Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.23 “The Maestro”

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

This week, it’s personal for Jack!

Episode 2.23 “The Maestro”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on May 22nd, 1989)

Famed choreographer Anton Pascola (Colm Feore) is fond of saying that great art requires pain and he would know. A former dancer, Anton was injured in an accident and now walks with a pronounced limp. He has devoted his life to choreography and he has a small company of dancers who are devoted to him, despite his fearsome temper. Because Anton’s dancers tend to be accident prone and also suicide-prone, there are frequent openings in his company.

Pascola’s newest dancer is Grace Cowell (Cynthia Preston). Grace is young and naive and she thinks her dreams are about to come true. She is also the daughter of one of Jack’s best friends. When she takes Jack, Ryan, and Micki to a Pascola-choreographed performance of Romeo and Juliet, they are shocked to hear that the lead actors recently leapt out of a window together. When Jack discovers that one of the cursed antiques is a Victorian music box that plays an amazing symphony but also forces the listeners to dance until they die, he realizes that Grace is in danger.

For all the time that they spend searching for cursed antiques, it’s amazing how often Jack, Ryan, and Micki just happen to stumble across one being used by someone they know. I understand, of course, that it’s meant to add an extra personal element to their adventures. Trying to save the daughter of his (never-seen) best friend adds something to the story that wouldn’t be there if Jack was trying to save someone he wasn’t personally close to. But, at times, the way that this show depends on coincidence can get to be a bit much.

That said, Jack’s personal connection to this week’s antique does lead to one of the show’s most devastating endings. Proving that he practices what he preaches, Anton dances to the music box’s symphony while an audience watches. He dances until he dies. Unfortunately, Grace is dancing with him and she dies as well. This is not the first time that someone close to the main characters has died on this show. What makes this episode unique is Jack’s reaction. Jack has always been the wise father figure who helps to keep Micki and Ryan strong. But when Grace dies, Jack has a breakdown. He goes from obsessively trying to clean Grace’s blood off the music box to throwing antiques across the shop. For once, it’s Micki and Ryan who have to calm down the distraught Jack.

The episode has more than a few plot holes and Grace’s actions often don’t make sense. Even after she discovers that Pascola is killing his dancers, she still wants to work with him. The implication is that she’s been brainwashed by his claims that art requires pain but there’s a difference between pushing yourself and killing yourself. If Grace had previously acted like someone who had a death wish, the episode would not only make more sense but it would actually be a good deal more interesting. That said, as someone who grew up going to dance classes and rehearsing and performing, I’ve certainly known my share of Anton Pascolas. This was an episode to which I could relate.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday The 13th 2.22 “Wedding Bell Blues”

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we meet Johnny Ventura!

Episode 2.22 “Wedding Bell Blues”

(Dir by Jorge Montesi, originally aired on May 15th, 1989)

With Ryan and Jack out of town, it falls to Micki to retrieve a cursed pool cue stick. Helping her out, despite all of her attempts to convince him to get lost, is Johnny Ventura (Steve Monarque), a friend of Ryan’s who Ryan hired to help search for the cue stick. Even after Johnny finds out that the item has been cursed by Satan and Micki’s entire life currently revolves around supernatural violence, Johnny wants to not only help out but to also stick around, just because he likes Micki. Micki might want to tell him about all of her previous boyfriends who have all died as a result of getting involved in the search for cursed antiques.

I understand that Johnny is going to eventually replace Ryan on the show, starting with the third season. This episode isn’t particularly subtle about setting Johnny up as a Ryan substitute, though Johnny’s crush on Micki is a bit less cringey than Ryan’s. (Ryan is Micki’s cousin, which is something that the show often seems to overlook.) Johnny is established as being a cocky guy who is willing to break the rules. In other words, he’s just like every other guy who has ever been a lead character on a show like this. One of the stranger things about Johnny is that everyone keeps referring to him as being a “kid,” even though he looks like he’s older than just about everyone else on the show.

