Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 58 Bad Penny Review

Bad Penny originally aired on October 30, 1989. The episode begins with a recap of the ending of episode 30. There are periodic flashbacks to episode 30 throughout the episode. Episode 30 found it's cursed object unattainable at the end, the coin of Ziocles. This was the coin that while it would kill someone, it would bring someone back to life. I was very satisfied with the pay off of this episode. Granted it took over an entire season before the storyline paid off, but it did and quite nicely, I might add. Especially in comparison to the Shard of Medusa retrieval which was retrieved off screen and briefly mentioned in dialogue at the beginning of an episode. I like that Micki is terrified of dying again. That was a huge episode at the beginning of the second season. They didn't flashback to her coming back to life, which I thought was the most memorable shot of the episode. Micki makes an attempt to write to Ryan because she's scared. I always like the nods to Ryan. The fact that he was written off so strangely is compensated by Micki's occasional reference to how much she misses him. Johnny uses the coin for evil in this episode. That's a little up for debate though. He uses the coin to bring his father back to life, but also uses it to kill him. The gravestone however said his father died in 1987. The episode that his father died aired in 1989... Overall, I thought this was a great episode though and I'm glad there was some pay off to open ended storylines.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 57 Stick it in your Ear Review

Stick it in your Ear originally aired on October 16, 1989. Our heroes recover 5 cursed antiques at an auction, but none of them are seen, nor are their qualities discussed in this episode. The main antique in this episode is an old hearing aid. The wearer is able to hear the thoughts of those around him. He's able to read peoples minds. This was a very effective episode. As always, I am amazed by the special effects this TV show has. This episode has pulsating skin and ears, it's quite remarkable considering this was made for television. Our main villain is arrogant. His ego becomes his downfall. Overall, it was a good episode that I would gladly view again.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 56 Crippled Inside Review

Crippled Inside originally aired on October 9, 1989. Jack does not appear in this episode, but by telegram he has offscreen recovered the shard of Medusa which was half the storyline to episode 44. Micki appears albeit briefly. This episode was an effort to get the audience to warm up to/like Johnny and boy did it succeed! Tragedies always help with a character's likeability. The cursed antique in this episode is an old wheelchair. This old wheelchair has the ability to heal people who are paralyzed from the neck down, but only if the person kills someone. The person while being in the wheelchair will have a faint image of themselves come out of the chair so that they can walk and kill. This episode brought up an interesting dilemma. The girl who is given the wheelchair was nearly raped. That is the sole reason she was put in the wheelchair. Is it right to take revenge on someone who ruined your life by attempting a purely evil act? My answer is no. The episode, I think, leans toward my answer and here's why: Johnny has to debate whether he'll let her keep the chair to take revenge on the rapists, he does for a little while. She kills them one by one in horrific ways. One boy got killed by having all the chem lab substances fall onto his face...he was beyond recognizable at that point. She took great glee in her killing as well. Her acts of killing were JUST AS evil as their attempt to rape her. In the end, the entire group of rapists die, but it also costs her her own life. The mother's shriek at seeing her daughter dead was so painful to hear. It seemed so real. Having said all these positives, this episode is not free from some criticism. The old man character does not make any sense. He says he used the chair in the past and was healed. However, in one shot, he literally dissolves out of frame. Was he a person, was he a ghost, the devil, a demon, who the heck knows???? The episode sure didn't know what he was! Johnny gets the chair back and severely regrets letting the girl keep it as long as she did. It led to her death. The old man comes back and wants it back to give it to another cripple. Johnny refuses. The old man tells him that even though they're collecting these cursed antiques, they'll never stop him, the objects will live a lot longer than they will. Johnny attempts to ax the chair, but it just keeps bouncing back. Like we learned in episode 1, the objects cannot be destroyed. It's overall a very strong episode and a great transition to Johnny as our male lead.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 55 Demon Hunter Review

