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I am writing this article, and stand by my review, despite what others may say.

If you were to mention Friday the 13th to any horror fan, it is generally assumed you are referring to the films. If you were to bring up the television series, horror purists will say it sucked. Why, you ask? because it had nothing to do with Jason Vorhees. The problem with this is that these fans are making the assumption that, because it uses the name but only tenuously connected (but still connected, I'll explain in a minute) to the films, it can't be any good. However, if you look at it as a TV series in its own right, its actually pretty damn good.

Antique store owner Louis Verendi made a Faustian deal with Satan in return for worldly power and knowledge. As part of the deal, all the objects in his shop became cursed, each item rewarding its owner in return for evil behavior. Some time later, Louis dies, and his two benign but naieve cousins Mickey and Ryan inherit the shop. Not wanting to be burdened with running the store, they mark everything down and have a closing sale.  But Jack Marshak, an old friend of Louis, returns and lets the new owners in on the big secret. The trio become charged with tracking down each item listed in the store manifest and lock it away to prevent it from causing evil. Here are a few of the items, along with how they worked:

Gold Compact-Flash it in a man's eyes, and he will fall desparately in love with you, until you are forced to kill him.

Mulcher-Wood goes in, woodchips come out. Bodies go in, money comes out.

Cupid of Malek-Makes a woman fall desparately in love with you...until you have sex with her. Then she dies.

World War 2 Kamakaze jacket-spill blood on the jacket, and it makes its wearer invisible.

Vita the Doll-Victorian doll that speaks in a sweet voice, and gives a child the power to strike back at those who torment her.

Druid Fertility Charm-Grows into a tree when buried in the ground. Grants fertility and ensures twin births. Oh, and the tree gets to eat the father.

Baby Crib-If you drown 7 people in water, it will cure your baby's fatal disease.

Quilt of Hathor-Allows the user to enter the dreams of others and kill them, not unlike Freddy Kruger.

Dog Collar-Strangle enough women with it, and your dog will become a woman.

Three Monkeys Statues-Tests the honor of your family. If they pass, great. But if they fail...

Fountain Pen-Turns a struggling writer into the writer of great murder mysteries. Unfortunately, the murders occur in real life as they are written down.

Book of Lucifer-Forget Anton Lavey, this book's the real deal, written by the man downstairs. If all the prophecies come true, the devil rises to earth.

Coin of Ziocles-Heads, you bring a corpse to life. Tails, someone dies.

So I went a little overboard on the examples. I don't care. First of all, you can't compare the show to the movie, thats like comparing apples and oranges. The stories are great, the characters are believable, and the effects are pretty good (especially for an early 90's TV show). Sadly, this review is being done mostly from memory-despite various internet petitions that are circulating, the show has not yet been released on DVD, and unless they decide to start showing reruns on scifi again, I don't see it coming back anytime soon. On the other hand, it lasted three seasons and had pretty high ratings in its day (until John D. Lemay left, and then it kinda went downhill), so there may still be hope. FUN FACT: According to imdb, not to mention most of the other sites I checked out, the last object listed in Louis Verendi's manifest was the hockey mask belonging to Jason Vorhees. This would have been the subject of the series finale, had it ever gotten to air, and provided the missing connection to the movies. It might have also provided some insight into how Jason first came back from the dead.

NOTE: Since this revew was written, I have heard conflicting reports about the existance of other "missing" episodes, including the last episode, in which Jason is said to have appeared. Some claim the episodes were shot and unaired, some claim to have seen the Jason episode themselves (this may be confused with John D. Lemay's appearance as a new and unrelated character in Jason goes to Hell), and some claim they are a myth. If anyone could help shed light on this, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

Even using the Friday the 13th name, the series was more connected to the movies than Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. 

For a syndicated horror anthology series, it is surprising to have lasted 3 years.   

One episode, I remember had David Cronenberg as a faith healer with a pair of cursed gloves that let him sure people by transferring the illness to someone else...

I've heard the same rumor about the hockey mask being the last item.  Had the final episode even aired once, more people would have remembered it. 

I was never a huge fan of the show, mostly watched since it aired in late night slots around the movies and other syndicated stuff like Soul Train. I grew to like it more during the SciFi reruns, had more appreciation for the series independent of the movies series (non/semi)connection.

I guy I knew in highschool who was a fan was convinced the two cousin characters were hot for each other, and was waiting for the "special" episode where "they do it". He was serious.

