The WORST episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series
Every episode of Friday the 13th: The Series ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series!
Two young antique store owners must recover cursed antiques.
#1 - Better Off Dead
Season 2 - Episode 15 - Aired 2/18/1989
A doctor is trying to develop a cure for a childhood syndrome lending towards hyperviolence. Due to his mistake, his daughter was inadvertently infected with the disease from a contaminated needle. Now, the doctor uses a cursed silver syringe to suck out the essence of a small gland that controls violent behavior from unwilling prostitutes, and inject it into his daughter to give her a temporary cure. Unfortunately, the process renders the donor hyperviolent as well. A friend of Micki's is grabbed by the doctor and submitted to the treatment. Trying to locate her friend, Micki herself is kidnapped and subjected to the process.
#2 - Eye of Death
Season 2 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/4/1989
An antiques collector, Atticus Rook, makes a fortune selling as-new antiques from the Civil War era. It turns out that they are ""as-new"": by fueling a cursed ""magic lantern"" with the blood of a victim, he can travel back in time through a slide of wherever he wants to go, until the lantern ""fuel"" burns out in three hours. Ryan and Micki follow, but Ryan is captured as a spy trying to get close to Lee (whose sword Rook is trying to grab). A local women, Abigail, helps Ryan only to be killed by Atticus. Ultimately Micki helps Ryan to escape, and they go back to the present and blow out the lamp...just as Rook emerges behind them, dying a particularly gruesome death caught partway in a wall where the image was projected.
#3 - Read My Lips
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/25/1988
Micki's college roommate wants her to be bridesmaid at her wedding. However, the woman's fiancee, a ventriloquist, appears to be going insane. He spends most his time talking to his dummy as if it were a real person. A string of murders in his past are also starting to show up. Ultimately the groom goes insane, but a new ventriloquist takes over the dummy. Since there is no antique ventriloquist dummy in the Manifest, the trio aren't sure what's going on. Ultimately they figure out that the lapel flower is the cursed item in question. Unfortunately, the curse hs finally allowed the dummy to animate itself. Ryan manages to pull the flower from the dummy, rendering it inert once more.
#4 - Tattoo
Season 1 - Episode 16 - Aired 3/12/1988
A young man, Tommy Chow, gets hold of a set of tattoo needles. He tattoes an innocent victim, and the tattoo then comes to gory life and kills the victim. In return, Tommy, a compulsive gambler, gets good luck in the games. The trio team up with Tommy's grandfather, Lom, a Chinese medicine man, and try to save Tommy's sister, the next victim, before the snake tattoo kills her. Unfortunately, Tommy is playing a game of high-stakes Russian Roulette when they save his sister.
#5 - The Poison Pen
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/10/1987
The cousins and Jack track an antique quill pen to a monastery famed for its mysterious prophecies. The pen can be used to make anything written with it come true...at the cost of a human life for each ""wish"" granted. However, the identity of the monk using the pen, and the location of the pen, isn't known. The trio must solve the mystery before it's too late.
#6 - Shadow Boxer
Season 1 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/21/1987
A cursed set of boxing gloves makes their owner unbeatable in the ring...while his shadow goes out and beats an innocent to death. The trio manage to recover the gloves, but the boxer they stole them from breaks into the shop and hold Micki at knifepoint until he gets them back. To beat him, Ryan has to beat Jack with the gloves so his shadow can defeat the boxer.
#7 - Badge of Honor
Season 1 - Episode 23 - Aired 7/9/1988
An old boyfriend of Micki's, Tim Ayres, shows up in town, and immediately begins acting suspiciously. Ryan, somewhat jealous, believes that Ayres is working with local counterfeiters. It turns out that Ayres is an undercover cop. Unfortunately, the crook he is tracking killed the wife of Russ Sharko, who has the cursed sheriff's badge of Wyatt Earp, and is using it to kill off criminals vigilante-style. In the end, Ayres and Sharko are both killed and the badge is recovered.
