Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.11 “The Sweetest Sting”

Posted on September 27, 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!

Agck! Bees!

Episode 2.11 “The Sweetest Sting”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on January 16th, 1989)

I have never been stung by a bee or a wasp.

I’m extremely lucky. All of my sisters and all of my cousins have been stung once or twice. My mom was stung multiple times when I was little. But I have never once been stung. I once had a wasp fly straight into my hair and I was able to shake it out without it stinging me. I have had bees land on my bare arm and just sit there without stinging. I once knocked a wasp nest off of a farm doorway and the wasps, while obviously angry, made no attempt to sting me in retaliation. For whatever reasons, the wasps and the bees have decided not to mar my beautiful skin with any of their stingers and I appreciate them for that.

Of course, I’m also very scared that they might someday change their mind. I have no idea what it feels like to be stung but I know it’s painful. On a more serious note, I have no idea whether or not I’m allergic to bees or wasps. I appreciate their kindness but I’m still terrified of their capriciousness.

That’s why this somewhat silly episode of Friday the 13th freaked me out. I say silly because it was about McCabe (Art Hindle), a psycho beekeeper who kept all of his bees in a cursed hive. Whenever he would unleash the bees, the cheap special effects were so bad that it would have made me laugh if not for the fact that I’m already scared enough of innocent bees. Imagine how I feel about cursed ones!

The bees produced cursed honey that can be used to restore the youth of people who allow themselves to be stung by McCabe’s bees. (Because they’re magic bees, they don’t die after stinging someone. I always understood that stinging someone caused a bee to be ripped in half so I’m not sure how the magic works but whatever. I actually kind of feel bad for bees now.) However, the people who accept McCabe’s youth treatment have to have a constant supply of honey and McCabe needs a constant supply of dead bodies so that his clients can fake their own deaths. So, McCabe orders his clients to kill if they want to remain young.

To be honest, the whole plot kind of feels like it was made up on the spot but the great Canadian character actor Art Hindle gives an amusingly over-the-top performance as McCabe. McCabe is the type of villain who laughs whenever he’s thinking about doing something evil. There’s nothing subtle about Hindle’s performance but it works in the contest of the episode’s overall absurdity. The bees are obviously fake. Art Hindle chews up every piece of scenery he can get his hands on. The episode’s a lot of fun.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.10 “Night Hunger”

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we’ve got the saddest episode of Friday the 13th yet!

Episode 2.10 “Night Hunger”

(Dir by Martin Lavut, originally aired on January 9th, 1989)

As a young boy, Michael Firono was constantly told by his father, Dominic (Nick Nichols), that he should always play to win and that, if he lost, it was because he was a wimp. Needless to say, once Mike became a teenager, he did not have a great relationship with his father. Seeking an escape from his abusive household, Mike spend all of his time at the local antique store where, on his 16th birthday, the store’s owner, Lewis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong), gave him a special silver chain.

Mike (played by Richard Panebianco) has grown up to be an angry young man. He always wears the chain around his neck. Hanging on the chain is the key to his car. Mike loves to race his car and, far from being the loser that his father claimed he would grow up to be, Mike cannot be beat. His car is amazingly fast and Mike is incredibly (one might even say supernaturally) skilled behind the wheel. His main goal is to defeat his childhood rival, Deacon (Real Andrews), who is now a street racer himself. Deacon is hesitant to race Mike, precisely because Mike seems to be so driven to win that racing with him can be even more dangerous than usual. To Deacon, street racing is fun. For Mike, it’s an obsession.

Of course, Mike has a secret. As long as he’s wearing the silver chain, he can’t be defeated. But he has to kill people and dip the key in their blood for the chain to work. Jack, Micki, and Ryan set out to reclaim the silver chain but an accident results in both the chain and the key being absorbed into Mike’s body. With the chain and the key now sitting next to Mike’s heart, Mike’s eyes not only glow red but his car seems to have a mind of its own….