As for the cursed pool cue, it belongs to Jennifer (Elizabeth Maclellan), a waitress at a seedy bar. She wants to marry Danny (Louis Ferreira), a self-centered pool player who treats her terribly. Jennifer is convinced that Danny is just worried about winning the upcoming pool tournament so she impales people with the cursed pool cue. Each time Jennifer kills someone, the next game that Danny plays is his best ever. Jennifer is slightly sympathetic because she’s convinced that Danny will marry her right after he wins the tournament and she’s too insecure to see what a cad he is. (She’s also pregnant, though Danny doesn’t know it.) When Jennifer’s sister (played, in a very early role, by Lolita Davidovich) says that Danny is never going to marry her, Jennifer refuses to believe it. When Jennifer discovers that her sister is sleeping with Danny, Jennifer has found her next victim.

It’s really not that interesting of a curse but then again, this episode is more concerned with introducing the character of Johnny Ventura than with anything else. Unfortunately, at least in this episode, Johnny really isn’t that compelling of a character. This was a bit of a disappointing episode but who knows? Maybe Johnny Ventura will grow on me.

Next week, Micki and Ryan go to the ballet! Yay!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 2.21 “Wedding in Black”

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, the departed return!

Episode 2.21 “Wedding in Black”

(Dir by Rodney Charters, originally aired on May 8th, 1989)

In South America, a man named Calvin Collier (Stephen Meadows) is carrying around a snow globe and strangling women. After he kills a young Jill Hennessy (credited here with playing “Spanish Hooker,”), Calvin is taken to prison. However, an ominous voice says that it has need of Calvin’s soul.

In Africa, Brother Antonio (Guy Bannerman) is caught trying to rape a woman and is promptly set on fire.

In America (or maybe Canada), Maya Zedler (Carolyn Dunn) is released from prison and promptly kills herself.

What do all three of these people have in common? They all know the folks at Curious Goods! Calvin is a friend of Micki’s. Brother Antonio is an acquaintance of Jack’s. Maya used to be Ryan’s girlfriend. And even though all three of them are now dead, Lucifer sent them back into the world of the living because he’s decided that he wants Micki to give birth to his child.

Calvin and Antonio show up and draw Micki and Jack out of the store and into a sudden blizzard. Suddenly, all four of them find themselves in the castle that sits in the middle of Calvin’s snow globe. Calvin sets about trying to seduce Micki on behalf of Lucifer.

Meanwhile, Maya shows up and tries to keep Ryan distracted so that he won’t go looking for Micki and Jack. However, it turns out that Maya still has a conscience and eventually, she turns on Lucifer and sacrifices herself to help Ryan.

This episode was an interesting change of pace. The snow globe may have been an antique but wasn’t one of the antiques and instead of Micki and Ryan stumbling into whatever terrible thing was happening, Lucifer instead came directly for them. If nothing else, this episode showed that the producers of Friday the 13th: The Series understood the danger of falling into a rut and that they were capable of changing things up without losing the overall macabre atmosphere of the show. The scenes in the castle were appropriately surreal and both Chris Wiggins and the often underused Robey gave good performances. Of the three souls, Guy Bannerman made the strongest impression just by playing his character as being totally and unashamedly evil.

At the same time, it was hard not to feel that this episode was a bit of a missed opportunity. While it was interesting to have Micki, Jack, and Ryan meet up with three spirits of people who they used to know, it’s hard not to feel that the episode would have worked better if the producers had reached into the past and brought back some of the show’s former guest stars. Not an episode passed in which Micki, Jack, or Ryan doesn’t lose someone that they cared about and it would have been fun to see some of those people come back. Imagine the emotional impact if John Stockwell or Catherine Disher or maybe one of Jack’s old war buddies had returned to life.

All in all, this was a good episode that could have been even better.

Due to the holidays, this is my final Friday the 13th review for 2024. These reviews will return on January 3rd!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.20 “Mesmer’s Bauble”

Posted on December 6, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, things get dark.

Episode 2.20 “Mesmer’s Bauble”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired by May 1st, 1989)

Howard Moore (Martin Neufeld) is the latest in a long line of nerdy Friday the 13th villains. With his long hair, unwashed appearance, and crazy eyes, Howard is an easy target for some of the less compassionate citizens of Canada. Of course, Howard doesn’t help things by having a totally creepy personality. He works in a vinyl record store, where he offers up unsolicited music advice to the teenage customers, the majority of whom giggle awkwardly whenever he’s nearby. Howard is obsessed with a singer named Angelica (Vanity) but there’s no way Howard could ever actually meet her.

