The BEST episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series
Every episode of Friday the 13th: The Series ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series!
Two young antique store owners must recover cursed antiques.
#1 - Vanity's Mirror
Season 1 - Episode 15 - Aired 3/5/1988
A homely girl, overshadowed by her prom queen sister, gets hold of a vanity which she can use to bedazzle any boy into falling in love with her. However, as soon as they do, she must then kill them. She eventually takes over her sister's boyfriend and has him hang her up by a noose. Micki and Ryan manage to save the girl, but the younger sister eventually commits suicide along with the boyfriend. The vanity is lost (although it will resurface in the second season episode ""Face of Evil"").
#2 - Bedazzled
Season 1 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/27/1988
Jack and Ryan recover a cursed lantern from two treasure hunters who use it to recover lost treasure by killing their divers with it. They take it back to the vault and then head off for a convention. The two crooks follow them to the shop and try to recover the lantern from Micki and the neighbor boy that she is babysitting. Micki manages to kill the two, and when Jack and Ryan return and ask what she did, she nonchalantly replied, ""Not much.""
#3 - The Charnel Pit
Season 3 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/26/1990
Micki is sent through a two-way time portal contained within a painting and finds herself at the mercy of the Marquis de Sade.
#4 - The Tree of Life
Season 3 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/19/1990
An exclusive fertility clinic is much mroe than it seems. It is run by a cult of female Druids who use a cursed fertility statue to expand their numbers. When infertile couples come to them, they use a ritual that kills the husband and results in the birth of twins: a boy and a girl. They only tell the mother that one child was born, and turn over the boy. They keep the girl to raise as a Druid priestess. A friend of Micki's is undergoing treatment, leading the trio to the clinic. They manage to break up the statue before the Druid priestesses can use a ritual to cause the fertility statue to replicate. The head Druids die, and the trio manage to reunite the young girls with their true mothers.
#5 - Spirit of Television
Season 3 - Episode 18 - Aired 5/12/1990
A psychic medium is dying of a rare degenerative disease. She stumbles upon a cursed television set, which allows her to put her customers in contact with the spirits of their dearly departed. Besides being paid a hefty fee for these real manifestations, she also gets a temporary 10-day extension of her life. The curse later sends the same spirits, horribly twisted and vengeful, after their "loved one" and kill them. The trio notice the pattern of deaths and a friend of Jack's tries to debunk the medium's powers. Eventually he commits suicide rather then let the spirits claim him, and the failure to follow through means the medium dies too.
#6 - Jack-in-the-Box
Season 3 - Episode 17 - Aired 5/5/1990
A friend of Micki's, who works at a pool club, is drowned by two intruders. The widow inadvertently gives her daughter a jack-in-the-box from a sailor's museum, and the girl discovers that if she kills people with it, she can summon back the ghost of her father for a little while. When the jack-in-the-box opens, the victim is grabbed by a water spirit from a nearby source of water and drowned. The ghostly father isn't happy with his daughter's methods, but the girl's grieving mother has turned to alcohol. Eventually the ghost contacts Micki, who manages to show up in time to stop the girl from killing herself so that she can be with her father forever. Micki recovers the antique and the girl and her mother try to work things out.
#7 - Repetition
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/17/1990
In this unusual episode, none of the main characters appear except Micki very briefly at the beginning and end. A newspaper columnist accidentally hits a young girl who was wearing a cursed cameo. The silhouette starts harping at him in the young girl's voice to free her by killing someone else. The columnist then kills his ambitious, obsessive mother which frees the girl...but then the mother's voice starts haunting him. He kills a homeless man to bring her back to life, but then is haunted by that man's voice. Ultimately the columnist tries to reverse the curse by killing his mother and then the girl again, and ends up killing himself. At the end, a social worker stumbles across the locket and turns it over to Micki.
#8 - Midnight Riders
Season 3 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/10/1990
Micki, Johnny, and Jack are taking a break, and star-gazing in Jack's old hometown. However, a ghostly biker gang, the Midnight Riders, rolls into town. At the same time, Jack's father Cawley, who has been gone for ten years, also shows up. The gang is out for revenge, as they were falsely accused of raping a girl who lied to protect her reputation and explain the fact she was pregnant. Jack's father was one of the ones who killed the gang and hid the secret. It turns out that Jack's father is also a ghost: he died at sea, but has returned on the anniversary of the gang's death. The girl and the others who participated in the gang's death are killed, and after a brief reunion with his son, Cawley's ghost disappears as well.
#9 - Femme Fatale
Season 3 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/2/1989
Desmond Williams, a director, is obsessed with the role that his now-aged actress-wife played 50 years ago: that of femme fatale Lili Lita in a film-noir crime film. He finds a cursed reel that lets him bring the Lili character to life, by pushing an innocent female victim into the film itself while its playing. The victim is forced to relive the entire movie...which ends with the character they are stuck as being killed. Meanwhile, the movie version of Lili emerges into the real-world for the same period of time. To stay alive, Lili must convince Desmond to kill her aged real-life counterpart. The character is also increasingly dissatisfied with her limited "life" as a sex toy for Desmond. Ultimately, the aged actress shoots her husband when she finds out what is going on, and decides to enter into the film (replacing a trapped Micki) so she can have her youth back. Trapped with nowhere to go when the film ends, the film Lili is destroyed for good.
