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The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - Season One by Jack Arnold, Don McDougall, Joseph Pevney, Stuart Margolin, Keith J. Atkinson
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DVD Cover InformationActor: Clyde Lucas (II), Edith Atwater, Gary Springer, Jack Kelly, Phillip R. Allen Director: Don McDougall, Jack Arnold, Joseph Pevney, Keith J. Atkinson, Stuart Margolin Brand: Universal Studios DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language) Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 682 minutes DVD Release Date: 2005-03-22 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - Season OneMovie Review: A +, An Excellent Set Summary: 5 Stars
I'm SO glad the first season of Nancy Drew & the Hardy Boys has been released on DVD, and I have really enjoyed watching the episodes. I think most women who are now in their 40's, were in love with either Parker Stevenson or Shaun Cassidy and for me it was Parker (sigh). In the 70's I wasn't into Nancy Drew so much, but now that I am older I am really liking the episodes a lot. It's great to have a set that is so nicely packaged. There are 14 episodes all together, on two two-sided DVD's that are separated into one DVD for each Nancy and the Hardy Boys. They have also been nicely restored. I have a couple of the HB videos that I bought a while back and I was startled at the difference in quality. There aren't extra features on the DVD's which I hope will come with future seasons. They do include a Hardy Boys poster, a copy of an original one from the 70's, which is really neat. Living in Canada with only 2 channels, I was not able to get all the episodes as a teen, so I am really looking forward to being able to watch all of them. I'm just 'dying' for the 2nd and 3rd seasons to be released. The 2nd season combined Nancy & the HB for a number of episodes and had just the Hardy Boys for the 3rd season, I guess as that was who all us girls wanted to see! They did afterall, have tons of sex appeal.
There are some really good episodes in the first season and Shaun Cassidy made his singing debut. I enjoyed George O'Hanlon Jr.'s portrayal as Ned Nickerson, Nancy Drew's friend, and am sorry he didn't continue in the part after the first season. He also did not appear in the last episode of the first season. The character appeared one more time in the 2nd season, but it was played by rock idol Rick Springfield. The beautiful Pamela Sue Martin also did an excellent job in her portrayal of Nancy Drew. Anyway, this first season is a really good presentation of an excellent series and I would certainly recommend it. It sure brings back wonderful memories that cannot be replaced.
Summary of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - Season OneFollow the clues to mystery, adventure and thrills as Season One of the The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries comes to DVD for the first time ever! Teen sensations Shaun Cassidy, Parker Stevenson and Pamela Sue Martin star as brave super-sleuths in 14 spooky episodes loaded with spellbinding action and smash-hit pop songs, including Shaun Cassidy?s #1 hit "Da Doo Ron Ron." Inspired by the hugely popular books and with an amazing lineup of guest stars, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Mark Harmon, Bob Crane, Rick Nelson and more, it?s no surprise that The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries is an open-and-shut case for fun! The Hardy Boys Mysteries and The Nancy Drew Mysteries began in 1977 as separate series alternating in the same time slot on ABC. Early the following year, the casts combined, and in the fall of 1978 the Nancy Drew thread was dropped and The Hardy Boys Mysteries continued on alone. This Season One boxed set captures the twin-series idea at its most ambitious, with adolescent brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, created by author Franklin W. Dixon, sleuthing for clues one week and Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew investigating crimes the next. Actually, as fans of the books know, Dixon and Keene were both pen names used by Edward Stratemeyer when he created those characters in 1927. Just as the young detectives have been updated in print every so often to accommodate successive generations of readers, so too did the TV show present Joe (Shaun Cassidy, brother of David Cassidy of The Partridge Family), Frank (Parker Stevenson), and Nancy (Pamela Sue Martin) as thoroughly 1970s kids. The boys are outfitted with motorcycles, Joe enjoys a retro-pop singing career, and Nancy has a certain freedom of movement only the hippest of dads in a permissive age would allow. Hardy Boys finds the always-amicable siblings following in the footsteps of their father, Fenton (Edmund Gilbert), a private detective, as they untangle capers that take them from haunted houses to Hawaii. The Hardy episodes make for brisk, family viewing, much better than the bubblegum reputation that built up, undeservedly, around the series. Slightly less interesting are the Nancy Drew programs (despite a more entertaining supporting cast), but only because the heroine is less focused and distractingly man-crazy, and the storylines are less exotic. An emphasis on the supernatural and science-fiction themes lends a Scooby-Doo vibe to several programs in both series, though the best stories are the ones with straightforward, meat-and-potatoes detective work. Among the directors on either series are Jack Arnold (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), Winrich Kolbe (Star Trek: The Next Generation), and actors Vince Edwards and Stuart Margolin. --Tom Keogh The Hardy Boys Mysteries and The Nancy Drew Mysteries Trivia ? Jamie Lee Curtis and Robert Englund, who played the biker couple Mary and Gar in an episode of this series, started acting in horror films during this era.
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