Or at least, that’s the case until he finds Mesmer’s Bauble. Having once belonged to the inventor of hypnotism, this crystal pendant grants Howard anything that he asks for, as long as he first uses it to hypnotize people and then kill them. (It turns out that merely looking at the pendant is enough to send someone into a hypnotic trance.) As with so many Friday the 13th villains, Howard quickly comes to love having the power to kill people. I’ve always felt that the majority of this show’s villains are basically addicts. Instead of being addicted to drugs, they’re addicted to the rush of power that comes with using a cursed antique to get what they want. That’s certainly the case with Howard.

At first, Howard thinks that he wants Angelia to love him. He kills both her publicist and her manager in order to get closer to her. But, once he’s finally close to her, Howard apparently realizes that he actually wants to be Angelica. In an effectively nightmarish sequence, Howard and Angelica’s body appear to merge into one. Howard literally turns into Angelia while Angelica presumably withers away into nothingness. Howard is now Angelica, which will undoubtedly upset Ryan, who has bought two tickets for Angelica’s latest show.

It’s up to Micki and Ryan to recover the pendant and they manage to do so in the most anticlimactic way possible. They go to Angelica/Howard’s concert and Micki grabs the pendant while Angelica/Howard is singing. Without the pendant, Angelica dissolves into Howard and then a panicked Howard is promptly electrocuted on stage.

Howard’s dead but so are a lot of other people. At the shop, Micki and Ryan confess to Jack that they feel that they failed because so many people died before they got the pendant. Jack shrugs and basically tells them “that’s life.” What a dark ending! Actually, it was rare that Friday the 13th didn’t end on a dark note.

This was an effectively creepy episode, one that worked because of just how dark it allowed things to get. Even Jack pointed out that the pendant’s powers didn’t always make sense, which made it even more dangerous in the hands of someone like Howard. There were a few loose ends. I found it a bit odd that there wasn’t a bigger public reaction to a famous black woman turning into an ugly white guy and then dying in front of a crowded club. In fact, the show left it a bit unclear as to what actually happened to Angelica after Howard transformed into her but I’m going to guess it was nothing good. In the end, though, this episode was effectively macabre.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.19 “The Butcher”

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s all about Jack!

Episode 2.19 “The Butcher”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on April 24th, 1989)

Horst Mueller (Colin Fox), a Nazi scientist, uses a magic amulet to bring back to life the fearsome Col. Rausch (Nigel Bennett), a Nazi war criminal who was infamous for using barb wire as a garotte whenever he was carrying out executions. Rausch was killed during the war by a squad of soldiers led by a young lieutenant named Jack Marshak. Once Rausch is brought back to life, he not only sets himself up as a radio talk show host but he also seeks revenge on the men who killed him. One-by-one, he kills the members of the squad until eventually, only three are left alive, Simpson (Julius Harris), Shaw (John Gilbert), and Jack.

There were many episodes of Friday the 13th in which Jack was absent and described as being out-of-town while Micki and Ryan dealt with the latest cursed antique. This, however, is the first episode to feature Jack on his own. He mentions that Micki and Ryan are out-of-town, presumably because they’re tracking something down. This leads Jack to face Rausch with only the help of Simpson and Shaw. Watching this episode, one gets the feeling that Jack wouldn’t have it any other way. While this episode features all of the usual blood and melodrama that we’ve come to expect from this show, it also serves as a tribute to the friendship between Jack and his comrades-in-arms. Jack relates to Simpson and Shaw in a way that he can’t relate to the much-younger Micki and Ryan. If Jack is usually cast as a fatherly figure, this episode finds him working with equals and fighting against a monster with whom he has a personal connection. This is the rare episode to not feature any of Lewis’s cursed antiques. Instead, the magic amulet is one of the many artifacts for which Heinrich Himmler and the SS spent much of the war searching.

It’s a change-of-pace episode that gives Chris Wiggins a chance to show off his considerable talents an actor. Rarely has Jack been as haunted as he is in the episode and Wiggins’s sad eyes allow us to see what a lifetime of dealing with unbelievable evil would do to a person. In this episode, Jack is not just aware of the evil in the world but he’s also aware that he and his comrades-in-arms, the members of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” are aging and their time is passing. Jack and his friends are at an age where they should be enjoying their retirement. Instead. they’re still fighting against the legacy of Hitler’s evil.