Demon Hunter originally aired on October 2, 1989. This episode changes the ordering of the names so that Robey is top billing and Steve Monarque is listed now fully replacing John D. Lemay on the show. This episode has Micki and Jack dealing with the bizarre transformation of Ryan. Micki says that Ryan will always be a part of her life. It's a nice touch and is so much more than I had anticipated the show to do. I thought once Ryan was gone they'd never mention him again. The cursed antique is a demon killing dagger. This, however, is not the main foil of the episode...a demon is. This episode is really, really weird. There's two storylines going on at once and they intersect at the very end. It's a nice change, but feels very strange coming from this show. The daughter of a demon hunter joined a satanic cult (I know, Satanism again, but at least they are always the villain) and conjured up a demon. She was crazy and wanted to give her father the best 'game' of his life. Micki, Jack, and Johnny on the other hand find a room under the floor where the demon rose up from. This room has become the new vault. Do you see what they're doing to us as viewers? New sign, new vault, new male lead...they really felt that the show needed a face lift for whatever reason. Ultimately, the demon hunter father kills his own daughter to save them all and cast the demon back to hell. It's an intense episode with a lot of new changes in it. Personally, I don't mind Johnny. I think that he's a fine actor. John D. Lemay was better dramatically, but Johnny is a very different role from Ryan as he needs to be. There are plenty of worse examples of cast changes for the worse (like getting rid of Sharona on Monk). Overall, it was a fine episode even though every episode keeps getting weirder and weirder.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 53 and 54 The Prophecies Review

The Prophecies, the third and final season premiere, originally aired on September 25, 1989. This was a 2 hour season premiere, hence why it counts as two episodes. This is the only two hour episode of the entire series. This was both a tremendous and crap episode. Tom McLoughlin returns for the last time as writer and director for this franchise. As usual his offering is a mixed bag. Creating a two hour episode for this series is hard and for the most part he did it with class. As I thought, Micki's looking at the book is not mentioned in the season premiere and is rendered useless and idiotic. The sign of the store Curious Goods also got a facelift. It looks completely different. It's a different color and in a different font and I'm not a really big fan of the change to be quite honest. The cursed object in this episode is a book of Satan that makes prophecies come true. It's not technically one of the cursed antiques. Ryan gets possessed by the devil in this episode. This is very scary and comes across as truly horrifying. John D. Lemay gives his best acting in this episode. He shows the most range. I LOVE the scene where he's crying asking an unconscious Jack what's happening. There's a little girl who's going to be possessed and going to be Satan's way into the world to rule it. I know, it is terrible theology. She's a cripple. The villain heals her and gives her back the use of her legs. He then tells her to praise Satan and let him enter her body. She screams out NEVER! This instantly takes away the ability to walk. Again, I LOVE that moment. How incredibly daring of a TV show to do, especially a horror TV show. It's so bold and gets a standing ovation by me. What went wrong with this episode? It's a little too Catholic for me. Mary is praised more than God, but even more upsetting Ryan is praised more than Mary. Ryan is looked at as the savior of the little girl. Ryan dies, but doesn't. Ryan in adult form dies to save the little girl. Ryan then resorts back to the bodily form he was when he was 12. His mother had been introduced in this episode. She had run out when Jimmy, his little brother, had died. Now she gets her happy ending and gets to catch up on all the lost years she missed out on. Ryan doesn't recognize Micki, Jack, or Johnny. This is a major problem for this episode. The way Ryan is written out of the show is incredibly idiotic. John D. Lemay doesn't even get a goodbye scene with the original trio. The way Ryan is written out it's impossible for John D. Lemay to come back...Ryan is flippin 12!!!! There's also a shot to show how much people have lost faith of a hotel manager burning a cross. I thought that was really inappropriate. Satan has way too much power for too long of a time in this episode. Overall, though, this is a staggering season premiere. I don't know if the show will ever top it.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan Review

After an entire second season, audiences must have been itching to see some more of their favorite slasher villain. What they got was an odd mix that's going to take a while to explain. I, for one, have always enjoyed Part VIII, but I know I'm in the minority.

