Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on YouTube!

Tonight, we have the first Halloween episode of Friday the 13th: The Series!

Episode 1.5 “Hellowe’en”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 26th, 1987)

Somehow, it was not until I watched this episode that I noticed that the Friday the 13th antique shop is names Curious Goods.  I guess that’s a good name for a cursed antique shop.  (It’s probably more inviting than going with something more honest, like Evil Junk.)  Certainly, it appears that it was good enough to keep the place open, even though the owners spent most of their time taking back the antiques from the people who bought them.

This episode takes place during a Halloween party.  Is it a good idea to throw a Halloween party in a location that is full of cursed items?  That’s the exact question that Micki asks Ryan but Ryan thinks that the store needs to do something to let the neighborhood know that it’s not as scary as it looks.  Ryan is actually thinking like a businessman, whereas Micki is thinking like someone who just wants to find all of the cursed antiques so she can get back to planning her wedding.  Personally, I think Micki has the right idea.

That said, it’s not a bad party.  Ryan dresses up like a renaissance prince.  Micki wears a black gown that is to die for.  (I assume Micki is costumed as the lead singer of an 80s goth band.)  Jack, who really should have been the voice of reason when Ryan first suggested the party, dresses up like a wizard.  A lot of people from the neighborhood come to the shop and they watch as Jack performs some simple magic tricks.  Unfortunately, the party is ruined when two dummies wander down to the basement and accidentally activated a crystal ball.  The lights in the store go out.  There are scary noises.  Everyone abandons the shop, except for Ryan and Micki.

Where is Jack?  He’s taking a mysterious little girl trick-or-treating, just to suddenly discover that the girl is actually a Satanic creature who was sent to distract him while the ghost evil uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) confronted Ryan and Micki in the shop.  Lewis, who is wandering around because the damned are apparently allowed to do so only on Halloween night, lies and says that he needs the amulet of Zohar so that he can free his wife from a curse but, after Ryan and Micki stupidly bring him the amulet, Lewis announces that the amulet will actually allow him to transfer his spirt into the body of someone who has recently died, as long as that person died from natural causes.  Lewis is going to use the amulet to return permanently to the land of the living.

Lewis and the little demon girl head down to the local morgue.  Fortunately, Jack has broken free of the trap that the demon put him in and Ryan and Micki have, for once, managed to figure out what’s happening on their own.  Between the efforts of Jack, Ryan, and Micki and Lewis’s own pickiness when it comes to picking a body, Lewis’s time runs out and he is dragged back to Hell.

This was a fun episode.  Not only did did it feature Ryan and Micki wearing their very 80s Halloween costumes but it also featured an enjoyably over-the-top performance from R.G. Armstrong as evil Uncle Lewis.  All Halloween episodes should be as enjoyable as this one.