This was a good and melancholy episode of Friday the 13th. This show could be uneven but episodes like this were good enough to make one mourn that the series did not last longer than just three seasons.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.16 “Scarlet Cinema”

Posted on November 1, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, a nerdy film students takes his love of a 1940s horror film too far!

Episode 2.16 “Scarlet Cinema”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on February 20th, 1989)

Darius Pogue (Jonathan Wise) is a nerdy film student who is obsessed with The Wolf Man. When Darius steals an old antique movie camera, he discovers that, by looking through the camera’s view finder, he can bring The Wolf Man to life and send him to kill anyone who annoys him. Darius kills a snooty antique store manager. He kills a bully. He kills his professor. He even sends the wolf after Ryan and a girl that Darius likes.

However, as much as Darius enjoys sending the Wolf Man after people, he wants to be the Wolf Man himself. After allowing the Wolf Man to scratch him, Darius shoots him with silver bullets. Transforming into a werewolf himself, Darius goes after Ryan, Micki, and Jack. Unfortunately, Darius didn’t consider that film stock is full of silver nitrate. Live by the film, die by the film….

This episode was a case where the premise was pretty interesting but the execution didn’t quite work. The episode mixes in archival footage from The Wolf Man with scenes of Darius’s victims meeting their fate. So, for example, one sees Lon Chaney Jr. turning into the Wolf Man and then the viewer sees The Wolf Man killing one of Darius’s classmates. The problem is that the Friday the 13th werewolf makeup doesn’t really look much like the Wolf Man makeup. Regardless of how darkly lit each scene is, it’s pretty obvious that the Wolf Man from the film is not the same Wolf Man that is doing Darius’s bidding. It not only negates the whole idea behind the cursed antique but it’s also pretty distracting for those of us just trying to watch the show. And, again, it’s a shame because the idea behind this episode was actually pretty clever.

Myself, I’ve always liked the original Wolf Man. Eventually, Larry Talbot got a bit too whiny for his own good and it’s pretty much impossible to buy the idea of the hulking, very American Lon Chaney, Jr. as the son of the sophisticated and very British Claude Rains. But, even with all that in mind, The Wolf Man holds up as a classic American horror film, full of atmosphere and featuring a pretty impressive monster. Friday the 13th deserves some credit for making Darius a Wolf Man fan because The Wolf Man, with its portrait of a man being driven mad by a curse that he cannot control, fits in perfectly with the main idea behind Friday the 13th. Darius, like most of the villains on this show, isn’t really evil until he starts using the camera. Each times he picks up the camera, his actions become progressively worse. Just as Larry Talbott was cursed by the werewolf, Darius is cursed by the camera. Much like a drug addict, Darius falls in love with the camera and he just can’t stop using it. His addiction changes his personality as it becomes all-consuming,. Eventually, it drives him to become the Wolf Man himself.

The episode ends with another cursed antique safely hidden away and Darius joining Larry Talbot in the cold embrace of death. There was a lot of potential to this episode so it’s a shame that it didn’t quite work.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.15 “Better Off Dead”

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki’s in even more danger than usual as a desperate doctor uses a magic syringe to try to find a cure for his daughter. This is also our final episode of Friday the 13th for October. Can you believe Halloween is right around the corner?

Episode 2.15 “Better Off Dead”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on February 13th, 1989)

John Cusack plays Lane Meyer, an artistic high school student who is stunned with he is dumped by….

Oh wait, sorry. Wrong Better Off Dead.

This Better Off Dead tells the story of Dr. Warren Voss (Neil Munro), who lives in an isolated mansion with his pre-adolescent daughter, Amanda (Tara Meyer). Amanda has a disease that makes her violent and dangerous. She attacks almost anyone who comes near her, including her own father. Dr. Voss believes that he has finally found a cure for her condition and, if he’s right, he’s convinced that he can cure all violent behavior.

Unfortunately, the cure is a bit extreme. Dr. Voss starts out by bringing prostitutes to his mansion and then using a silver syringe to extract their brain fluid, which he then injects into his daughter. This temporarily calms down his daughter but it turns Voss’s unwilling donors into violent maniacs. Voss claims that he’s doing all of this for the greater good and he’s only using donors who would be better off dead. But, as the episode unfolds, it becomes clear that Voss’s good intentions can’t hide his own sadistic streak.