As always, we begin with the trailer. The trailer is like a teaser. None of the shots are actually in the movie. It's just that: a tease. It plays a familiar song and shows shots of New York in the background. It zooms in on someone looking at the city, just then he turns around and it's JASON! Everybody screams, show the title. It's a nice trailer, but it doesn't really advertise the movie very well, or at least what the movie became. The tagline, New York has a new problem, is kinda lame if you ask me. Another note of trivia: the original poster for the film had the classic I <3 NY, only Jason's machete and face were tearing the sheet away. That's an awesome poster, even thought it's a total gimmick. That's the problem with this film's advertising. They advertised a gimmick, not what the actual film was.

As far as the film itself, this entry has some of the best drawn characters of the whole series. I really love the characters, however, the deaths are lackluster and there's hardly any tension in the film. The best death is kinda a jokey death. A side character has a boxing match with Jason. He punches him until he can't punch any more. Jason gives one blow to the head and it decapitates him. What a memorable sequence!

Director Rob Heddon, who we've run into before a couple of times on the TV series, was told that he could assume that Part VIII would be the last entry. This is where some of the final version of the film gets muddled. There's a lot of deleted lines that mention that the senior class in the movie is the LAST senior class at Crystal Lake. This would make sense that Jason would resurrect one final time. Rob obviously had a ton of respect for the original. He gives a good amount of time to retelling the original in the opening scene of the movie. This is great because it adds to the idea of bookending the series. HOWEVER, too many lines are deleted mentioning that they're the final senior class. A lot of the work for bookending gets lost in translation.

Rennie, as a character, is a great final girl. She wants to be a writer, she's afraid of the water, AND she has had a previous encounter with Jason. You actually feel for this girl as well as the final guy. Rennie's uncle lived on Crystal Lake. He pushed her into the water to 'teach' her how to swim. Little boy Jason pulls her under...now we have a revenge worth looking at. Rennie learns to fight for herself really quickly in dire consequences. She throws toxic waste on Jason at the end. Jason resorts back to his little boy position. Another GREAT bookend, if not weird. The only problem is that the actress for Rennie is not very good. If she were better, I think her character would be remembered a lot more fondly...however, Rennie is vastly more memorable than the final girls to come in the New Line years.

This more went wrong on a couple of counts. First, the gimmick isn't really paid off. Two-thirds of the movie are spent on a cruise ship to New York that gets sunk. The boat is called Lazarus...get it? It's because Jason got resurrected. He's resurrected by electricity again, but it's cool enough. My favorite movie's Titanic, so spending time on a sinking ship is never a problem for me, but I can see why it's considered such a disappointment. The second thing is that the film got a little too supernatural, it was a little too Nightmare on Elm Street. Rennie has premonitions of Jason as a little boy, the water in the faucet turns to blood, etc... They're really cool shots, it's just not the right series to put them in. The gore is toned down in this one, which I'm fine with.

This movie is also significant due to the fact that it is the first time EVER that Jason has a returning actor. Kane Hodder returns and is slowly but surely becoming the face of the franchise. His presence is undeniable even in this film. Regardless of all it's faults, Kane's presence is something to be commended and respected.

As far as the music goes, Fred Mollin is back. He did the original stuff for Part VII and the TV series. It's all of Fred's music for Part VIII which really helps the score overall. MUCH improved over Part VII, and for the first time instead of doing Ki, ki, ki...Ma, ma, ma, it's Jason, Jason, Jason. This makes more since because Jason's not his mom. He's no longer asking his mother to kill for him, but again it's different so I can see why people have a problem with it.

I think the biggest problem with Part VIII is that we're no longer in the woods. I have a problem with this too because we never truly make it back there again until the remake. This decision rendered the rest of the original series problematic, but more on that later.