#10 - Bad Penny
Season 3 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/11/1989
While mourning the death of his father (in last season's The Prisoner), Johnny catches wind of a series of murders with the victims bearing the mark of a ram's head on their forehead. It turns out that two crooked cops have recovered the Coin of Ziocles (from Tails I Live, Heads You Die). In a shootout, one of them is killed along with a drug dealer they were in cahoots with. The other, live cop figures out the coin can resurrect the dead, and uses it to resurrect his partner as a semi-zombie. They then use the Coin to kill a prostitute, but Johnny grabs the coin from them...and uses it to resurrect his father. Meanwhile, Micki is in a near-useless state, since she herself was briefly dead, killed by the Coin earlier. She doesn't want to go through that again. Disgusted with Johnny's selfish use of the coin, Jack kicks him out, but Johnny manages to redeem himself after the cops get the coin back and try to resurrect the drug dealer to find out where their money is. Johnny saves Micki,
#11 - The Prophecies (2)
Season 3 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/7/1989
Micki and Ryan get word of Jack's injury at the end of the preceding episode. They travel to Marie-Mere with Johnny Ventura to investigate and try to recover Lucifer's Bible. Asteroth uses the Bible to take control of Ryan, who must then kill an innocent child to fulfill the final prophecy that signifies Satan's arrival upon Earth. Ultimately, Jack recovers and he, Micki and Johnny manage to thwart Asteroth. However, the ritual turns Ryan into a 10-year old permanently. He leaves with his mother, and Johnny takes his place.
#12 - The Prophecies (1)
Season 3 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/7/1989
Part one of this two-parter features Jack travelling to Marie-Mere in France on the trail of a cursed tome, Lucifer's Bible. The town is a holy site, with a fountain that cures the sick and dying. However, a priest of Satan, Asteroth, has the Bible and is using it to fulfull a series of prophecies that will culminate with the arrival of Satan on Earth. Meanwhile, Ryan is re-united with his mother, and the two deal with the death of his brother years ago over which Ryan is still guilty. The episode ends with Jack knocked through a window and put into a coma after a confrontation with Asteroth.
#13 - Wedding In Black
Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/13/1989
A mysterious snowglobe is mailed to Curious Goods. When Micki gives it a shake, an old boyfriend of hers shows up, and convinces her to join him at a bed & breakfast. Then Jack and Ryan are both visited by old friends when they shake the globe. It turns out that each of the three newcomers is working for Satan. If Micki can be tricked into sleeping with her boyfriend, then she will be considered wedded to Satan as she ""willingly"" did so. Jack and Ryan, lured to the hotel, are separated from her, able to witness what is going on but unable to contact Micki. It turns out they are trapped in the hotel within the snow globe. Ultimately, Ryan's ex-girlfriend helps them, and they manage to drive a car into the edge of the globe, knocking it off the shelf it is resting and shattering it (and freeing themselves) before Micki can consummate her wedding with the Devil.
#14 - The Butcher
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired 4/29/1989
While Micki and Ryan are on vacation, Jack has nightmares of his World War II experience when he was captured by the Nazis and nearly killed by Rausch, a commandant known as The Butcher. The Butcher used a garrotte made of barbed wire to kill his victims. Jack was saved by the rest of his battalion then, but now in the modern day his surviving friends are being killed off one by one with a barbed-wire garrotte. It turns out that an escaped Nazi, Mueller, is using a mystic talisman, the Amulet of Thule, to resurrect Rausch. Rausch, masquerading as a right-wing radio talk-show host named Walden, is seeking revenge on Jack and the others. Although the Amulet is not an antique, Jack must recover it to defeat Rausch and send him back to the grave.
#15 - Master of Disguise
Season 2 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/11/1988
The trio become involved in a movie production when they loan some (non-cursed) antiques out to a set. Handsome actor William Pratt is the star, and Micki and he soon fall in love. Unfortunately, Pratt has two secrets: he is actually a disfigured ""monster"" actor named Jeff Amory, and he owns an antique: a cursed make-up case that belonged to John Wilkes Booth. Using the case, Amory can temporarily hide his disfigurement by mixing a victim's blood in with the make-up. Unable to bring himself to kill Micki whom he truly loves, he reverts to his normal features but Micki loves him anyway. He is locked up and the make-up case returned to the Vault.
#16 - The Electrocutioner
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 4/23/1988
An innocent man is condemned to the electric chair, but manages to survive. Embittered, the man buys the electric chair from Lewis Vendredi. A dentist, he takes a job in an orphanage and disguise it as a dentist's chair. He then kills the orphans and covers up their disappearance by claiming they are runaways. The killings let him electrically charge himself into a living dynamo, so that he can go out and kill those responsible for finding him guilty at his trial. The trio must ground him before he can kill again.