This is another one of those episodes of Friday the 13th where the villain is himself a victim. Even before he met Lewis and received the silver chain, Mike was doomed. His abusive father left Mike feeling so insecure and so obsessed with winning that there was really no way Mike wasn’t going to end up snapping eventually. In the present day, Dominic finally understands how much he hurt Mike and he feels guilty about it but it’s too late to undo the damage that’s been done. Like a pusher befriending people most likely to get addicted to his product, Uncle Lewis saw Mike as someone who would easily succumb to a cursed antique. Mike becomes addicted to using the key and that leads to him doing a lot of bad things. But the real curse here is not the silver chain but instead Mike’s abusive childhood. Mike never had a chance.

This is a genuinely sad and well-acted episode, with Mike’s obsession eventually destroying him. As happen so often with this show, Ryan and Micki are left with the knowledge that, while they can reclaim the cursed objects, they can never repair the damage that they’ve done.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.9 “13 O’Clock”

Posted on September 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, time stops.

Episode 2.9 “13 O’Clock”

(Dir by Rob Hedden, originally aired on January 2nd, 1989)

Wealthy but dorky Henry Wilkerson (Ron Hartmann) owns a watch that he inherited from his father. The watch can stop time at exactly one a.m., giving the owner the chance to do whatever he or she wants for an hour while the world is frozen. The only catch is that someone has to be murdered before the watch will do its thing. Henry, like his father before him, has killed a lot of people and stolen a lot of money while the world was frozen. But then Henry is murdered by his wife, Reatha (Gwynyth Walsh), who wants the watch for herself and her adulterous, criminal lover, Eric (David Proval, who later played Richie Aprile on The Sopranos).

When Jack reads a series of newspaper articles about a bunch of murders and thefts that all seem to take place near the subway station at one in the morning, he figures out that someone is using a cursed watch. (Actually, it’s kind of strange just how quickly Jack manages to figure that out. Jack, is there something you need to share with everyone?) Micki and Ryan investigate the area around the station and they meet two homeless teenagers, Skye and Johnny-O (played by Ingrid Veninger and Jason Hopley). Skye witnessed Reatha killing Henry and she is about to become Reatha’s next target.

This was one of the better episodes of Friday the 13th. The scenes where time froze were remarkably well-done, with the world not only stopping but also transforming into black-and-white. Only Reatha and anyone who is with her can move and they are also the only things not stripped of color in the frozen world. The sight of Reatha, Eric, and eventually Ryan walking through the frozen and eerily silent subway station is a surprisingly powerful one. This is an episode that really does seem to capture what it would be like to actually live in a world where magic collides with everyday, mundane reality. The special effects earned this show an Emmy nomination and it was certainly deserved. They’re still effective, even when viewed today by eyes that have been jaded by too much CGI.

Reatha, Eric, and Henry make for a memorable trio of villains and Gwynyth Walsh especially deserves some credit for fearlessly embracing the melodrama in her performance as Reatha. If you ever wondered what would happen if a femme fatale from a classic noir made a deal with Satan, Reatha is your answer. I will admit that I cringed a little when the homeless teens showed up but Ingrid Veninger and Jason Hopley were well-cast and they turned their stereotypical characters into sympathetic human beings.

I wish this episode had been a bit clearer on how the stopwatch works. At the end of the episode, Reatha and Eric appear to be permanently frozen in time but they’re frozen in a very public place and you really do have to wonder what’s going to happen when people notice two monochrome people standing frozen on the train tracks.

But that’s a minor quibble. Overall, this was a superior episode of Friday the 13th.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.7 “Wax Magic”

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Ryan and Jack go to a carnival!

Episode 2.7 “Wax Magic”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on November 14th, 1988)

Unable to get a date, loser Ryan convinces Jack to go to a traveling carnival with him.

(Okay, maybe “loser” is a bit harsh. I like Ryan and I think John D. LeMay did a pretty good playing him on the series but seriously, in this episode, Ryan is oddly whiny. Then again, I would think that Ryan would be more careful about trying to date anyone, considering that everyone with whom he falls in love either dies or is his cousin, Micki.)

Ryan and Jack discover that the carnival has been rocked by a series of decapitations. Ryan suspects that it might involve the creepy wax figure exhibit that is run by Aldwin Chase (Angelo Rizacos). Aldwin is incredibly jealous of but also very abusive towards his wife, Marie (Susannah Hoffman). Whenever someone shows too much interest in Marie, they are visited by a wax figure of Lizzie Borden. Guess who Ryan develops an obviously doomed crush on?

