn’t be deported.

Carson says he will help her get her papers and make sure she’s not deported. Luckily this is the 70s and not today or Carson might have a pretty hard time keeping Tina from being sent back to Mexico.

As I mentioned above, this was one of the better episodes in my opinion. The story wasn’t too bad, the writing was better than others and Nancy was a lot nicer to Ned all around.

If you want to read other episode recaps you can do a search for Hardy Boys Nancy Drew via the search bar to the right.

Up next, I will be recapping The Hardy Boys episode Wipe Out.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Episode recap: Nancy Drew: A Haunting We Will Go

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 3 Comments

Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.

As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season they started to join together. Eventually they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.

This time around I am writing about a Nancy Drew centered episode called A Haunting We Will Go.

As far as episodes go, this one wasn’t the worst. It had a lot of humor mixed in and kept the mystery going for quite a long time. It also had some absolutely ridiculous elements, but that’s totally okay. That’s what makes these episodes fun.

Nancy, George, and Ned are producing a play to raise money to demolish the old town theater so they can build a children’s home. What exactly is the children’s house? I have no idea, but it is supposed to be a good cause, from what I can tell.

They’ve already recruited a former well-known local actress to perform in the play. Then Ned starts receiving notifications from other people who used to act in the community theater and are now famous.

They want to come and help out too.

The young people are confused, but excited for them all to come, even though a prop chandelier fell and almost killed Nancy the scene before.

Here are our characters who used to be actors at the theater: Alex Richmond, Seth Taylor, Danny Day, Thelma March, and Janet Musant.

Janet remained living in the town but everyone else moved away. Janet isn’t too happy about having been left behind and everyone returning either. She’s pretty unpleasant all around but she seems to have reason to be. Life hasn’t been easy to her. Her hotel, located across the street from the theater, is old and run down and she uses a cane. We aren’t sure why she has the cane and limp but it’s clear some kind of illness or injury has befallen her.

Janet.

Nancy is trying to figure out what happened with the light fixture that almost fell on her when the other people start to arrive.  

We feel the tension among the group fairly fast, especially between the others and Thelma, who is now a movie actress and is very condescending to everyone. She tells the one man she wonders how he is able to spend all his time sharing bad news as a newscaster and then says, “Oh well, I always turn way from you to channel 3. It’s a much better quality of news.”

This is how things will go for a good portion of the first half of the show — the actors shooting verbal barbs at each other.

The actors all claim they came back to the theater to act on the stage one more time before the theater is destroyed, but Nancy recognizes right away there isn’t a ton of truth in these statements.

Something else is definitely up.

Arguments are breaking out, snide remarks are being made, and when Nancy suggests they came for a reason other than raising money for the children’s house, they all get funny looks on their faces.

Nancy was only referring to the fact they were all in the same play together years ago, but they certainly looked panicked. Nancy doesn’t miss these expressions either.

Later that night, after an argument between Seth and Thelma that is witnessed by Nancy and George, the five actors begin searching the theater.

We aren’t sure what they are searching for, but it seems like some kind of treasure from the comments they are making. “It should be back here!” “This is where we put up the wall!”

 During the search they insult and accuse each other of vague offenses, keeping us from knowing what is really going on.

At one point Seth and Janet end up in an argument at the top of the stairs in the theater. The actors have been put up at Janet’s hotel. Janet snottily asks Seth if he is happy with his room.

He sneers back that he expected it to be lined with mink.

“Someone has been making a very good living out of this nightmare,” he snaps.

Janet is incredulous. “You think it’s me? Would I stay on in this town, in this run down mausoleum?”

“Where else would you fit in so well?” Seth asks.

Ouch.

Seth snaps out some more accusing remarks and Janet swings at him with her cane. He grabs her at the moment Nancy shows up at the bottom of the stairs and it looks like Seth is about to throw the woman down the stairs. Yikes. He clearly has anger issues, if not homicidal tendencies

The pair of actors claim they were simply practicing a scene to attempt to cover up their fight, but Nancy’s way too smart for that. She knows something is going on.

