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.

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/