Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.20 “The Charnel Pit”

Posted on July 18, 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 say goodbye to Friday the 13th.

Episode 3.20 “The Charnel Pit”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on May 14th, 1990)

All things come to an end and that includes the adventures of Micki, Jack, and Johnny.

Friday the 13th: The Series ends with an episode about a professor (Vlasta Vrana) who owns a two-sided painting that he can use to send people into the past. He sends female victims back to the time of the Marquis de Sade (Neil Munro) and the Marquis sends the professor his unpublished works. If you’ve ever seen an episode of this show, you will not be surprised to learn that eventually Micki is sent back to the Marquis and briefly finds herself fascinated by the man for whom sadism is named. Micki gets to dress up in a cleavage-baring costume and Neil Munro plays another villain. All the bad guys end up dead and the painting is tossed in the Curious Goods vault. It’s Friday the 13th!

It might not seem like much of a finale. Unfortunately, the cast and crew were not informed that the series wouldn’t be returning for a fourth season until they were almost finished filming this episode. As a result, Friday the 13th did not get a proper send-off. The series ended with many of the cursed antiques still out there and Jack, Micki, and Johnny apparently destined to spend the rest of their lives searching for them.

On the one hand, I enjoyed this series and I regret that it didn’t get a proper ending. Micki, Jack, and even Johnny suffered so much that it seemed like they deserved to end things with some sort of triumph. At the same time, it does feel appropriate that — after a season that featured some ill-thought experimentation with the show’s format — Friday the 13th went out with a traditional episode. This show was always at its best when it focused on antiques and creepy villains. That’s certainly the way that I’ll remember the show.

I enjoyed watching and reviewing Friday the 13th. Was it uneven? Sure. It was a low-budget, syndicated show. A certain uneveness is a part of the package. At its best, though, it was a genuinely creepy show that was blessed with some wonderful chemistry between Chris Wiggins, Robey, and John D. LeMay. (The show never really recovered from LeMay’s exit.) On the whole, the good definitely outweighed the bad, even during the final season. And who knows? Perhaps, if there had been a fourth season, the writers would have finally figured out a way to make Johnny into a compelling character.

I’ll miss reviewing this series.

Next week, something new will premiere in this time slot. What will it be? You’ll find out next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 3.19 “The Tree of Life”

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s Johnny vs the Druids.

Episode 3.19 “The Tree of Life”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on May 7th, 1990)

Johnny randomly runs into a distraught woman who claims that, years ago, her daughter was abducted and her husband murdered by obstetrician Dr. Sybil Oakwood (Gale Garnett). When Jack and Micki doubt the woman’s story, Johnny investigates on his own and discovers that Dr. Oakwood is kidnapping newborn girls and raising them in her fertility clinic. It turns out that Dr. Oakwood is a druid and she’s trying to breed future Druidic priestesses.

(Don’t yell at me, this is the show’s interpretation of druidism.)

This was the next-to-the-last episode of Friday the 13th and it just feels like the writers were tired and uninspired. Suddenly, for the first time in three years, Jack and Micki are skeptical about reports of the paranormal. Johnny is back to being impulsive and, if we’re to be honest, kind of stupid. He tells the distraught mother that her daughter is being held prisoner at the fertility clinic and then is shocked when the mother runs off to the clinic without waiting for Johnny to accompany her. Once again, it all leads to a cult and an underground cavern. This entire episode feels like it was recycled from previous episodes.

I’m not an expert on paganism so I’m not going to get into whether or not this episode accurately portrayed druidic beliefs. I will say that the druids in this episode acted like every other cult that’s ever appeared on this show. They’re just like the Satanic cult that showed up at the end of season 2. Making them druids is probably one of those things that sounded good when the episode was pitched. The word “druid” brings to mind Stonehenge and all the rest of that good stuff. But, narratively, there was nothing gained nor lost by making them druids. The show treated them like any other self-destructive cult.

This episode was a bit dull. It felt like the show was taking one last shot at getting audiences to replace Johnny as Ryan’s replacement. The whole thing just felt uninspired. It certainly left your brave reviewer bereft of inspiration.