The syringe once belonged to Jack the Ripper and, as you definitely already guessed, it’s a cursed object. After a friend of Micki’s becomes one of Voss’s victims, Micki is herself kidnapped and becomes Voss’s latest donor. When Jack and Ryan show up to save the day, they not only have to battle Voss. They also find themselves attacked by Micki. And Micki, due to the experiments and perhaps also due to the resentment that anyone would feel over having to put their lives on hold to search for cursed antiques, proves to be a fierce opponent.

Fear not, of course. Things are resolved. Micki is saved and, at the end of the episode, she is slowly recovering from her trauma. Voss is attacked and killed by his own daughter. Ryan wonders about whether or not Voss could have eliminated violent behavior if he had been allowed to continue his experiments. Jack says that it’s not worth wondering about. I agree. Leave Micki alone! Better the whole world suffer than one redhead be inconvenienced, say this proud redhead.

Director by Armand Mastroianni, this was a really good episode. Both Neil Munro and Tara Meyer gave good performances as the doctor and his daughter and Robey, who has often felt underused on this show so far, got a chance to show off her own dramatic abilities. As for the question at the heart of the episode, I agree with Jack. The cost outweighs the benefits. Friday the 13th deserves a lot credit, though, for seriously considering the issue. This was an episode that was both creepy and intelligent.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.14 “Face of Evil”

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s sequel time!

Episode 2.14 “Face of Evil”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on February 6th, 1989)

In this sequel to the first season episode Vanity’s Mirror, Joanne Mackey (Gwendoline Pacey) returns to Curious Goods for the first time since the death of her younger sister, Helen. Joanne reveals that she’s the one who stole the cursed gold compact at the end of Vanity’s Mirror, explaining that she simply had to have something that belonged to her sister. Jack is not amused, telling her that she should have turned it over so that it could be stored in the vault.

Calm down, Jack. Joanne knows she did something wrong and she’s trying to make amends. She is especially concerned because the compact is now in the hands of an aging supermodel named Tabitha Robbins (Laura Robinson). Tabitha is upset that her career is struggling and she’s been told that not even plastic surgery can reverse the fact that she’s just not as young as her competition. Tabitha has figured out that anyone whose face is caught in the reflection of the mirror will either die or, at the very least, suffer a terrible disfigurement. Apparently, in this case, the antique’s curse changes depending on who owns it.

I have mixed feelings about this episode. On the one hand, I could relate to Tabitha’s feelings about aging. No one wants to age and that’s doubly true when you’re working in an industry where youth is the most valuable commodity. I also enjoyed the very 80s fashion shoots that were featured in this episode. On the other hand, there were a lot of rather silly scenes of Tabitha trying to catch Ryan and Micki’s reflection in the mirror while Mick and Ryan ducked around with their hands over their faces. There’s no other way to put it other than to say it all looked really goofy.

The biggest problem with this episode is that the majority of it was taken up with clips from Vanity’s Mirror. Every few minutes, Joanne would think about Helen and we would get a flashback. Unfortunately, a lot of the flashbacks didn’t even feature Joanne so you have to wonder how exactly she was able to remember them. The constant flashbacks made this episode feel like a clip show and you know how much I hate those.

In the end, Tabitha accidentally catches her own face in the mirror’s reflection and she immediately starts aging. I guess that’s the risk you take when you try to use a mirror as a weapon. Micki and Ryan finally retrieve the compact and Jack mentions that Joanne could have saved a lot of lives by not stealing the compact in the first place. Look, Jack — she feels bad enough already! I’m sorry everyone isn’t beating down the doors of the antique shop to give you their cursed items. Get off Joanne’s back!

Oh well. At least the evil compact will hurt no one else….

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.13 “Eye of Death”

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ryan goes into the past.

Episode 2.13 “Eye of the Death”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on January 30th, 1989)

Atticus Rook (Tom McCamus) is an antiques dealer, one who is well-known to Jack. No one seems to really like or trust Atticus Rook. Everything about him seems to scream sleaze. But Atticus has somehow managed to get artifacts from the American Civil War that no one else has ever been able to find. His latest claim is that he will soon be selling Robert E. Lee’s sword.