#17 - Brain Drain
Season 1 - Episode 18 - Aired 4/30/1988
A dim-wittedd man discovers a cursed trefinator in a museum warehouse: a guillotine-like device that transfers spinal fluid from one individual to another. The cursed item actually transfers intelligence as well, and the man uses it to make himself intelligent by preying upon doctors at the museum. Jack and the others become involved when Jack's old girlfriend and fiancee goes to work at the museum, and is the next target for the trefinator.
#18 - The Quilt of Hathor (1)
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 5/7/1988
A cursed quilt, which allows the person underneath it to dream their enemies to death, finds its way into an Amish-like ""Pennitite"" community. A plain woman stumbles upon it and uses it to kill her rivals for the community leader. Ryan attempts to infiltrate the community, and the woman manages to die. Ryan decides to stay with a newfound love, believing that the Quilt of Hathor is destroyed. Little do he and the others know that the quilt was recovered by the community's leader, the father of Ryan's girlfriend, who has his own dark purpose for it.
#19 - The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening (2)
Season 1 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/14/1988
Jack and Micki, depressed because Ryan stayed with the Pennitites, learn that the Quilt of Hathor they have is a forgery when they are able to harm it (all of the cursed antiques are indestructible). They return to the religious community to discover that Reverend Josiah, Ryan's father-in-law to be, is using it to destroy his enemies in their dreams. Josiah, unhappy with an outsider romancing his daughter, has framed Ryan for the deaths. Ryan must fight in an old Testament-style trial by combat while the others recover the Quilt.
#20 - The Pirate's Promise
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 7/2/1988
Tracking a cursed foghorn, Micki and Ryan arrive at an isolated community. Initially unbeknownst to them, the local lighthouse keeper is using the foghorn to summon up the ghost of pirate Angus MacBride, who kills his descendents in return for revealing more and more of his hidden treasure to the keeper. Ultimately the keeper discovers that he is the last descendent of MacBridge, and the pirate captain completes his crew at last.
#21 - Bottle of Dreams
Season 1 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/30/1988
A mysterious messenger brings a Coptic urn to the store, which bursts open when Micki and Ryan take it to the Vault. The gas from the jar puts them into a trance where they are forced to relive their most horrifying moments over and over until they die. Jack calls upon his friend, a fellow mystic named Rashid, to help him enter their trance and free them. To do so, Jack must both overcome the spirit of Lewis Vendredi, who arranged for the urn's delivery to gain revenge, and confront the spirit of his deceased son.
#22 - Doorway to Hell
Season 2 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/30/1988
Lewis Vendredi was defeated in the previous episode Bottle of Dreams, but he has another plan. Vendredi is using a mirror that he prepared before his death, hidden away in an old home that the cousins were unaware their uncle owned. The mirror will open a doorway to hell, and let Lewis escape. Vendredi possesses the body of one of two escaped convicts who has fled to hell. Jack must enter the doorway and destroy it from within, which he manages to do.
#23 - And Now the News
Season 2 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/14/1988
In an insane asylum, a doctor is using a cursed antique radio to enact miraculous cures on his patients. The cost, as usual, is that the radio then kills another doctor's patients, by bringing their greatest fears to life. Tracking down the radio, Micki and Ryan must break into the asylum and recover the antique.
#24 - Tails I Live, Heads You Die
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/21/1988
A Satanic cult leader gets ahold of the cursed Coin of Ziocles, and needs it to resurrect three powerful witches. Flip the coin and it comes up heads...killing the victim and allowing the user to resurrect someone else. Unfortunately, while spying on the cult Micki is captured and killed by the coin! Jack and Ryan are deeply hurt, and Ryan plans to quit antique-hunting once they've defeated the cult. Fortunately, they are able to substitute Micki's body for that of the third, mummified corpse, and the cult leader, Sylvan, inadvertently resurrects her instead. As the temple begins to crumble, Ryan grabs the coin and tosses it at Sylvan to deter him...but it's a fake. Unfortunately, Ryan loses the real Coin as well, leaving it buried under tons of rubble.
#25 - Symphony in B#
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/4/1988
Jack is a fan of deceased violinist, Janos Korda. Ryan's new girlfriend Leslie, a violinist, is Korda's widow. Each year a new album of Korda's ""lost"" music is mysteriously released. Also initially believing that The trio find out that Korda is still alive, but horribly disfigured and crippled by the car crash it was believed he was killed in. Only by using a cursed violin, and killing a victim with its razor-sharp bow, can Korda temporarily gain enough control of his hands to produce new music. Upon seeing his ex-wife Leslie, he becomes obsessed with her and tries to steal her away. Leslie sacrifices herself rather than let Ryan become Korda's next victim, and Korda kills himself in despair at her loss.