Next week, we come to the conclusion of Friday the 13th: The Series.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.18 “Spirit of Television”

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, people are dying and somehow television is to blame.

Episode 3.18 “Spirit of Television”

(Dir by Jorge Montesi, originally aired on April 30, 1990)

Ilsa (Marj Dusay) claims to be a medium. She uses a television set to summon the spirits of the dead for her rich clients and then, later on, the spirits kill her customers and Ilsa, who has a degenerative disease, gets another ten days added to her life. If she doesn’t continually kill, her skin starts to look like rubber and her fingernails fall off. Agck!

This was largely a Jack episode. Jack is the one who, with his years of experience as a magician, assumes that Ilsa is a fake. He’s also the one who recruits an old friend named Robert Jandini (Paul Bettis) to go undercover and check Ilsa out. And when Robert is inevitably killed as a result, Jack is the one who has to live with the guilt. One thing that I’ve always appreciated about Friday the 13th is that it doesn’t shy away from showing what a lifetime of battling the supernatural would do to someone’s psyche. At the end of this episode, Jack is about as depressed as I’ve ever seen him. The great Chris Wiggins was always Friday the 13th’s not-so secret weapon and he gives another stand-out performance here.

In fact, this episode is so focused on Jack, Jandini, and Ilsa that Micki and Johnny largely feel like bystanders. There’s nothing wrong with that, to be honest. Micki and Johnny just don’t have the same sort of enjoyable chemistry that Micki and Ryan had. Still, watching Johnny in the background, it’s hard not to consider that the third season’s writers never really figured out who the character was meant to be or what they really wanted to do with him. I have sympathy for Steve Monarque because he doesn’t come across as being a bad actor. Instead, he comes across as being an actor who was saddled with an extremely inconsistent character.

As for this episode, it was nice to finally get an episode that was just about a cursed antique and that didn’t feel the need to try to reinvent the show’s format. That said, the television seems likes a really bulky object to curse. How did Ilsa even figure the curse out? What if the television had been purchased by someone who wasn’t terminally ill? Can Ilsa watch regular programming on the television or is it always a portal to Hell? These questions go unanswered.

Still, it’s an atmospheric episode and Chris Wiggins gives a strong performance. For a season 3 episode, this wasn’t bad. It’s also the the third-to-late episode of Friday the 13th. Only two more left to go.

I’m going to miss this show.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.17 “Jack-In-The-Box”

Posted on June 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s episode is a sad one.

Episode 3.17 “Jack-In-The-Box”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on April 23rd, 1990)

After her lifeguard father drowns, a young girl named Megan (Marsha Moreau) uses a cursed jack-in-the-box to get revenge of those who she blames for his death. Seeing the jack in the box when it opens leads to people drowning. A janitor drowns in a pool. One guy drowns in a car wash. The deaths are grisly but it brings back the spirit of Megan’s death father. Or, at least, that’s what Megan thinks. Personally, I think the spirt was a demon in disguise because some of the things he suggested were really out there.

This was a really sad episode. In an amazing coincidence, Micki knew the lifeguard’s family and she spent most of this episode on the verge of tears. Meanwhile, Megan’s mother dealt with her sadness by becoming an alcoholic and Megan killed a number of people just so she could spend some time with her “father.” This episode was well-acted and well-written and really not the right sort of thing for me to watch at a time when the one-year anniversary of my Dad’s passing is quickly approaching. This was an episode that not only left Micki in tears but it left me in tears as well.

Okay, enough sadness! This was a good episode. The third season has been uneven and I still miss Ryan’s character but this episode showed that Friday the 13th was still capable of being effective even as the show came to a close.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.16 “My Wife As A Dog”

Posted on June 20, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, it’s all about a man and his dog.

Episode 3.16 “My Wife As A Dog”

(Dir by Armando Mastroianni, originally aired on February 19th, 1990)

I knew I was going to dislike this episode as soon as I saw the title.