You make a good defence of it, but your explanation for the last episode doesn't really hold water. So Jason, after murdering his sister (wearing a clown mask) and escaping from the asylum years later, drives to this shop and buys a hockey mask before popping to Haddonfield to murder a few teens there?

I'm sorry, I probably thought about it more than the scriptwriters did. It's not a bad idea for a series, for sure, I just don't get the link to the films.

Famous Mortimer................. thats michael myers  :lookingup:

Jason was a hillbilly mongoloid who obtained his hockey mask from the loser in Friday 3 in 3D.  Interesting way to connect it to the show, but I still think they used the name soley for marketing purposes, even if one show had better writing than the entire film series :)  But, more power to 'em.  I used to watch this.  I distinctly remember the Cupid episode.

agreed clockworkcanary

I used to watch the show and found it entertaining...of course I was hot for the red headed Mickey... :wink:

Whoa, I missed that ep.  Wonder if it was a first season...

Yeah, I thought the series was pretty good myself.  I especially liked the often ironic way the villians would find themselves the victims of the very items they were using on others. 

The show did start get a little reptitive by the third season though.  I think one of the things that may have bothered a lot of fans is how Ryan (Ryan was Mickey's cousin, Johnny's the guy who took is place is Season 3) was turned into a child in the last ep of the second season.  I'm guessing they did because the guy who plays Ryan (John D. LeMay) wanted to leave the show and they didn't want to kill the character off, so they thought this would be a happy ending for him.

You probably know this, but another (off-screen) connection was Frank Mancuso Jr., one of the writer, was a producer on several of the Friday the 13th films.

And yeah, it should get a DVD release. 

Ah, Friday the 13th: The Series.  I'm not a horror fan in general (and I'm here?), but damn I loved this show.  It had a decent hook--completely unrelated to the movies in tone, sure, but very well done for the time.  It had a modestly good cast, even allowing for that odd vibe I sometimes got from Ryan and Micki--and, yes, Robey was raw sex appeal even with big hair; I won't deny that helped out quite a bit.

Ultimately, though: while it certainly had its cheesier moments combined with its better ones, this show totally had me with one episode: Mesmer's Bauble.  Sure, it was one of the highest-profile episodes--this was the one with Vanity basically playing herself--but it was a remarkably dark and interesting story with one hell of a twist ending.

I remember watching the series with my grandmother (She was a Scfi-fi/Horror fan) vaguely because I was still very young. Remeber the store and a couple of charaters but no epsiodes.

I liked the series and definitely feel it superior to the FRIDAY THE 13TH films. Certainly one of Canada's best TV efforts.

I thought that this series was pretty good overall. Haven't seen an episode of it in YEARS however.

I remember one episode I think that has a big scene set at a lighthouse in which a man got an axe in the back of the head (though it was shown from the front since it was on TV).

Anyone know which episode this might have been? I can't remember any more than that.

For a blog post that never quite came together, I googled Robey, the red-haired woman from that show and found this site: http://www.louiserobey.com/
It's a pretty good site, with actual interesting info about how she became a duchess for awhile, and stuff like that. There's this video of her singing that "One Night In Bangcock" song that just about made me crap my damn pants.

http://gaycelebritycrap.blogspot.com

http://davemunger.blogspot.com

I'm Dave Munger from the olden days, BTW.

Dave, you provided fair warning, but that "One Night in Bangkok" video probably deserves a big warning text above it.  Wow, I thought my head was going to explode.  Of course, it doesn't help that I just finished watching "Killer Tongue."

I had Killer Tongue on VHS at one point.  Someone swiped it off of me when I had a party years ago at a town house. I believe that it stars Mindy Clarked from Return of the Living Dead 3?  Interesting and very strange flick.   The sex scene between her and her own tongue is burned into my mind. Strange!

Okay, I'm going off of failing memory here (old age, too much alcohol and too many crap movies), but the one thing that stuck in my mind about the first season of Friday The 13th: The Series was the weird comic undertone, at least in the early episodes.

One of the earliest episodes I remember had to do with a cursed tea cup, owned by a female rock star.  It gave her--I don't remember, either fame or something.  But the big hit she had in the episode, that kept popping up from scene to scene, was a reworking of "I'm A Little Tea Pot".

And another episode took place on the grounds of some monastery, and there was one monk who would wander through a scene now and then doing something that I recall had me on the floor every time he did it.

I mention this stuff to people who used to watch it, and they look at me like I'm nuts.  Sadly, I missed the reruns on Sci-Fi Channel, so I have no way to verify this myself.  Of course, there's always the bootleg DVDs on eBay....