This was an effectively creepy episode and, with its scenes of carnival goers losing their heads, it felt like it had more in common with the Friday the 13th movies than some of the other episodes. Towards the end of the episode, Jack and Ryan are actually attacked in the antique shop and it’s actually a bit jolting, a reminder that nowhere is safe. The show ends with a twist about Marie that’s not particularly but it’s effective nonetheless. In the role of Jack, Chris Wiggins gets to deliver another one of his monologues about the nature of evil and, as always, he pulls it off wonderfully.

That said, Micki is not in this episode and that’s unfortunate. Micki is the character to whom I relate, mostly because we’re both redheads with big boobs and, therefore, we share the same struggle. There have been plenty of episode where Jack was said to be off on another mission and, in those cases, that actually raised the stakes because it left Micki and Ryan without their mentor. But not having Micki present just felt weird. Unlike Ryan, I guess she was actually able to get a date.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.6 “Master of Disguise”

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The search for cursed antiques continues!

Episode 2.6 “Master of Disguise”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on November 11th, 1988)

A side job delivering antiques for use in a horror film leads to Micki meeting her favorite actor, the amazingly handsome and charming William Pratt (John Bolger). And when the film’s leading lady refuses to shoot a scene because of Pratt’s method obsessiveness, Micki finds herself cast as her replacement. Soon, Pratt and Micki are having a torrid romance. Ryan feels that there’s something wrong with Pratt but then again, we all know that Ryan has unrequited romantic feelings for his cousin (ewwww!).

That said, Ryan is right. Pratt is actually Jeff Amory, an actor who was so disfigured that he was previously typecast in horror films. Amory disappeared after the murder of one of his co-stars, an actress who looked a lot like Micki. Using a cursed makeup box that once belonged to John Wilkes Booth (“the actor who shot Lincoln,” Ryan helpfully explains), Amory has transformed himself into the handsome Pratt. Unfortunately, the box needs to constantly absorb blood to work and Pratt has become a one-man murder spree. (One of his victims is played by Aaron Schwartz, of Check It Out! fame.) Will Micki become his next victim?

(An interesting piece of trivia: Booth is often described as just being “the actor who shot Lincoln,” but he was actually a legitimate star and a celebrity in both the North and the South in the years leading up to the Civil War. The youngest and best-looking of the Booth brothers, he was an acclaimed and popular Shakespearean actor who was so handsome that women would flock to the theater whenever one of his show’s came to town. He was the 19th century stage’s version of Ryan Reynolds. Everyone who was into theater knew his name, even before he shot Lincoln. America has seen many assassins who wanted to be celebrities. Booth was a celebrity who wanted to be an assassin.)

This was an okay episode. I liked the fact that Pratt was a bit more tormented by his actions than some of the other villains who have appeared on this show and I was also happy that Micki got to be at the center of the action, even if the episode’s script did make her a bit more flighty than she’s ever been previously portrayed. Ryan’s romantic feelings for Micki are a little bit awkward, seeing as how they’re related but, again, they were necessary to establish why Micki was originally dismissive of Ryan’s concerns.

This episode ended with a bit of trivia, with Jack mentioning that William Pratt was also the real name of one of the gentlest men in show business …. Boris Karloff. Again, you have to wonder why no one else noticed that is before Jack and why it took Jack so long to mention it. Still, it’s nice that Karloff got a shout out.

Mini Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.5 “Symphony in B Sharp”

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone! I sprained my wrist yesterday and today, it still hurts to type so, just as with T and T, today’s review is going to be a quick one. You might even call it a mini-review!

Episode 2.5 “Symphony In B Sharp”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on October 31st, 1988)

Oh, Ryan!

You would think that, by this point, Ryan would know better than to fall in love with anyone, seeing as how he had to leave one girlfriend behind in a Mennonite village and he lost another girlfriend to an insane news anchorman. Add to that, Ryan has also seen Micki repeatedly lose the people with which she has fallen in love. But, once again, the episode finds Ryan falling in love.