She tells Ned something is going on and Ned sort of groans and says, “Why are you always playing detective when there’s no crime?”

Burn.

Nancy isn’t letting Ned deter her though. She knows these people are hiding things and she’s going to find out what they are.

I have to say that Nancy is really, really rude to Ned in this episode. She mocks him incessantly because he is proud of bringing all the actors in and organizing the play. Nancy is often very mean to him, and I don’t know why he keeps pursuing her.

Look! She’s even giving him the “duh, Ned!” expression!

I’m sure the writers were trying to add humor, but it’s not funny when Nancy compliments him only to bait and switch and tell him he needs to see a psychiatrist because he worked so hard on a project that she talked him into working on.

*pulling out soapbox*

I think he’s a pretty weak man for putting up with her belittling him all the time, but I think that’s what 70s shows were like at times. They were trying to give women independence and much like today there is an attitude that to make women appear stronger they have to tear men down. I don’t like that idea or to see it pushed here.

*putting soapbox away*

Anyhow, Ned does start to wonder if Nancy is right about something weird going on when he stops by the theater at night to check the props and lights again and finds Thelma and Alex carrying bricks out the back door of the theater.

See, right before Ned shows up, the viewer is shown that all four of the actors are digging with pickaxes into a wall in the basement of the theater. They’re saying something about them not remembering it being so thick and they thought it was more hollow.

When Ned catches them, they toss out a lame excuse that Alex has a bad back and needs to sleep on the bricks to help his back. I think that was a thing people did back in the day but ouch!

They talk Ned into leaving to get some rest by suggesting he’s offended Thelma by calling her old, so they can go back to digging.

In the morning, Ned and Nancy find the actors all asleep in the dressing room and they claim they were running their lines.

Nancy again knows they are lying, and Ned admits he saw them sneaking bricks out of the theater the night before.

“I knew it!” Nancy declares.

When Ned and Nancy leave, the actors start talking about how they’ve been bled dry financially by someone in the room and that someone has their money and they’re going to find out who. All four (Janet isn’t there) deny being the blackmailer.

The actors agree to stumble out onto the stage for a rehearsal but after a few runs they are ready to go back to their rooms and crash. Nancy argues that they need to stay to help her learn her part (which seems to consist entirely of her carrying drinks out to the stage and asking if they want one … so not too challenging to me.)

While arguing about going or staying, an entire light fixture falls and would have killed Alex if Nancy hadn’t pushed him out of the way.

Nancy is certain it was done on purpose, but, as usual, her father (Carson  Drew) and Ned disagree and offer up excuses like: “The theater is old. Maybe we shouldn’t even have people there for a play,” and “These are fine, upstanding members of society. Why would they have anything to do with people almost getting killed in the theater, Nancy? It’s preposterous!” (Not actual dialogue but imagine all that said in a very posh British accent. I did and it made me giggle.)

Nancy pushes out her lower lip and stomps her foot and says, “Well, I am going to find out what is going on! I am! I am!”

She doesn’t actually say this but it’s very close.

She stomps out the door like a toddler after that. Very mature for an “18-year-old” sleuth.

Things get worse after she leaves when her dad’s sexism rears it’s ugly head when he suggests she’s just being emotional because she’s working with so many stars. The he leans back with his pipe and grins.

Ick. The way Carson Drew is portrayed in this show is so icky to me. In the books he was fairly clueless — letting Nancy run all over the place without really checking on her, but in the show he’s downright dismissive of her and practically calls her an emotional woman on her period. He is a lot more misogynistic in the show in other words.

Nancy decides she’s going to put some ultra-violet paint on things around the studio, like the door, to see if any of the actors are the person who has been sneaking around and sabotaging things in the theater.

During the episode we have little snippets of someone walking around spying on Nancy and George or some of the actors. It’s always just someone in black boots and pants so we are never sure if it is one of the actors or who.

The next day during rehearsals, Nancy shuts off the lights and shines ultra-violet light onto the stage to see who is guilty and discovers that all of the actors have the paint on their hands. We won’t get into how she found an ultra-violet light that big to shine on them because I have no idea.

