Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.1 and 3.2 “The Prophecies”

Posted on February 7, 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, we start season 3!

Episode 3.1 and 3.2 “The Prophecies”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on October 7th, 1989)

The third season starts with a 90-minute episode, one that was split into two parts when the show was later re-aired. It’s a rather strange episode, one that takes the Curious Goods crew far from Canada and one that also see Ryan transformed into a…. well, we’ll get to that.

When the episode starts, Ryan is in a state of shock because he recently ran into his mother (Jill Frappier) while visiting the grave of his brother. His mother walked out on Ryan and his father after the death of Ryan’s brother and the reunion between the two leaves Ryan feeling conflicted. As he blames himself for both the death of his brother and his father, he can’t help but wonder what he would do if he had the opportunity to do everything over again.

Meanwhile, Micki is running the antique store with none other than Johnny Ventura. Last season, Micki disliked Johnny and she had ever right to as Johnny tended to be a little bit stalker-ish in his behavior towards her. But, with the start of this season, it appears that all has been forgiven.

As for Jack, he’s in a small town in France. He received a letter from Sister Adele (Marie-France Lambert) telling him about some apocalyptic visions that she’s been having. Those visions are largely the result of fallen angel Asteroth (Fritz Weaver), who is determined to bring the AntiChrist into the world by following the step laid out in the Books of Lucifer. He has to kill a nun and he’s decided that Adele is that nun. However, Asteroth cannot get to her.

But then Jack gets shoved down a flight of stairs and ends up in the hospital. Ryan, Micki, and Johnny fly over to France. Ryan is promptly possessed by the Devil and he murders Sister Adele! But now, for some reason, Asteroth also needs to murder a young girl who seems to know Ryan and whose presence in the episode is never really explained. In order to free Ryan from being possessed, it’s necessary to transform him back into a small child. Eventually, God gets tired of all this and Asteroth bursts into flame.

The ending is a bit ambiguous about what this all means but I do know that this was John D. LeMay’s last episode and that Johnny Ventura will become a series regular as well. (Steven Monarque, who played Johnny, is still listed as a guest star in this episode.) So, I guess Ryan, who no longer has any memory of Micki or any of his Curious Goods adventures, is going to go live with his mother and grow up again and I’d love to know how Jack and Micki are going to explain that to his mom.

This was a weird way to write Ryan out of the show. (If anything, Ryan sacrificing himself to save Micki and/or Jack would have made much more sense and been just as powerful an ending.) But, with all that mind, this was still a good episode. While the episode did not film in France, it does feature some location work in Quebec and those scenes are full of ominous atmosphere. Fritz Weaver was an appropriately creepy Asteroth. Speaking of being creepy, John D. LeMay did a great job playing possessed Ryan. This episode was not always easy to follow but it was scary and atmospheric and it worked surprisingly well.

Bye, Ryan! I’ll miss you.

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

Posted on September 20, 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, 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.

Horror on TV: Are You Afraid of the Dark? 1.8 “The Tale of the Nightly Neighbors”

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first decided to devote some of October to featuring horror related TV shows, I knew that I’d have to include at least one episode of the classic Nickelodeon TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark? Back in the 90s, Are You Afraid of The Dark? was the best because it was a show about scary things but it was on Nickelodeon so you could watch it without having to worry about your mom coming in the room and making you change the channel.

This episode of Afraid of the Dark continues this sort of mini-vampire theme that we’ve got going. The Tale of the Nightly Neighbors was originally broadcast on October 3rd, 1992.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPgDpv3Vkmw