While Johnny and Micki spend their time trying to get the store up to code so that it can pass a fire inspection (and good luck doing that when there’s a literal portal to Hell located in the basement), Jack searches for a cursed leash. Jack has no idea what the leash does. He just knows that it’s cursed. However, the leash’s owner — fireman Aubry Ross (Denis Forest, making his fourth appearance on the show) — has figured out that, by using the leash to strangle people, he can transport the mind of his dying dog into the body of his estranged (but not dying) wife.

Or something like that. To be honest, I had a hard time following the particulars of this curse. Fortunately, so did Jack. This is the first episode that I can think of where Jack admits that he has no idea how a cursed objects works. Even when he retrieves the leash at the end of the episode, he admits that he’s still not sure what Aubry actually did with it. Jack being confused made me feel a little bit less dumb so I was happy with that. The episode ends with Aubry in jail, being visited his panting wife. She brings him his slippers because she’s now a dog in a human body.

Ugh. This was an attempt to do a light-hearted episode and I respect the show for trying to do something different. At the same time, it also featured four murders and a woman, who simply wanted to get a divorce from her creepy husband, being transformed into a dog. Our regulars were barely in this episode and, when they did appear, we had to suffer through some awkward flirting between Johnny and Micki. Denis Forest did a good job as Aubry but otherwise, this was an episode that I could just as soon forget.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.13 “Midnight Riders”

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, the show attempts a change of pace!

Episode 3.13 “Midnight Riders”

(Dir by Allan Eastman, originally aired on January 29th, 1990)

An odd episode, this one.

Jack, Micki, and Johnny head out to a small town so that Jack can look up into the night sky and see a once-in-a-lifetime convergence of the stars. However, possibly as a result of the convergence (it’s never really made clear), a bunch of dead motorcycle riders are resurrected and they rumble into town, seeking vengeance on everyone who took part in the death of their leader. If the bikers can kill every one of them, their leader will be resurrected. Finally, the ghost of Jack’s father (Dennis Thatcher) shows up and works with Jack to stop the bikers. It turns out that Jack and his father had a difficult relationship. Ryan had a difficult relationship with his father. Johnny was falsely accused of murdering his father. We’ve never met Micki’s father but he’s probably a jerk too.

The weird thing about this episode is that it didn’t feature a cursed antique. Instead, Jack and the crew went to a small town and supernatural stuff started happening shortly after they arrived. That’s okay, I guess. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with trying something new. But, at the same time, the cursed antiques were what set this show apart from all of the other supernaturally-themed television series out there. Personally, even when the antique’s curse makes no sense, I still enjoy seeing what the show comes up with.

This episode had a lot of atmosphere and a typically good performance from Chris Wiggins. The ghost bikers were never quite as intimidating as they should have been, despite all of the murders. If anything, they reminded me a bit too much of Sometime They Come Back. This episode was a change of pace and, as if often the case with things like this, it didn’t quite work. Here’s hoping next week will have a cursed antique!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.11 “Year of the Monkey”

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Friday the 13th features an international adventure!

Episode 3.11 “Year of the Monkey”

(Dir by Rodney Charters, originally aired on January 15th, 1990)

Mushashi (John Fujioka) is a modern-day samurai who owns a cursed tea kettle. When Jack, Micki, and Johnny come by his dojo in search of the kettle, Mushashi says that he will give it to them if they can prove that they are “honorable” by retrieving three cursed monkey statues that are currently in the possession an elderly businessman named Tanaka (Robert Ito).

Tanaka, however, has given the three wise monkey statues (“See No Evil,” “Hear No Evil,” and “Speak No Evil”) to his three children, Michiko (Tia Carrere), Koji (Leonard Chow), and Hitoshi (Von Flores). Tanaka explains that each statue will challenge it’s owner. Those who react in an honorable way will inherit Tanaka’s fortune. Those who are dishonorable will get nothing.