This leads the actors to discuss in private how Nancy knows too much and that “we know what we have to do.”

“No, oh no,” says Seth. “I can’t do that again.”

“You can’t do what again?” asks Thelma (who has a fake theater voice…it’s weird).

“I can’t do away with that sweet, innocent girl.”

Thelma says she didn’t want to do away with her anyhow.

“She’s talking about him,” Danny says. “We’ve got to get rid of him.”

“In the cellar,” Alex says. “Before he does away with us.”

I’m sorry? Blink. Blink.

Before who does away with you?

Oh my!

So, next, Nancy and George go to the library to find newspapers that will tell them what happened when the first play was held some 20 plus years ago. They find out that the original play was promoted by a producer named Jason Hall. Hall took in several donations from the community businesses to promote the play and promised that New York critics would come in to see it. The play flopped , no critics came, and Jason Hall disappeared the first night of the performance with all the money.

A humorous moment comes in the next scene comes when the actors pull a sarcophagus out of the basement of the theater. The entire time they are saying things like, “Jason has gotten heavier,” or “Good grief, where did you think Jason was going to go after all these years.”

Yikes. So, we have already figured out what happened to Jason.

Ned stumbles onto them while coming back to check something at the theater and Seth, while holding one end of the sarcophagus says, “Oh..” nervous laugh. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“That looks like a sarcophagus,” Ned says.

Seth, barely able to hold on to his end of the thing says breathlessly, “Well, yes, it is a sarcophagus.”

Like this is something that happens every day. Two grown men carrying a sarcophagus.

Seth says that the item was a souvenir he wanted to keep and that he collects them

“I have nine of them. I have just the spot for this one in my Hollywood apartment.”

“Do you think he’s suspicious of anything?” Alex asks when Ned leaves.

“What’s suspicious about two men carrying a sarcophagus down a dark alleyway at midnight?” Seth asks while rolling his eyes.

Har. Har. Cue the cymbal tap.

Nancy hears about the sarcophagus and tells her dad that she just knows that Jason Hall’s body is in the sarcophagus.

Carson isn’t very sure about this, because, you know, it would be a travesty for him to believe his daughter, but he calls the police anyhow.

Before the police get there, the actors talk about how they can’t believe Jason is still in there. Janet says how she’s the one who has had to live across the street from where his body has been buried while they all went to live their lives somewhere else.

When the police get there, bursting through the doors, they make the actors open the sarcophagus and — Oh.  It doesn’t have a body inside. Instead, it is full of bricks.

Even the actors are shocked but try to play it off.

“Of course there isn’t a body in there!” they declare. “We knew there wouldn’t be!”

But they all look a bit panicked and when everyone else leaves, Danny says that the body was removed by the blackmailer who has been demanding money from them to keep the secret a secret.

The show must go on and the next night they are all on the stage, while the local TV station broadcasts it live.

Nancy, though, standing in the wings, knows what really has happened.

Jason Hall never died. He’s been alive this whole time and he’s the one who has been blackmailing all the actors and creating all the havoc at the theater. When George asks why, Nancy says it is because he’s been trying to end the performance. Once the theater was torn down and the sarcophagus uncovered, it would be clear he wasn’t really dead and had been blackmailing them all along.

When it is Nancy’s time to go out and they are all supposed to take a drink of champagne, Nancy smells something odd in the bottle and yells for them all not to drink it. She then demands Ned shut off all the lights and use the ultra-violet light on the audience. They see a man with glowing hands in the front row. He takes off up onto the stage and runs across it, but the actors and the police (where did they even come from?) catch the man. He is revealed to be none other than Jason Hall! Alive and well! Gasp!

Later the actors all share what really happened with Nancy, Carson, Ned and George. They say Jason tricked them all those years ago and took all the money from the investors for the play and the ticket sales. They found out before he could leave town. A violent argument ensued and Jason fell and hit his head, they say. They all thought they had killed him, but instead of calling the police (hello!!) they tossed him in the sarcophagus to pretend it never happened.

