Kirsten Kieferle | 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, there’s something in the fog! Can Micki and Ryan stop the horror of the thing in the fog? FOG!

Episode 1.22 “The Pirate’s Promise”

(Dir by Bill Corcoran, originally aired on June 27th, 1988)

In the 18th century, a group of pirates killed their captain, Angus McBride, and stole his treasure. They used the money to start a seaside village in New England and to become respectable citizens. Over two hundred years later, the spirit of Captain McBride is hanging out in the fog and desiring vengeance on the descendants of his crew.

Hmmm …. this sounds familiar.

This episode has more than a little in common with John Carpenter’s The Fog. This time, as opposed to it being the result of an anniversary curse, it’s a crazed lighthouse keeper named Joe Fenton (Cedric Smith) who summons the ghost of Captain McBride with a cursed foghorn but otherwise, much of the plot and the show’s imagery feels as if it was lifted directly from Carpenter’s classic horror film. Captain McBride emerges from the fog several times during the episode. He kills his victim’s with a hook and then tosses a few coins at Joe.

Micki and Ryan show up in town to retrieve the foghorn. (This is another episode in which Jack is not present.) It’s interesting how these cursed antiques often tend to end up in small towns, like the one in this episode or The Quilt of Hathor. The previous few episodes featured Ryan having to say goodbye to someone as a result of a cursed item. This time, it’s Micki whose heart is broken when the sweet proprietor of the local history museum is stabbed with a saber while trying to protect her. The episode ends with Micki sobbing while Ryan tries to comfort her, which is quite a change from how these things usually go. For once, Micki is the one who gets to show emotion while Ryan is the one who takes a more pragmatic approach to dealing with the horrors of the cured antiques.

As for the episode, it wasn’t bad. Director Bill Corcoran did a good job of creating a properly ominous atmosphere and Cedric Smith was perfectly creepy as the evil lighthouse owner. The low-budget was evident by the fact that the time itself seemed to be nearly deserted. Even though the town was described as being small, it still seems like it should have been home to more than just a handful of people and I found myself wondering if maybe the show decided to save money by not hiring extras. That minor quibble aside, this was an effective episode as long as you were willing to overlook the plot’s similarity to Carpenter’s film.

Next week, hopefully, Jack will come back and maybe Micki will have cheered up. Someone likeable dies in every episode so you would think they would be used to it by now.

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 1988 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

Tonight’s episode is directed by a future Oscar nominee and a multiple Genie winner!

Episode 1.3 “Cupid’s Quiver”

(Dir by Atom Egoyan, originally aired on October 12th, 1987)

This week’s cursed antique is a statue of Cupid that shoots neon arrows at women and causes those targeted to fall madly in love with the statue’s owner. Unfortunately, the curse kicks in when the owner of the statue is then forced to murder the woman who is now in love with him. Yikes! What a mean statue.

When we first see the statue, it belongs to a frat boy who uses the statue at a club. After the frat boy is arrested for murder, possession of the statue falls to a total loser named Eddie Monroe (Denis Forest). Eddie is a janitor and groundskeeper at a local college. He’s the type of guy who hardly anyone ever notices and even those who do notice him think that he is a complete creep. Eddie is obsessed with a student named Laurie Warren (Carolyn Dunn), following her around campus and taking pictures of her. He’s even built an elaborate shrine to her in his apartment, one where he’s cut the heads off of the people that Carolyn was with and replaced them with his own head. (Double yikes!) Laurie, of course, wants nothing to do with Eddie.

Could Eddie’s new statue help him out? He hopes so and he even takes it to the club to test it on someone else beforehand. Eddie is determined to force Carolyn to love him, even if he’ll be required to kill her almost immediately afterwards. Fortunately, Ryan, Jack, and Micki are on campus, searching for the statue.

This episode is often cited as one of the best of the show’s run, largely because it was directed by a future Oscar nominee, Atom Egoyan. (Amongst Egoyan’s films: Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia’s Journey and Where The Truth Lies.) It’s certainly not a bad episode, as Egoyan approaches the storyline with a sense of humor. The scenes of the frat boy and then Eddie wandering around with their cupid statue are more than a little silly and Egoyan seems to understand that. He does a good job contrasting the ludicrousness of the statue with the seriousness of the consequences of using it. The ultimate message is that both the statue and the men who carry it with them are more dangerous than they look.

I also enjoyed the scenes in which Ryan and a far more reluctant Micki went to a frat house to search for the statue. The frat house is a stereotypical den of debauchery, full of empty beers can and a black bra hanging from a ceiling fan. Ryan, not surprisingly, is right at home. Micki cannot wait to escape and I have to say that, as often happens when I watched episodes of this show, I definitely related to Micki. Watching Ryan and Micki wander through various frat parties in search of Eddie and his statue, I had to ask myself which is worse, a cursed antique or a fraternity?