I am such an idiot. I wasn't even drunk.

lol

I was tempted to just edit my original post, but the internet is a scary place and it's good to admit you're wrong sometimes.

Friday the 13th used to screen late, late at night during the early 90's here in Australia.  It was a time when you could see some really cool B-grade TV shows from the States.  The late-night badness tradition continued with gems like Nightman, Dark Justice, Street Justice, The Dark Zone, and Viper, but that kind of show doesn't screen here that much, any more.

I very much enjoyed Friday the 13th - when I first saw the entry in the programme guide, I thought it was a Jason-thing, too.  But I was rewarded with some very interesting and creepy stories.  I still have a few taped on VHS; I wonder where they've gone?

Robey - I remember her well, not just from Friday the 13th, but from the final scene of The Money Pit with Tom Hanks, in which she's the singer along with White Lion.  I had no idea that she sang the dance version of One Night In Bangkok, though!

Yep, the virtual death of original syndicated one hour dramas and genre programming  on weekends in the US is a real shame. Now it's either repeats of well-established shows like Stargate and Smallville and not so great sitcoms, tired movies, infomercials, or repeats of reality crap like Cops and Cheaters. Ugh.

Then again you knew the type was on life support when stuff like Relic Hunter and Pensacola: Wings of Gold managed to hang around to fill time slots. Could a show like Baywatch even happen nowadays, be a hit not on a network or a big cable channel, much less become a huge worldwide success?

Besides it was fun to find out a lot this stuff was from Canada. About the only one I still get to watch is Da Vinci's Inquest. I'll take that over any of the CSI clones.

If we all stopped watching them, is there any possibility that this might change? I mean, some people must presumably watch infomercials. The only way we can make a difference is to vote with the finger that controls the remote.

You're from the UK, right Famous Mortimer? Do the infomercials air on satellite channels or how is it set up over there? Beyond the BBC channels anyway. I remember hearing of independent television producers like Thames TV and ITC, did they have they're own channels, are they even still around?

In the US, time is bought on local stations during the off peak times and infomercials. Some local stations carry nothing but satellite feeds of infomercials 24/7.

Once upon a time stations would either go off the air during this time or play old movies and reruns, religious programs, or public service and educational programming to satisfy requirements for maintaining their license from the govt - the rules for what counts in this area have loosened. When the regulations for TV advertising were loosened up in the late 80s, infomercials began to reproduce like rabbits. They have since taken over much of the off peak hours of cable TV as well. I know of on lower tier cable channel here that only carries between 6 and 8 hours of programming each day the rest is infomercials.

Just not watching them during those times would have little effect here. The audience levels are so low then, it is more profitable for them to air these ads knowing that there are few eyes watching at during those times anyway. Why try to sell ad time for commercial breaks and run endless promos for your own shows when only a few thousand people are watching nationwide, when there are folks wanting to buy the time from you in half hour chunks. Even the cable news stations repeat shows from earlier in the evening unless there is breaking news. And even that can be rerun to pad out time until the early morning news shows start. Just stick the old "recorded earlier" label on it

I agree.The Series is differant from the Movies.I started watching the Series almost from the beginning.I have to say,the Series is not bad.I have some favorite episodes eg; "Faith Healer" about a chalatan who had found a White Glove that could heal one person,and transforms the disease to another.Also,there is "The shamans Apprentice" about a Native American Doctor,who uses a Ceremonal Rattle (in the reverse of the healing glove)to kill,and then to heal.There are other favorites,but I just wanted to name afew.I also hate when people judge anything without watching,or checking it out.I watched The series,and knew that it was differant from the Movies.The series was original in its concept.Thank you for putting this site on. :wink:

You guys do realize that there is an official DVD for this now, right? I saw it up at Barnes an' Noble a few weeks ago. And after having read this entire thread, i have full intention on getting it. I wonder if it can clear up some of the Jason connection rumors...

"The Shamans Apprentice" is also one of my favorite episodes from the series. And it is one of the reasons I liked the series so much, for its originality. I mean, how many times has a TV series dealt with the subject of the Native American trying to make it in the white man's world. Not that many is my memory.

Unless it's changed, I think so far there's just a DVD for the first season.

Wait, did some checking, Season Two comes out in February.

 :teddyr: :teddyr: :teddyr:

My favourite episode was the one entitled Helloween where Uncle Lewis returns from the dead. Great and scary, IMO.