J.J. Makaro | Through the Shattered Lens

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, 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.

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!

This week’s episode of Friday the 13th is …. well, it’s not that good. Let’s talk about it.

Episode 1.14 “Bedazzled”

(Dir by Alexander Singer, originally aired on February 22nd, 1988)

With Jack and Ryan out of town to attend an astrology convention, Micki has got the antique store to herself …. or, at least, she does until she agrees to babysit a bratty kid named Richie (Gavan Magrath). Even worse than Richie are Jonah (Alan Jordan) and Tom (David Mucci), who claim to be telephone repairmen but who are actually at the store because they want to retrieve a cursed lantern that was taken from them by Jack and Ryan.

(Incidentally, they kill the real telephone repairman before showing up at the store. The real repairman is played Timothy Webber, who played Mo in Terror Train. Meanwhile, Dave Mucci played Wendy’s thuggish boyfriend in Prom Night. So, if nothing else, this episode is a footnote of sorts in Canadian slasher history.)

The cursed lantern is probably the lamest antique that the show has featured up to this point. Using the lantern, undersea divers can find hidden treasure. But after finding treasure, the lantern then has to set someone on fire. (Basically, after hidden treasure is found, anyone who is touched by a beam of the lantern’s light will burst into flames.) The man problem is that the lantern is so big and bulky that Jonah just looks silly whenever he picks it up and aims the lantern’s fiery light at anyone. It is a seriously awkward and rather impractical weapon, one that appears to not only be impossible to aim but also next to impossible to run with as well. Add to that, it turns out that the beam of light can diverted by a mirror so it’s not only a lame item but an easily defeated one as well.

It’s a shame that this episode isn’t better. Micki may have the best hair and the best fashion sense of anyone on the show but it’s rare that she ever really gets an episode all to herself. But this episode saddles her down not only with forgettable villains and an impractical cursed item but it also forces her to deal with a bratty kid. The kid survives his night at store and, by all logic, he should be traumatized for life. Instead, he tells his mother about everything that happened and his mother laughs about what a great imagination he has. Seriously, though, shouldn’t Micki have some magic wand that she could use to erase Richie’s memory or something? It seems kind of dangerous to let a kid that bratty know that the store is full of magic items.

Anyway, this was a forgettable episode so I’m keeping the review short tonight! Fortunately, next week’s episode will be much better.