“At sometime, he must have recovered consciousness and gotten out of the sarcophagus, weighted it down with bricks, and then not realizing it we all came back to the theater after the performance and bricked it up,” Alex theorizes.

Everyone agrees that must have been what happened but no one expresses guilt at having shoved Jason’s body in the sarcophagus in the same place. Seth does express guilt at how they have all acted and how they went all cray cray about finding the body before anyone else.

The actors agree they will do the performance again, with no pretenses this time, and raise the money to have the theater torn down so the children’s house can be built.

By the way, when Jason was caught, the dude didn’t even get a line. Not one line. He just scowled at Nancy. I guess that was one way to cut down on how much he had to be paid. Another cost saving measure in this episode is how much was shot with a dark background since they were on a theater stage for much of it. Less lighting expense I suppose.

Everyone agrees at the end that Nancy is an amazing sleuth. She, however, is not an amazing actress, Thelma tells her.

The episode ends with everyone laughing at Nancy, which I thought was a bit called for since she’d been so mean to Ned the entire episode.

If you want to read some of the other episodes I’ve written about, there is a search bar to the right and you can just type in Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.

Up next will be The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Flying Courier!

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Recapping and reviewing the 1977 Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode The Secret of the Whispering Walls

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 3 Comments

Here we are to another episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977. As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season they started to join together.

This week we have another Nancy Drew episode, The Secret of the Whispering Walls.

I knew part way into this one that it was based on at least one Nancy Drew book — The Secret of Red Gate Farm, but learned on the Nancy Drew Wiki site that it also combined the story of The Hidden Staircase. I didn’t recognize some of the elements from that book until I read that and then I began to see what parts they pulled from it. I did find it interesting that there is a book with this title from the same era as the Nancy Drew books and ironically it is written by Mildred Benson, who wrote about 30 of the original Nancy Drews under the pseudoym Carolyn Keene.

The book was part of the Penny Parker Mysteries series and I thought it was interesting what was written in the description of the book on Amazon.

“Penny Parker starred in a series of 17 books written by Mildred A. Wirt Benson and published from 1939 through 1947. Penny was a high school sleuth who also occasionally moonlighted as a reporter for her father’s newspaper. Benson favored Penny Parker over all the other books she wrote, including Nancy Drew. “I always thought Penny Parker was a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is,” Mrs. Benson said in 1993.”

You know I’m going to have to get a copy of this one so I can compare.

On to the episode:

We open to someone breaking into a house.

Then we have Ned Nickerson, the assistant of Nancy’s father, attorney Carson Drew for the purpose of the show, pull up outside a house. Nancy’s friend George Fayne hops out of the back seat and says “Super evening, Ned! Thanks for the movie!” She gives a little wave and hops toward the house, which I assumed was hers because Nancy stays in the car.

We see George go into the house and we see the hands of the person rifling through drawers and that person stops as George closes the front door. So, it must be George’s house, right?

But, no, Nancy then follows a few minutes later, walking into the same house. She’s walking toward the stairs when she hears something fall in her father’s office.

My question is — why didn’t she come into the house with George?

In other episodes it has appeared that Ned was just a friend, unlike in the books where he is her boyfriend. Could Nancy have been staying behind for a goodnight kiss? Hmmmm….

I’m guessing maybe so because after George goes in the house we see someone opening the office door enough to peer out and watch her go up the stairs. Then we switch back to Nancy smiling at Ned and Ned smiling back. Nancy gets out of the car and then Ned looks pretty proud of himself about something or maybe it’s more delighted, as he leans back and shifts the car into gear.

Maybe this was a deleted scene to keep the show clear of kissing sessions. *wink* Again I say hmmmmmm.

Whatever the reason, let us move on to the plot.

Nancy catches someone in her father’s office, but the man pushes her down and takes off back into the office and smashes a chair through the window to escape. I’m not sure why he didn’t just rush past her and through the front door, but I guess he has a flare for the dramatics.