How is Atticus accomplishing this? He has a cursed magic lantern that he uses to project old pictures onto his wall. He’s then able to step into the picture and enter the time period in which it was taken. (Hey, that sounds like a fun cursed object to own!) Atticus has been going into the past and telling Gen. Lee (Bernard Behrens) that he’s a spy. However, the information that he gives Lee is just stuff that he remembers from history class. Atticus thinks that he’s got a pretty good operation going but there are two catches. To go to the past, he has to kill someone in the present. To return to the present, he has to kill someone in the past.

Naturally, Ryan ends up in the past while trying to retrieve the magic lantern. Ryan meets General Lee and tries to present himself as also being a spy but it turns out that Ryan paid even less attention in history class than Atticus did. Ryan being Ryan, he also falls in love with a widow named Abigail (Brooke Johnson). As we all know, having Ryan fall in love with you is pretty much a death sentence on Friday the 13th. Abigail’s death does allow Ryan, Jack, and Micki to return to the present. Moving the lantern allows Atticus to get trapped in his own wall, where he suffocates while trying to return to the present.

This was a surprisingly good episode. I say “surprisingly” because you wouldn’t necessarily think that a low-budget Canadian show would do a great job of recreating the American Civil War but this episode pulls it off. The costumes, the sets, the words used by the people encountered by Ryan and Atticus, all of them work to make the episode’s Civil War setting feel very realistic. Tom McCamus is a great villain and Bernard Behrens is well-cast as Robert E. Lee. Even the obviously doomed romance between Ryan and Abigail works remarkably well.

I have to admit that I’ve always assumed this show took place in Canada, largely because of all of the Canadian accents and the Canadian scenery. This episode reveals that Friday the 13th is supposed to be taking place in the United States, despite the way that people pronounce the word “sorry.” When Ryan ends up in the Civil War, he says that he’s from Chicago. (It’s not necessarily a good idea to go back to the Civil War era and immediatly tell everyone that you’re a Yankee.)

Well, this show can pretend that the antique store is in Chicago if it wants to, but it’ll always be Toronto to me.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.12 “The Playhouse”

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Agck! Stranger danger!

Episode 2.12 “The Playhouse”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on January 28th, 1989)

Mike and Janine Carlson (played by Robert Oliveri and Lisa Jakub) are two young siblings living in the suburbs. They don’t have much of a life. Their mother (Belinda Metz) is neglectful and continually complains that her children are the reason why she can’t find a rich boyfriend. Mike and Janine don’t appear to have any close friends. Children are vanishing all over town and parents are telling their kids, “Don’t go off with strangers!” but no one seems to care enough about Mike and Janine to even check to make sure that they haven’t been kidnapped.

Mike and Janine have a playhouse, a gift that was given to them by one of their mother’s former boyfriends. The playhouse is the only place where they feel happy. It’s a place where they literally get anything that they wish for. But sometimes, the door to the playhouse is locked. When that happens, Mike and Janine have to convince someone else to go into the playhouse. Once someone enters the playhouse, they find themselves trapped in a nightmarish world that is full of evil clowns and other circus figures. Mike and Janine have to chant, “I hate you! I hate you!” while the playhouse claims its victims.

Agck! Seriously, this is a disturbing episode! Not only are Mike and Janine terribly abused but almost all of their victims are children. Perhaps because of the age of the people involved, this is the only episode of Friday the 13th: The Series in which no one dies. They’re held prisoner in the playhouse and probably traumatized for life but they don’t die. Fortunately, that means that they can be freed once Jack convinces Mike to chant, “I love you!” instead of “I hate you!”

Yep, this episode is all about the power of love but you really have to wonder if all of Mike and Janine’s problems can be solved by chanting, “I love you!” I mean, aren’t the other kids going to remember that Mike and Janine held them prisoner in a nightmare universe? The episode may end with the playhouse defeated by Mike and Janine are still living in that terrible suburb and their mother is still a resentful alcoholic. Even though this episode has what would most would consider to be a happy ending — the kids are free! — it’s still incredibly dark.

This episode definitely left me feeling a bit shaken. I hate seeing children in danger and that’s what this episode was all about. Even things that sound kind of silly — like Mike chanting “I hate you!” while the playhouse does its thing — are actually rather disturbing when viewed. The child actors are almost too convincing in this episode. In the end, Jack says that all you need is love but this episode leaves you wondering if he’s correct.