This time, his lover is Leslie Reins (Ely Pouget), who plays violin in the local symphony. Her former boyfriend, Janos Korda (James Russo), was believed to have been killed in a car accident but instead, he’s alive but terribly scarred. He hangs out in the rafters and the basement of the symphony hall and kills anyone who get too close to Leslie. He has a cursed violin that is slowly healing his disfigured appearance in return for Janos using a sharpened bow to kill people. Janos’s newest target is Ryan.

Yep, it’s Phantom of the Opera all over again, with Leslie Reins’s last name deliberately invoking the name of a past actor who played the Phantom, Claude Rains. It’s not a bad episode. There’s plenty of atmosphere and James Russo makes for a good villain. That said, the cursed antique is not that interesting and the whole episode leans a bit too much into the Phantom of the Opera story. It was a bit predictable, right down Janos accidentally killing Leslie before taking his own life and Ryan ending yet another episode in tears, with a concerned Jack and Micki watching from a distance. Ryan listens to a recording of Leslie playing her violin and swears that he’ll never fall in love again. We know that’s not true, Ryan. I guess we should be glad that Ryan is no longer looking to hook up with his cousin but still, it’s hard to feel that the guy just can’t get a break!

Next week, hopefully, things will look up for Ryan. (It would seem that they certainly couldn’t get any worse.) We’ll find out soon enough.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die”

Posted on May 17, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, a flip of the coin leads to tragedy!

Episode 2.4 “Tails I Live, Heads You Die”

(Dir by Mark Sobel, originally aired on October 21st, 1988)

Finally, Jack, Micki, and Ryan have a night to relax. Jack does some reading while Micki poses for Ryan, who is apparently a sculptor now. Micki says that it’s unfortunate that Ryan is stuck having work at Curious Goods when he has so much artistic talent. Micki has a point, even if this is the first time that we’ve heard about Ryan’s artistic interests.

Suddenly, the phone rings. A reporter named Tom Hewitt (Bill MacDonald) is calling because he’s heard that Jack is an expert in the occult. Tom says that he’s tracked down a Satanic cult that is planning on doing something big. He tells Jack where he can find all of the evidence that Tom has gathered over the course of his investigation. While Jack and Ryan head over to the bus depot where Tom has hidden his research, Micki stays at the store. As for poor old Tom, he ends up dead with the image of a bloody ram’s head imprinted on his forehead.

Looking through Tom’s papers and photographs, Jack discovers that the head of the Satanic cult is a taxidermist named Sylvan Winters (Colin Fox) and that Sylvan is in possession of a coin that is imbued with Satanic energy. When the owner of the coin flips it, it leads to the death of whoever is standing nearby. After the coin kills someone, it can be used to bring someone back to life.

First, Jack goes to the taxidermy shop with Ryan but the two of them fail to find the coin. Later, Jack returns with Micki and the two of them stumble on a Satanic ceremony. When they are spotted by Sylvan and the cultists, Jack and Micki make a run for it. Sadly, they get separated. While Jack manages to escape from the cultists, Micki is caught by Sylvan. Sylvan flips the coin and …. KILLS MICKI!

Seriously, Micki’s death took me totally by surprise and it actually left me feeling really upset. I’ve got red hair. Micki has red hair. Micki tends to be a skeptic. I tend to be a skeptic. Micki was pretty much me on this show! And now she’s dead? Agck!

Arriving at the taxidermy place, Ryan sobs over Micki’s body and then tells Jack that, after he gets the coin and destroys Sylvan, he is done with the cursed antiques business. Ryan says that he’s ready to live his life and he can’t handle losing anyone else close to him. (Remember that Ryan’s father was killed by a cursed pipe last season.)

Returning to the taxidermy studio, Ryan and Jack discover that Sylvan is planning on using the coin to raise two powerful warlocks and a witch so that they can combine their power to bring Satan into the world. However, Ryan and Jack steal Micki’s body from the morgue, put a mask on her to make her look like the witch that Sylvan wants to raise from the dead, and then the replace the witch’s body with Micki’s body. As a result, Sylvan brings Micki back to life. (Ryan and Jack’s plan is incredibly complicated and I’m kind of surprised that they were able to pull it off. But who cares as long as Micki is no longer dead.) Satan gets angry, the taxidermist studio collapses. and Ryan grabs the coin and flips it in front of Sylvan. Sylvan dies but the coin is still out there.