#8 - Pipe Dream
Season 1 - Episode 24 - Aired 7/16/1988
Ryan's father Ray, a small-time inventor, rolls into town and announces that he's achieved great financial success and is planning to finally marry. Ray's managed to do so with the aid of a pipe given to him by Lewis Vendredi, which allows him to totally disintegrate first the young inventor whose ideas he stole, and then his rivals in the company he's working for. Eventually Ryan and Micki discover the truth. When Ray tries to kill Micki with the pipe, Ryan throws himself in the way. Ultimiately reconciled with his son, Ray then takes the blast of smoke for himself, dying to save his son.
#9 - Night Hunger
Season 2 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/14/1989
A young hot rodder is given a gift by Lewis Vendredi: a silver key chain that lets him win car races. However, he has to kill those he races against to get the curse to work. His ultimate goal is to beat his rival, Deacon, and show he's worthy of his abusive father's respect. Micki and Ryan try to get the key chain away from him, but only succeed in crashing the rodder's car...and causing the key chain to enter his heart! Ultimately, the boy's father sacrifices himself to stop his son by ramming him head-on during the final race.
#10 - The Shaman's Apprentice
Season 2 - Episode 24 - Aired 6/3/1989
The son of an Indian shaman, who has embraced the white man's medicine and become a doctor, is frustrated by the patients he loses. He stumbles across a cursed Indian rattle hidden away by his father, which allows him to miraculously cure the sick at the cost of another's life. Unfortunately, the doctor's next patient is Vera, a friend of Micki's. She has to choose between getting her friend cured at the cost of another's life. Ultimately, the trio unite with the father and his daughter (also a shaman) to stop the curse. The son is killed and the shaman promises to keep the rattle safe in his care.
#11 - My Wife as a Dog
Season 3 - Episode 16 - Aired 3/3/1990
A lonely fireman is obsessed with his dog, loving it more than his shrewish wife. He is able to fulfill his fondest wish when he finds a cursed aboriginal dogleash that lets him slowly merge his wife and his dog into one being that will love him forever.
#12 - Year of the Monkey
Season 3 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/27/1990
The trio track a cursed tea set to a samurai, Musashi: an honorable man, but one who refuses to give them the antique unless they aid him in recovering a mystical set of oriental monkey statues (which represent See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil). A wealth Japanese industrialist, Tanaka, has them, and they reward his honorable behavior with success in business. Now he is almost ready to die, and the magic of the statues require that he use them to test the honor of his three children to see which one will inherit. Each monkey gives a child magical powers, but the two sons abuse their power and fail to act honorably. Forced to choose seppuku (ritual suicide) they refuse, and the monkey statues then kill them. each death further reinvigorates Tanaka. The daughter passes her test, but is then required to use the statues to kill her father. She refuses, and kills herself. Musashi then confronts his old friend Tanaka and tricks him into killing the unarmed samurai. Having acted dishon
#13 - Tales of the Undead
Season 1 - Episode 10 - Aired 1/30/1988
A old and embittered comic book writer, Jay Star, gets hold of a cursed comic book that allows him to transform into Ferrus the Invincible and take vengeance on the individuals who stripped him of his legal rights to the superhero character he created.
#14 - Root of All Evil
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/28/1987
A gardener's assistant gets hold of a cursed mulcher. The more wealthy and valuable the person you feed into it, the more money that comes out. The trio manage to feed the assistant into the mulcher, and nothing comes out. Meanwhile, Micki's fiancee Lloyd tries to convince her to give up the antique business, but at the end she declines, feeling obliged to continue recovering the cursed antiques.
#15 - Face of Evil
Season 2 - Episode 14 - Aired 2/11/1989
The compact lost in last season's ""Vanity's Mirror"" is found by the dead girl's sister, who is now working as a make-up artist. Inadvertently, the aging starlet she works for gets hold of it, and discovers it has a new ability: by flashing light from the compact into a victim's eyes, they die a horrible, disfiguring death but the actress looks are rejuvenated. Our intrepid trio manage to get hold of it, leaving the actress to suffer all the disfigurements she inflicted on others as the curse snaps back.
#16 - Cupid's Quiver
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/17/1987
An unattractive low-life gets hold of a cursed statue of Cupid that allows him to turn women into loving worshippers who fall at his feet. However, he is compelled to kill them in hideous ways once he has his way with them.