Jack, Micki, and Johnny split up to retrieve the monkeys. Johnny goes to New Yok to get Hear No Evil from Hitoshi. Micki goes to Hong Kong to retrieve See No Evil from Koji. Jack gets to stay in Canada (or Chicago or wherever this show is supposed to be taking place) so that he can retrieve Speak No Evil from Michiko. What they don’t know is that Tanaka is several hundred years old. Every time one of his children fails a monkey test, Tanaka gets a little bit younger.

It’s all about honor and dishonor and the code of the samurai in this week’s episode. To be honest, it’s a bit of a mess. First off, the title refers to the Chinese Zodiac but, other than our three regulars, all of the characters are meant to be Japanese. Secondly, it’s never really clear how the cursed monkeys decide what is honorable and what is dishonorable. Hitoshi uses his monkey to hear the thoughts of those around him and to take advantage of them. That’s definitely dishonorable. But then Koji is declared to be dishonorable even though his monkey did something on its own, without Koji telling it to. Michiko refuses to use her monkey to her own advantage and is judged to be honorable. She is told that it is now her duty to kill her father but instead, she commits suicide because killing her father would be dishonorable. Then, Tanaka is eventually judged to be dishonorable because he stabs Musashi while Mushasi is not holding a weapon but that’s just because Mushashi dropped his sword at the very least minute. It seems like Mushashi should be the dishonarable one for going out of his way to trick Tanaka.

My point is that this was a confusing episode. The monkey were actually kind of cute but their powers made no sense. I’m also not sure why experienced world traveler Jack decided to send Micki to Hong Kong instead of going himself. In the end, this episode was pretty silly, despite the cool monkeys and the samurai-themed finale.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.9 “Femme Fatale”

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Micki finds herself trapped in a movie!

Episode 3.9 “Femme Fatale”

(Dir by Francis Delia, originally aired on November 20th, 1989)

In an isolated mansion, former film director Desmond Williams (Gordon Pinsent) lives with retired actress Lili Lita (Kate Reid). Lili is sick and bed-ridden now but, when she was younger, she starred in all of Desmond’s noir melodramas. Desmond still enjoys watching their old films, particularly one in which Lili played a doomed femme fatale named Glenda.

Unfortunately, Desmond’s copy of the film is cursed. Whenever he watches it, he has to watch with a young woman who will suddenly find herself switching places with Glenda. Glenda is allowed to live in the real world until her unfortunate replacement is killed in the film. Desmond is overjoyed to have Glenda come into his world. Glenda, however, is more than little frustrated by the fact that she always has to return to the movie.

When Micki shows up to try to retrieve the cursed film, she ends up trapped in the movie. Micki, however, is a bit more creative than Desmond’s other victims and continually tries to change the script, just to discover that the black-and-white characters around her are always going to do the same thing no matter what.

Meanwhile, Jack and Johnny show up and try to rescue Micki. While Glena explores the real world and even drops in on a showing of one of her old movies, Lili ends up shooting Desmond and then willfully taking Micki’s place in the movie. Micki returns to the real world. Lili dies in the film. Gloria burns up into nothingness. With Desmond dead, Gloria is now forever trapped in the film.

This was a good episode. When it started, I thought Desmond was going to turn out to be one of the quasi-sympathetic villains who was using a cursed object in an effort to help someone else. But, as the episode progressed, it becomes obvious that Desmond didn’t really love Lili. Instead, he loved the character that he created for her to be. He loved the imaginary femme fatale but not the real-life woman who played her. As well, the scenes inside the film were handled with a lot of wit and style. I enjoyed watching Micki trying to disrupt the film’s story. As much as I miss John D. LeMay’s Ryan, his absence really allowed Robey to come into her own during the third season.

Friday the 13th could be an uneven show but this episode was definitely a triumph.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.8 “Night Prey”

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week on Friday the 13th: The Series, Micki and Jack come across vampires in their city but the real threat comes from the man who has dedicated his life to destroying them.