But no matter! The important thing is that Micki comes back to life! Yay! And Ryan decides not to leave Curious Goods, mostly because he’s in love with his cousin, though that’s something that the show rarely acknowledges.

By the time this episode came around, Robey, Chris Wiggins, and John D. LeMay had developed into a tight enough ensemble that Ryan’s tears and Jack’s anger over the death of Micki felt very powerful and very real. As well, Colin Fox was a wonderfully hissable villain. He was so smug that I couldn’t wait to see him get his comeuppance. This was an excellent episode.

Next week, Ryan falls in love with a cursed violinist because Ryan is never allowed to be happy for long.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.2 “The Voodoo Mambo”

Posted on May 3, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki, Ryan, and Jack get involved in voodoo!

Episode 2.2 “The Voodoo Mambo”

(Dir by Timothy Bond, originally aired on October 7th, 1988)

This episode opens with Micki and Ryan watching a street party that just happens to be taking place in front of Curious Goods. It’s a Haitian voodoo party and, judging from Micki and Ryan’s comments, it is apparently some sort of annual event that takes place wherever this show is supposed to be set.

(If Curious Goods was set in New Orleans, I could maybe buy this without giving it too much thought. But the show is filmed in Canada and, judging from the states that were specifically mentioned over the course of the first few episode, it appears that Curious Goods is meant to be located in the Northeast. How many voodoo street parties do you see in New Jersey?)

Micki and Ryan want to join the party but Jack insists that they first meet his old friend, Hedley (Joe Seneca). Hedely is a powerful voodoo priest and he has traveled to the city so that his daughter, Stacy (Rachael Crawford, who was on the first season of T & T until her character vanished), can become a priestess. Ryan is obviously attracted to Stacy but the attraction goes nowhere, which I guess is good considering that every woman who likes Ryan ends up dying in some terrible way.

Meanwhile, good-for-nothing Carl Walters (David Matheson) is in danger of losing the mansion that has been in his family’s possession ever since their days as plantation overlords. Carl finds a voodoo mask in the basement. Whenever he puts the mask on, the spirit of a voodoo priestess named Laotia (Suzanna Coy) rips out someone’s throat. Laotia wants to rip out the throats of the city’s top voodoo priests so that she can gain their powers. Carl agrees to help because part of the deal is that Carl will get what he wants as well. I’m not sure what Carl wants, though. Money, I guess. But it doesn’t matter because, of course, Laotia is really only concerned with what she wants.

This episode had some atmospheric moments, especially in the scenes featuring the big party outside of Curious Goods. There’s also some black-and-white footage of actual voodoo ceremonies that is randomly inserted throughout the episode. I assume that black-and-white footage is meant to be a flashback or something like that, though the show never really makes it all that clear. That said, this episode was a bit on the dull side. Carl and Laotia were not particularly interesting and this is the second episode this season to feature an old friend of Jack’s. (That wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that we’re only two episodes in.) This episode felt a bit tired, as if someone entered the production office and shouted, “I need an episode about Voodoo! You’ve got 48 hours!”

Next week, hopefully, thing will be a bit more interesting.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the second season beings with the return of Uncle Lewis!

(For a dead guy, Lewis sure does return a lot.)

Episode 2.1 “Doorway to Hell”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on September 26th, 1988)

The second season begins in much the same way that the first one ended, with Uncle Lewis (played, as always, be R.G. Armstrong) trying to re-enter the world of the living.

This time, he’s doing it through mirrors. According to Jack, a mirror that “witnesses” an occult ceremony becomes a doorway to the dark realms that sit between Heaven and Hell. Lewis lives in the dark realms and, since he was a big fan of mirrors, his reflection occasionally appears in the a mirror at Curious Goods. When Micki and Ryan find evidence that Lewis owned a house, they ignore Jack’s warning and go to investigate on their own.