#17 - Faith Healer
Season 1 - Episode 12 - Aired 2/13/1988
Jack is asked by a friend to investigate a ""faith healer"" who uses a cursed glove to heal one person...by transferring their ills magnified tenfold to another victim. Jack must not only recover the glove, but deal with his friend, who is dying of cancer and needs the glove to cure himself.
#18 - The Great Montarro
Season 1 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/7/1987
A magician creates a new death-defying act using a pair of cursed antique ""magic boxes"" created by the famous magician Houdin. Anyone placed in one box can survive any danger...because someone placed in the second, hidden box suffers all the harm. Jack, a magician himself, enters a magic competition as the trio try to ferret out who is using the magic boxes.
#19 - Doctor Jack
Season 1 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/14/1987
A doctor has obtained the cursed scapel used by Jack the Ripper, and discovers he can use it to kill one victim and miraculously heal one of his patients. His reputation as a miracle worker soon spreads, bringing him to the trio's attention. However, when Jack is injured, the doctor must choose whether to heal his enemy, or ruin his reputation.
#20 - A Cup of Time
Season 1 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/24/1987
An antique tea cup decorated with ""borrowers' ivy"" lets the user borrow youth and talent from a victim by taking their life. A senior citizen uses the cup to reinvent herself as a young rock singer, ""Lady Die,"" but a young girl whom the cousins befriend witnesses her kill one of her victims, and is at risk herself.
#21 - The Inheritance
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/3/1987
In the opening segment (to be repeated throughout the first two years), we see Lewis Vendredi try to recover the cursed antiques, and end up condemned to hell. Distant cousins Ryan Dallion and Micki Foster find out they have inherited an antique shop from Uncle Lewis. Micki wants to simply sell off the place, and Ryan reluctantly agrees. They sell off the antiques in the store, but then are greeted by Jack Marshak, Vendredi's partner and procurer. They find out about Vendredi's deal with the devil, and realize that some of the antiques they sold were also cursed. The first antique they recover, a toy doll, comes to life and kills for its owner, a young girl. They recover the doll, and vow to recover the other antiques as well.
#22 - Hellowe'en
Season 1 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/31/1987
Micki and Ryan throw a Halloween party at the shop to meet the neighbors, but two visitors inadvertently resurrect Uncle Vendredi's spirit. Now totally corrupted by evil, Lewis plans to use the energies on Halloween, the night where evil walks the earth most freely, to resurrect himself once and for all.
#23 - Demon Hunter
Season 3 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/14/1989
A close-knit family, the Cassidys, had a daughter who was kidnapped by a cult of demon worshippers. They used her to summon a demon. The daughter escaped, and now the family huts the demon. The cult was connected with Lewis Vendredi, and used a secret cavern beneath Curious Goods for their rituals. The paths of the Cassidys and our intrepid trio cross when they track the demon to the store. The demon must be killed by midnight on a particular day, or it will remain on Earth forever. Ultimately, the demon is destroyed and the trio use the expanded space from the cavern to store more antiques, as the Vault was filling up.
#24 - What a Mother Wouldn't Do
Season 1 - Episode 25 - Aired 7/23/1988
Two desperate parents were given an antique cradle by a symathetic Lewis Vendredi. The cradle belonged to a female passenger aboard the Titanic. Trying to rescue her child, she accidentally capsized a lifeboat that killed seven passengers, but her child floated to safety. Now, the curse of the cradle lets the parents cure their ailing baby if they kill seven people by water while the baby is in the cradle. However, they must do so before the anniversary of the Titanic's sinking. Ultimiately, trying to kill the child's babysitter, the parents themselves both manage to die by water, inadvertently giving their lives to save their child. The babysitter ends up with the cured baby, and the trio recover the cradle.
#25 - The Voodoo Mambo
Season 2 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/7/1988
During a local voodoo celebration, Jack meets an old friend, Hedley, who is a voodoo houngan, and the ""Keeper of Fire"". Hedley's granddaughter Stacey is to be initiated as a priestess. However, the other three priests of the other elements are being killed off by Cole, a rich young man using a cursed voodoo mask. He is working for Laotia, a priestess who has promised him power but plans to take it all for herself once Cole has killed the priests. We eventually find out that Laotia and Hedley were married, and that Hedley had killed his wife years ago when she turned to evil. The cousins, Jack, and Hedley must defeat Laotia once and for all.