Episode 3.8 “Night Prey”

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

Back in 1969, Kurt Bachman (Michael Burgess) could only watch helplessly as his wife was abducted and turned into a creature of the night by vampire Evan Van Hellier (Eric Murphy). Kurt has spent twenty years searching for Evan and trying to kill other vampires. (Jill Hennessy makes her second appearance on Friday the 13th, this time playing a vampire who lures an unsuspecting victim into an alley.) However, Kurt now has a new tool at his disposal. He has a cursed crucifix that can destroy a vampire but only after it is first used to kill an innocent person. Kurt may be trying to do the right thing by ridding the world of vampires but, as is so often the case with this show, it’s impossible to do the right thing while using a cursed object. Kurt gets his revenge but at the cost of his own life. Spilling blood to destroy a bloodsucker just doesn’t work in the long term.

This is another episode in which Jack gets involved after a friend of his is killed. Poor Jack. He friends were always dying. In this case, Jack’s friend was a priest who attempted to keep Kurt from stealing the crucifix. (Kurt, for all that he’s suffered, doesn’t really seem to be too upset over killing an innocent priest. Maybe his obsession got the better of him. Maybe Kurt was just a jerk.) Jack and Micki investigate the local decadent vampire scene while Johnny stays at the store and has pizza and beer. Jack confesses that he sometimes envies the vampires but fear not, Jack does not go over to the dark side. For that matter, neither does Micki. They both learned their lesson the last time they had to deal with a vampire.

This was a stylish episode, though the idea of vampires being decadent, leather-clad nightclubbers is not really as shocking an idea as the show seems to think it is. Michael Burgess gives a good performance as the obsessed Kurt. In the end, he destroys the vampire who abducted his wife but at the cost of his own soul as his now vampiric wife puts the bite on him and soon, Kurt is a vampire himself. Fortunately, Jack has some holy water to take care of that. People spend so much time on stakes and crucifixes that they overlook the power of holy water. This episode was full of atmosphere and I always like it when Jack gets to do something more than just wait back at the store. This was a good Friday.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 3.7 “Hate On Your Dial”

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Johnny screws up, making the type of mistake that Ryan never would have!

Episode 3.7 “Hate On Your Dial”

(Dir by Allan Eastman, originally aired on November 6th, 1989)

This week’s cursed antique is an old car radio from 1954. Smear it with the blood of someone who has just died and the car will transport you back to …. 1954. That seems like an oddly specific curse and a kind of pointless one. What if the car radio ends up in the possession of someone who doesn’t care about 1954?

(And, to make clear, Jack does specifically state that the curse involves going back to 1954.)

The car radio does end up in the possession of Ray Pierce (Michael Rhoades), a racist auto mechanic who uses the car to go back to 1954 so that he can hang out with his father in Mississippi. His father (Martin Doyle) is a member of the Klan, along with his friend, Joe (played, in an early performance, by Henry Czerny). The 1954 scenes are filmed in black-and-white. When the show travels back 1954, the first thing we see is an “I Like Ike” billboard, featuring Dwight Eisenhower and a Confederate flag. Obviously, someone in the show’s Canadian writer’s room didn’t know who supported segregation in 50s and who didn’t. There was a political party wrapping itself in the Confederate flag in 1950s Mississippi but it wasn’t the Republicans and their candidate wasn’t Dwight Eisenhower.

This episode features Johnny making another one of his trademark mistakes, this time selling the cursed radio to Ray’s “slow” brother, Archie (played by Cronenberg regular Robert A. Silverman). Only after Johnny sells it does he realize it was probably cursed. Micki yells at him for not checking the manifest before selling it. Then Jack yells at him too. Jack remains angry with him for nearly the entire episode. It’s understandable that Jack would be upset but then again, maybe they shouldn’t have left inexperienced Johnny alone in the shop in the first place. Maybe they shouldn’t even be selling antiques at all. That would definitely solve the problem.

Anyway, this episode featured some of the worst Southern accents that I’ve ever heard and it also featured a cursed objects that didn’t make much sense. Johnny learned an important lesson about being careful about selling things and I guess that’s a good thing. That said, Ryan never would have made that mistake!