Friday the 13th: the Series (1987 series)
Friday's Curse (1987), AKA Friday the 13th: the Series
Summary
"Lewis made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques, but he broke the pact and it cost him his soul. His niece Micki and her cousin Ryan have inherited the store, and with it the curse. Now, they must get everything back, and the real terror begins!" Micki Foster is the lucky niece who inherits an antique store from her Uncle Lewis. But this is no ordinary antique shop: Lewis made a deal with the devil -- in exchange for material wealth, he will sell cursed antiques. Micki, along with cousin Ryan and her new partner, retired magician Jack Marshak, have the duty of recovering the antiques sealing them safely away in their basement vaults, where the items can cause no further harm.
The artifacts' curses usually worked by causing its user to sell his/her soul by killing someone in exchange for some benefit, usually with an ironic and addictive twist (for example, a cursed vanity mirror might grant its user temporary youth and beauty in exchange for a murder, but the youth and beauty gained will last for a shorter and shorter time, with the increasingly more desperate and dependent user losing more youth and vanity every time the positive effects wear off....)
Details
- Release Date: 1987-1990
- Country/Language: Canada, English
- Genres/Technical: Horror, Fantasy, Mystery
- Runtime: (generally formatted for a 1-hour commercial television slot)
- Starring: Louise Robey, Chris Wiggins, John D. LeMay
- Creators: Larry B. Williams, Frank Mancuso Jr.
- Producer/Production Co: Variety Artists International, Lexicon Productions, Hometown Films
- View Trailer: (link), (link)
- TVTropes: (link)
- IMDB Page: (link)
Ratings
MPAA Ratings
- Rated: (not rated) (equivalent to a TV-14 or TV-MA for Violence and Adult Content that pushed the envelope of what was allowed on 1980s television)
Tentacle Ratings
A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:
- S____ (One Tentacle: Debateably Lovecraftian; has almost no direct connection to Lovecraft's work)
Not very "Lovecraftian" beyond the "low-Mythos" Call of Cthulhu RPG-friendly premise of a group who inherits an antique store owned by an evil occultist who used it to sell cursed antiques in exchange for immortality before his death after double-crossing the powers of evil, and who now must retrieve the cursed artifacts before they cause any further trouble. There were couple of stories/artifacts that would, at a stretch, almost fit a vaguely "Lovecraftian" theme (such as cursed tomes of prophecy, a ritual dagger that summons a demon when a victim is sacrificed, a cursed antique coin that kills one person and causes a different dead person to come back wrong, a mirror that serves as a magical portal to the Realms of Darkness, an antique medical trephanator which steals knowledge from a sacrificial victim and transfers it to the brain surgeon, an antique animated scarecrow that brings a good harvest after killing three victims, a pulp horror book that turns its reader into an invincible killer, etc.), and a few stories involved pagan and witch cults, but for the most part the series assumed this to all be the (quite non-Lovecraftian) work of a Judeo-Christian devil who uses the artifacts to tempt sinners into surrendering their souls by killing people in exchange for an ironic and addictive benefit of the cursed item; a lazy keeper could probably just substitute Nyarlathotep for the Devil and give the cursed antiques a vaguely "Lovecraftian" angle and make an adaptation to a short campaign work.
Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.
Reviews
Review Links:
- (review needed)
Synopsis
Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)
Micki Foster is the lucky niece who inherits an antique store from her Uncle Lewis. But this is no ordinary antique shop. Lewis made a deal with the devil -- in exchange for material wealth, he will sell cursed antiques. Micki, along with cousin Ryan and her partner, retired magician Jack, have the duty of recovering the antiques to be sealed in their basement, where the items can't cause more harm.
Notes
Comments, Trivia, Dedication
- Playing follow-the-leader of cable's Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996), network/syndicated television shows like Friday the 13th: the Series (1987-1990), Freddy's Nightmares (1988-1990), War of the Worlds: the Series (1988-1990), and Tales from the Darkside/Monsters (1983-1991) really pushed the boundaries of what was considered to be in good taste for 1980s prime-time television with graphic violence and adult themes.
Associated Mythos Elements
- TO DO
- business: "Curious Goods" (formerly "Vendredi's Antiques"); under its original management Lewis Vandredi, the shop dealt in cursed antiques; following its owner's mysterious death, the new owners used the antique business as a front for tracking the cursed objects down and locking them away in hidden vaults beneath the shop where they can do no further harm
- tome: the shop manifest, which reveals the curses that plague the artifacts, and who the artifacts were sold to
- cult: a couple nameless and unrelated satanic, pagan, and witch cults appear in various episodes
Keeper Notes
- A group of distantly-related people become investigators after inheriting an antique store their rich uncle, a warlock, used to sell cursed artifacts as his part of a bargain with Nyarlathotep in exchange for wealth and limited immortality; now, the investigators' very souls are at stake, and they must retrieve the cursed artifacts before it is too late!