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan premiered on July 28, 1989. On a budget of $5 million (the largest budget to date for the series at that time), the film only grossed $14,343,976, which is a series low. Although they still doubled their budget and it still made more than it's budget on opening weekend, Paramount was through. With the diminishing returns and the horrendous reviews, Paramount opted not to make another sequel. They decided to focus solely on the TV series which was about to begin it's third season. The third season was getting a two-hour premiere. Unfortunately, the third season is the last. The days of Paramount's Friday the 13th are numbered. But before that, audiences were wondering how Johnny would come into play in the TV series and how many more antiques there could possibly be to retrieve...

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 52 Coven of Darkness Review

Coven of Darkness, the second season finale, originally aired on June 12, 1989. I know I've been saying this a lot, but it's been true, this is yet another truth is relative episode. The way one fights evil can also be used to fight good, it's just all how you use whatever power. It's really stupid and is so incredibly false I cannot begin to explain how false that truly is. Micki discovers she has magic powers and uses them for good, but she uses all of her powers up by the end of the episode. Ryan gets bewitched in this episode. The cursed antique is a witches ladder. This can greatly increase the witches' magical powers. There is also a sculpting tool that sculpts peoples image out of clay in order to bewitch them. Both items are returned to the vault by the end of the episode. There's a somewhat cliffhanger at the end. Micki, who knows her powers are gone, opens up the spellbook to a musical sting and freezeframe. If they don't address this in the season 3 premiere, then this ending is incredibly forced.

Season 2 overall was a fairly good season. Season 1, at least to me, didn't have any objectionable episodes. Season 2 has plenty. There's plenty of episodes praising voodoo, magic, Shamanism, etc... None of this I find good. I don't think it's right to present something as how you use it determines whether you use it for good or for evil. I don't think we're that powerful, for one. Having said that, the stakes are a LOT higher in season 2 which is a major plus. It's a much welcomed change from the formulaic season 1.

After a full year of the TV series, the producers felt it was time to resurrect their main villain, Jason, one last time. How would audiences react after having more than a full season of TV to distract them from the movie series? Well, we'll have to address that next time.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 51 The Prisoner Review

The Prisoner originally aired on June 5, 1989. This episode was uneven. The villain didn't make much sense to be perfectly honest. The villain gets caught repeatedly inside the jail with a weapon by the guards. If he was caught once, he would have had his weapon confiscated, meaning he wouldn't have been able to kill more people which makes the entire episode completely irrelevant. This is Johnny's second appearance and he is convicted of the death of his father and spends the entire episode in jail. He didn't do it. Our invisible villain did. The cursed antique is a WWII jacket which, after having blood get on it after someone dies, allows it's wearer to walk around invisible anywhere he/she wants to go. He can just put it off to I was in my cell the whole time sleeping. It is weak that he can continually kill people with weapons in the jail considering he wouldn't be allowed to have ANY after he had been caught. BUT his death is awesome. He is invisible, so Johnny pours gasoline over him and then lights him on fire. It's a spectacular ending and worth watching for that alone even though there are plenty of plot holes in this episode.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 50 The Shaman's Apprentice Review

The Shaman's Apprentice originally aired on May 29, 1989. This was an interesting episode. Again, it's another one of those truth is relative. It doesn't matter what religion it is, it's how you use it's power. The cursed antique was a Shaman's rattle which is used during Shaman's ceremonies. It will take the life of one and cure the life of another even with the most incurable of diseases. The villain is a doctor who denounced his Shaman heritage. He, however, uses the rattle to not further himself, but to genuinely help people in need. He uses it for evil to try to destroy this other doctor who's a little bit racist against Native Americans. Micki also has a friend who's seeking help from the Native American doctor. Micki struggles with letting the killing go on to help save her friend who has a death sentence or to hold every life as precious. The episode ultimately goes with the message that every life is precious. The racist doctor almost dies in a brutal ceremony, but survives. Micki's friend ultimately does not receive help from the cursed object. The character dynamics are really interesting in this episode. The Native American doctor even accidentally kills his grandfather to continue his new found form of doctoring. The death scenes are kinda eh. Overall, it's an episode that could spark a lot of discussion.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 49 The Maestro