Nancy and George are, of course, alarmed and when they hear someone else coming back to the office from the outside, they arm themselves. George is wielding an umbrella that she brings down on what she thinks is the head of the intruder returning, but it is actually the head of Mr. Drew.

Oops. *cue goofy music here*

The next morning Carson Drew is looking through the papers in office to see if anything was taken by the burglar. He thinks things are mostly in order, but then, wait a minute —  the papers for the sale of the property and farm owned by Carson’s eccentric aunts are missing. The sale was supposed to be finalized the next day.

This means Carson will need to go to the state capital and obtain new copies of the deeds so he can transfer the property to the aunt’s neighbor. He asks Nancy and George to go to the home of the aunts to explain to them what has happened while he heads to the capital.

He’ll be there in time for the signing of the papers, he assures Nancy.

On the way to the farm, Nancy tells George about the neighbor of the aunts, a grumpy and mean old farmer who used to try to scare Nancy as a child with his tractor. No sooner has she said this than a tractor barrels across the dirt road and forces her car off the road.

It’s the grumpy farmer, Mr. Warner, who tells her to watch where she is going. There is a back and forth about it being the land of Nancy’s great aunts and the farmer saying it will soon be his land and him ignoring Nancy’s requests to pull her car out of the ditch.

Nancy and George have to walk to the farm of the eccentric aunts and when they get there the farmer roars by and says, “I warned those two young women! Just remember, if anything happens to them in this old house, it’s on your conscious, not mine!”

“Oh, it’s just his way of scaring people off with wild stories.”

“Not so wild!” says the one aunt, pointing at the girls menacingly. “I have heard those demons, and I have seen them!”

“Yeah pink elephants, purple spiders, and usually after one of her ‘cough spellings,’” snaps the other aunt.

This comment starts the reoccurring humorous theme of Aunt Lela’s clearly being a functioning alcoholic. She kept taking a “tonic for her heart” but viewers are given the  impression that drink in the little cup is a bit stronger than a “tonic”.

What Aunt Lila means by “demons” are voices inside her walls. This was a plot point in the Hidden Staircase when the aunt of Nancy’s friend Helen Corning (who later disappears completely from the series) says there are ghosts in her house.

Inside the house later, the aunts tell Nancy and George that they are excited to move and are going to Las Vegas. The declaration of their planned destination is declared by the aunt who is a drinker.

They also make this announcement in front of a couple who have recently arrived at the farm to help the two aunts run it.  To say the couple seems a bit off is an understatement. When Nancy asks the man some questions and then says she gets the impression he cares for her aunts very much, he abruptly stops talking and walks away in a very bad acting moment meant to let us know that there are some secrets brewing at this place and he  may know what they are.

Ned and Carson are supposed to be heading out to the farm with paperwork for the aunt’s to sign but they are knocked off the road by a mysterious truck. Carson ends up in the hospital but doesn’t want Nancy to know so she won’t get worried.

It takes a couple of days for Ned to get to Nancy since he’s with Carson and by then Nancy has already discovered that there is a tunnel behind the walls at the aunt’s house that leads to a well on the property of the cranky farmer who wants to buy the land. The well is one of those huge old-fashioned ones that you can crawl out of. One of those you only ever see in the movies or televi— oh, right.

Nancy wants to find out where the voices were coming from since she didn’t find the source when she went through the tunnel. She know she’ll have to go through again to figure it out.

This plot point is different than in The Secret of Red Gate Farm where Nancy discovers a “cult” but that is something you will have to read if you want to know more about that craziness. People in white sheets. Ahem. That’s all I’ll say about that. It is not what you think it is, however.

Warning! I am going to share some spoilers in these next couple of paragraphs. You’ve been warned.

Are your ready?

If you don’t want spoilers you might want to skip this part.

I’m warning you.

Okay. You’ve been warned.

In The Secret of Red Gate Farm the “cult” on the hill is actually a group of people trying to cover up a counterfeit money ring and it is the same in this episode except the strange couple who came to help out the aunts are running the ring and are trying to get them not to sell so they can keep doing it. They have set up their operation in a room under ground at the end of one of the tunnels that leads from the aunt’s house to the neighbor’s well.