They discover that the decrepit house is being used as a hideout by Buddy (Charle Landry) and Eddie (Louis Ferreira), two criminals who have just held up a gas station and killed an attendant. Buddy wants to go straight and was pretty much coerced into taking part in the robbery. Eddie, on the other hand, is a total psychopath who ties up both Micki and Ryan and laughs when they try to warn him about Uncle Lewis.

The house, not surprisingly, is full of mirrors and soon, Buddy gets sucked into one of them. When Buddy returns to the house, he’s possessed and shooting electricity from his fingertips. He kills Eddie and then chases Ryan and Micki around both the house and the dark realms.

Jack and his friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) watch all of this reflected in a shard of reflective glass that they found at the antique store. Whenever things start to get really exciting or scary at the mansion, we cut to Jack and Rashid staring at shard of glass and saying, “Get out of there, Ryan!”

Eventually, Jack goes to the house, enters the dark realms and distracts Lewis long enough for Ryan and Micki to destroy all of the mirrors in the house. Jack manages to escape just in time, Buddy apparently become unpossessed and the ghost of Uncle Lewis declares that he will return. Lewis’s constant shouts of “I’ll be back” are such a cliche that they can’t help but be a bit charming, especially since R.G. Armstrong always seems to be having so much fun chewing the scenery whenever he shows up as Lewis.

The second season premiere did an effective job of reminding old viewers and informing new viewers about what the show was about. The haunted house was an effectively creepy location and the dark realms were nicely atmospheric. I do wish that the premiere had not once again deployed the tired idea of Micki and Ryan ignoring Jack’s warning about impulsively investigating something on their own. I mean, that has never worked out for them. You would think that Ryan and Micki would have learned the lesson by now. Otherwise, this episode got the second season off to a good start.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

Posted on April 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, season one comes to a close with a trip down nightmare lane.

Episode 1.26 “Bottle of Dreams”

(Dir by Mac Bradden, originally aired on July 25th, 1988)

It’s clip show time!

To be fair, the first season finale of Friday the 13th does come up with a clever way to justify being a clip show. Micki and Ryan get trapped in the vault of Curious Goods with an ancient, Egyptian urn that causes people to confront the memories of their worst fears. Not surprisingly all of Micki and Ryan’s worst fears are connected to the cursed antiques that they’ve spent the past year seeking out and dealing with.

So, once again, we get to see the cursed doll that started the series. We see the weirdo wandering around with his cursed cupid statue. We see the vampire. Oddly enough, we don’t see the pirate ghosts or the gangster who killed Micki’s boyfriend, even though both of those events were very traumatic for Micki. We don’t see the magic pipe that killed Ryan’s father, despite the fact that episode ended with Ryan in tears. We don’t see the newscaster who killed Ryan’s girlfriend or the cursed quilt that nearly caused Ryan to get burned at the stake. In short the clips seem to be a little bit arbitrary and they also all seem to come from early in the season, which leads me to suspect that this episode was put together long before it actually aired.

The cursed urn and the flashbacks are all a part of yet another attempt by Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) to return to the world of living. Fortunately, Jack’s friend Rashid (Elias Zarou) shows up and helps to push Lewis back into the netherworld. It’s always nice when one of Jack’s associates shows up to help. It creates the feeling that there’s an entire magical underground out there, all dealing with cursed antiques and malevolent spirits. While Ryan and Micki deal with their bad memories, Jack and Rashid are the ones who save the day and it makes for a nice conclusion for the first season. Our heroes may have started out as skeptical amateurs but now they’re a strong team. Micki and Ryan know that they can count on Jack, which is good considering that almost everyone else that that they get close to ends up dead.

The first season of Friday the 13th: The Series was pretty good. The horror was effective. The cast had a lot of chemistry. With a few exceptions, the cursed antiques were all interesting and worked in genuinely clever ways. The show had a sense of humor but it never let it get in the way of mayhem. Even the fact that the show claimed to be set in America even though it was clearly filmed in Canada and filled with Canadian actors only served to increase the dream-like atmosphere.

Will the second season live up to the first? We’ll start to find out next week!