The Maestro originally aired on May 22, 1989. This episode ran high on the emotions. No, it didn't add anything overall to the history of the show, but that's ok because the emotions were real. The cursed antique pretty much sucks this episode. The antique is a symphonia (a music box) that creates choreography...only the people who are dancing dance to their deaths. No joke, that's what it does. I know, I know, you can stop laughing now. Jack's niece appears in this episode. I know, another characteristic of Jack simply being a plot device. She ends up giving her life for the end of the dance along with our main villain. They receive a standing ovation as they breathe their last breath. Jack's heart wrenching reaction to his niece's death is yet another wonderful piece of acting and it alone saves the entire episode.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 48 Wedding Bell Blues

Wedding Bell Blues originally aired on May 15, 1989. This was a great episode. This episode actually is going to lead into the rest of the series. This was the first episode that Johnny appears in who will eventually take over Ryan in season 3. The cursed antique in this episode was a cuestick that will make the owner a great pool player...only if you impale someone with it first. Snow shoes are mentioned as another cursed object that Jack and Ryan went after. This episode solely focused on the build up to the relationship between Micki and Johnny. Micki hates Johnny, but warms up to him by the end of the episode. Johnny even says he'd be willing to do it again...hint, hint. The villain is this woman who loves a pool player. She wants to marry him, but he won't marry her. She eventually impales him with the object. It's a great side story. I immensely enjoyed the episode, especially considering that it'll add to the overall story.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 47 Wedding in Black

Wedding in Black originally aired on May 8, 1989. You can tell that they're trying to up the stakes. This was yet another weird episode, but a good one. Three 'servants of Satan' are propositioned by Satan that if they kill our trio they will get another shot at life. This is where our antique comes in, which is not really an antique at all. In many ways it's like the second season premiere object. This episode has a snow globe that traps Micki and Jack inside. The ultimate plan is to destroy our trio. To save Micki, Ryan or Jack can sell their souls to Satan, or they can sit back and watch as Satan impregnates her. It's all very Rosemary's Baby. Jack and Ryan aren't pleased with either option and end up destroying the snow globe which thwarts Satan's plans. I loved the comments about the emptiness of Satan and how true evil is the absence of something. This is a very true statement and I was shocked that it was left in the show seeing how relative the show has been this season. They also comment that they only survived round 1. There's gonna be a lot more Satan episodes to come, I think.

Friday the 13th: The Series Ep. 46 Mesmer's Bauble

Mesmer's Bauble originally aired on May 1, 1989. The original title for this episode was: The Secret Agenda of Mesmer's Bauble. This episode rarely appears in reruns. Vanity, who was a singer in the 80's guest stars and legal reasons could play a factor. The episode is intact in the DVD release though. This episode has some striking imagery though and I'm so glad I watched it. The cursed antique is a hypnotist's bauble that, after having hypnotized a person and had them kill themselves, grants whatever the owner wishes. There is a fairly edgy sex scene, as edgy as they could have gotten in 1989. It didn't feel like TV, it felt like a movie. The villain, who is a man first wishes to become beautiful, his face distorts and through sound effects we can feel his painful transformation. He then goes one step further he doesn't want to just have sex with the famous singer Angelica, he wants to become her. She literally is swallowed into him. Her arm goes under his skin. It's a spectacular make up episode. Once Micki and Ryan get the bauble back, there's one final transformation: that from beautiful woman to ugly man. We see that transformation too, especially some spinal work. It's incredible. This episode went back to what made the series great to begin with: amazing visual effects, interesting cursed objects, and the interaction between our main trio. It was a wonderful back to form.