The aunts know about the tunnels by the way, but they thought they were all sealed up. They used to be used for smuggling goods in the 1890s the drinker aunt says as she sniffs her “tonic.”

Nancy discovers what the couple is doing through a series of steps, including finding burnt counterfeit money after the couple has burned the trash further up the proptery, a trap door in the barn, and then spying on the couple as they go into the barn. She also decides to take George with her into the tunnels when she hears voices in the walls after the couple has driven a van into the barn.

At the same time Nancy and George head down the cranky neighbor also hears the voices from his well and decides he’s going to find out what is going on. He is certain that Nancy and her dad are trying to find a way to keep him from buying the aunt’s property.

Eventually, the bad guys (the couple) capture the neighbor and tie him up, which Nancy and George see because they are spying from the end of one of the tunnels. They overhear the couple planning to get as much of the fake money out as they can and then blow the tunnel to bury all the evidence. They’re going to bury the neighbor too.

Nancy sneaks in while they are sneaking out and unties the neighbor so they can all get out before the explosion.

Going back a bit here for a funny scene recap — at one point Nancy sends George for help but George gets lost and can’t find the ladder back to the house. She thinks she hears Aunt Lila and the camera cuts to the woman sitting on the couch by the fire drinking her tonic. George yells out to her and the woman thinks that the spirits are yelling at her from the fire. She freaks out and tosses her little cup of booze at the fire around the same time Ned bursts in and hears George yelling, “Call the police!”

Ned doesn’t know where George is but yells back that Mr. Drew already had him call the police. I’m not sure why he had Ned call the police, but help is on the way.

The police end up waiting for the couple in the cranky farmer’s field when they crawl out of the well. Nancy, George, and the neighbor pile out soon after and Nancy tells the police what the couple is doing. They deny any involvement until the dynamite explodes and counterfeit money blows up out of the well and rains down on everyone.

In the end, the neighbor’s wife marches him over to the aunt’s house and he confesses he wanted the property because a big development was going to move in and he wanted all of the proceeds. He tells the aunts that because Nancy and George saved his life he’s not going to buy their property but instead let them sell it the development company and make even more.

The aunts are thrilled because now they will have all the money they need to move to Las Vegas. Aunt Lila is so overcome with excitement that she requests a bit of her tonic. Everyone laughs at the alcoholic old lady as the show draws to a close.

In my opinion, putting aside the weird alcoholic aunt, this episode was well done. There seemed to be a lot more focus on unique camera angles and the acting was better than previous episodes. The  camera angles from above and below and around columns made us wonder if someone was following Nancy or not, keeping us on our toes.

I also felt like Pamela Sue Martin toned it down a ton for this episode. She wasn’t quite as abrupt or bossy as she was in the first two episodes. She seemed to soften her portrayal of Nancy down to where it should be if we are going to compare it to the books.

Nancy was bossy and sometimes a bit rude in the books, but not to the point of Pamela’s portrayal in The Mystery of The Diamond Triangle. For this episode the writers added some moments where she appeared more aloof and clueless, but in a humorous way.

For example, at one point George is afraid to sleep in her room because of all the whispering sounds in the walls and instead curls up in the hallway with a blanket. Instead of telling George to come in with her to be safer, Nancy simply tells George that she’s solved one of the mysteries and then says cheerfully, “Well, goodnight, George,” before leaving her in the hallway alone, huddled under the blanket. It was a funny moment showcasing how fixated Nancy can get on a case.

Next up in our feature of discussing episodes from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries I will be offering my impressions of the Hardy Boys episode entitled The Flickering Torch Mystery. I actually watched this episode ahead of what was next up, but I’ll go back to The Disappearing Floor for a later post.

You can read some of my other Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy posts here:

The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Recap: The Mystery of the Diamond Triangle (with spoilers)

Discussing The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Show episode, The Mystery of the Haunted House.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries Season 1 Episode 2 The Mystery of Pirate’s Cove