Paramount Television, 1987
starring: Louise Robey, Chris Wiggins, John D. LeMay and R.G. Armstrong
directed by: William Fruet

the plot: Antiques dealer Lewis Vendredi (Armstrong) made a deal with the devil. In exchange for a longer life and more money, Vendredi agreed to sell cursed antiques out of his store. The enchanted items grant their owners with great powers, but at a terrible price—usually the death of an unsuspecting innocent. When Vendredi tries to back out of the deal, the devil comes to collect his due. But the evil artifacts remain in the store, and Vendredi’s niece Micki Foster (Robey) and his nephew Ryan Dallion (LeMay) are the unwilling inheritors of their uncle’s damned collection. Eager to be rid of their burden, Micki and Ryan attempt to liquidate the store’s inventory. That is, until Jack Marshak (Wiggins), Vendredi’s old friend and a part-time occultist, reveals the secret behind Vendredi’s death and the wicked antiques. Using an old sales ledger as a guide, Micki, Jack and Ryan set out to collect all the antiques Vendredi sold and keep the evil from spreading.

why it’s good: In preparation for this year’s reboot of the “Friday the 13th” franchise, Paramount has dusted off “Friday the 13th: The Series,” part of a wave of horror anthology shows that dominated syndicated television in the late 1980s, for release on DVD. There are no hockey masks, machetes or wayward campers with questionable morals in the series, just some musty old antiques and some suitably gruesome morality tales. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr., who worked on “Friday the 13th” parts two through eight, used the title to better sell a somewhat high-concept syndicated series. If you’re looking for the nuts and bolts blood and guts of the “Friday” movies, you’ll be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean the series should be passed over. Though limited by budget and formula, the “Friday” series holds up fairly well, mainly because of the chemistry between Robey, Wiggins and LeMay, and a fairly consistent dose of shocks and violence. If anything, the show’s format is a little too loose, and the hour-long episodes often feel padded with unnecessary complications to fill running time. Some of the proceedings are silly, too—the second episode of the first season features Micki, Ryan and Jack going undercover in a monastery in order to retrieve a cursed pen. Jack adopts an utterly awful Irish brogue while Micki pins her hair back and tapes her chest down in order to look like a boyish monk. The series gets better as it progresses, though, and the ongoing quest to retrieve the antiques is augmented with peeks into each character’s back story. Despite sharing an unlucky moniker with a famous film franchise, “Friday the 13th: The Series” is lucky enough to stand on its own merits.

why you should own it: While it’s nice to see “Friday the 13th: The Series” on DVD, Paramount could have done a slightly better job. The picture quality on the first season is terrible—not much better than when the series first aired in syndication two decades ago. Unless you’re a super-fan, grab a few discs from Netflix before buying.