User Reviews

On their way to meet their dad, Frank and Joe Hardy (Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy) stop off in Egypt for a little sight-seeing. Before you know it, the boys are mixed up in stolen antiquities and a pretty American girl who has been kidnapped. Can the boys put the pieces together to solve The Mystery of King Tut's Tomb? More importantly, can they clear their own names and get their passports from the local police?

I admit, The Mystery of King Tut's Tomb isn't earth shattering in its originality, but I had a good time re-watching it for the first time in about 30 years. To begin with, the mystery elements are reasonably good. It's a fairly complicated story (okay, complicated for a Hardy Boys mystery - it's all relative) that takes a bit of time to unfold. And secondly, who doesn't enjoy a bit of mysterious ancient Egypt mixed into a mystery? I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.

My biggest complaint has more to do with the start of Season 2 than it does this particular episode. First it was Transylvania and Dracula - now it's Egypt and King Tut. What happened to the more homegrown believable mysteries? Were the producers that desperate for ratings? While I don't necessarily think any of the first three episodes in Season 2 are particularly bad, none can compete with the majority of episodes from Season 1.

This series had some very attractive stars, but not much in the way of real mystery writing. The books this series is loosely based on, while written for kids, actually have MUCH better mysteries.

In this episode we find the Hardy Boys in Cairo, and quickly being victimized by theft when Frank chases a thief who stole a girl's purse, and Joe is overwhelmed by locals stealing the stack of packages he's carrying.

Frank recovers the purse, and inside they find a golden idol. The rest of the plot doesn't' make a heck of a lot of sense, except that a couple of bad guys also want the idol, and of course there is a real one and a fake one.

Chase action late in the show is extremely bad, with the younger actors outrunning an older man with a limp who nevertheless is always right behind them anyway. LOL And throwing torches on the ground isn't as exciting as someone thought it was.