Horror fans alot of successful films have spawned TV shows it's oddly enough seems to be a right of passage for a horror film. Even more so for a slasher since for some strange reason TV executives seem to be obsessed with turning slasher films into TV shows and what alot of those shows have in common is they at least try to be like there respective film counterparts however there is one show which doesn't even try to be like the film series it's based off of and so here is my review of the debut episode of Friday The 13th: The Series with the episode being called "The Inheritance" enjoy the review guys and girls and everyone inbetween.
The plot of the episode is cousins Micki and Ryan inherit an antique shop from their late Uncle Lewis Vendredi and after selling one of the shops products they find everything in the shop is more deadly then they first fought and so have to try and get back the sold item in this case a doll before it's to late. Even tho I just gave a fairly detailed summery of the episode my summery is more story then what's featured in the actual episode since the actual story is so thin and it takes nearly twenty minuets to get going which is not a good thing at all.
Starring in the episode is John D. LeMay as Ryan Dallion , Louise Robey as Micki Foster and Chris Wiggins as Jack Marshak. Also starring in the episode is R.G. Armstrong as Lewis Vendredi , Sarah Polley as Mary , Lynne Cormack as Mrs. Irene Simms , Michael Fletcher as Mr. Simms , Esther Hockin as Babysitter , Sean Fagan as Boy #1 , Gordon Michael Woolvett as Boy #2 , Robyn Sheppard as Nurse and Barclay Hope as Boyd.
The acting in the episode even tho I say this alot I feel is true here but it was alot better then what I was expecting it to be. I went into this show expecting the acting to be really freaking bad if i'm being honest but to my surprise the acting was passable which for a show based of a movie is a very good thing , it helps that alot of the actors are at least putting in some effort into making the script and the idea work but they can only do so much tho.
Say whatever you will about the quality of Freddy's Nightmares at least that show is actually connected to the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise even if it's just by having Robert Englund back as Freddy Krueger. This show literally has nothing to do with the Friday The 13th franchise hell even co-creator and Friday The 13th franchise producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. admitted that they only named the show Friday The 13th: The Series so it would be easier to sell the show to networks.
I get that you have to sell a show and I get that it could be hard selling a show and putting the name Friday the 13th in title would make it easier. However by doing that your going to make alot of fans of the Friday The 13th franchise both angry and confused angry because it doesn't feature any characters or settings that they are familiar with and confused because you don't make it clear if this is set in the same world as the films or not and so the fans will be watching just to see if there favourite character appears in any of the episodes.
In all honesty one of the good things about this episode hell about this series is the fact that they don't feature Jason's mask. I say this because there was a rumour going around that if the show did get a fourth season or even more time to film a final episode then they would have tried to connect the show to the movies through the way of using Jason's mask which on paper sounds cool but when you take into account that we see how Jason got his mask in Friday The 13th Part 3 it really makes no sense for the mask to appear in this show.
Perhaps the biggest issue that I have with the show is the fact that the story takes close to twenty minuets to get going. I say this because the episode is forty five minuets long (an hour with adverts / commercials) and so for a story to take that long to get going is not a good thing at all since it means that your now rushing to hit all of these plot points without taking the time to get us there at a more natural pace as such the episode has very uneven pacing with the first twenty minuets feeling pretty dull and going slow as heck but the final twenty five minuets going by super fast as such it leaves the episode feeling very uneven.
Now given that this show debuted on October 3rd 1987 and the original Child's Play movie was released on November 9th 1988 I feel that someone copied someone when it comes to the killer doll concept. Just because there are far to man similarities between Chucky and the doll that is featured in this episode I don't know who copied who but it's clear to me that someone copied someone and i'm hoping that i'm not the only one that feels like this.
Just to make things clear on what those similarities first is the fact that the kid is attached to the doll which while it doesn't mean that the concept was copied it does however lead into what else is to follow. Since both Child's Play and this episode have the kid and doll try and kill people only in this episode the kid knows what she's doing and the fact that there's something supernatural involved is enough to make me wonder who copied who.
Unlike the Friday The 13th films this series takes on a supernatural approach instead of being a slasher which from a budget point of view makes sense since it would cost alot to produce high quality make up effects. However at the same time the die hard fans of the Friday The 13th franchise would be expecting this show to be a slasher and so to against that would only upset the fans but all of that could avoided if they just changed the title of the show to it's original title which was The 13th Hour which to me is a more fitting title.
This show started airing on October 3rd 1987 with the final episode of the show airing on May 26th 1990 with the show lasting a good three seasons. This show actually didn't air on any network instead it went straight to syndication and so it aired on many channels / networks all at once which I honestly feel was a bad move for this show because the people who bought the show must have been expecting an actual Friday The 13th show and not something that is literally Friday the 13th in name only but who knows maybe the various networks knew what they were getting themselves into.
Overall this episode while it wasn't that bad it wasn't that good either it was a very mixed bag in almost every aspect. For everything that this gets right there are two or three things that it gets wrong which for your debut episode is not a good thing at all since it doesn't leave a good enough first impression on the viewers but the fact that this show lasted three seasons means that there must be some fans who like this show this episode tho gets a 5 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from either the official Friday The 13th fandom wiki page , the official A Nightmare On Elm Street fandom wiki page , the official Child's Play fandom wiki or Google Images. If we are talking strictly images from this show then I would recommend Google Images just because those images I found to be more high definition however if we are talking images in this review then I have to recommend the official Child's Play fandom wiki page just because the poster for the original Child's Play was nearly nine mega bites and as always we end this review as we always do with our one true goddess Elvira wishing us all some very unpleasant dreams.
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