Editorials
The 5 Best Episodes of “Friday the 13th: The Series”
Thanks to the Friday the 13th film franchise, a day steeped in unlucky superstition is now a horror fan holiday often spent binging all things Jason Voorhees. With twelve films, novels, documentaries, fan films, comic books, and video games, it’s easy to see why it’s become synonymous with the calendar day. It’s such a profitable franchise that news of potential sequels and TV series comes on the regular, never mind that perpetual roadblocks of legal rights that will take a massive, daunting untangling before any new entries come to pass. Until then, nearly every Friday the 13th tends to become a recycled marathon on cable.
There’s one aspect of the franchise that’s often overlooked, though, for having very little association with the films with no ties to Crystal Lake or Voorhees. Technically, it wasn’t meant to be tied to the franchise at all, then titled The 13th Hour. Executive producer and co-creator Frank Mancuso Jr., the producer behind six of the film series’ sequels, realized he could draw in audiences by changing the name to Friday the 13th: The Series. Even with no character ties, many of the actors and directors would crossover, with show’s star John D. LeMay starring in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, guest star John Shepherd portraying Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, director Tommy McLoughlin (director of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) helming multiple episodes, and even David Cronenberg dabbled in both the films and the series.
Also like its film franchise sibling, the series knew how to pile up a body count. The series’ premise allowed for it to go to some dark places; it revolved around an antique dealer who sold his soul to the devil and had to sell cursed antiques. He broke the pact and lost his life, and his niece and her cousin inherited the store. Knowing nothing of the curse, they sold off many of the antiques, and the series works as a sort of anthology as they track down each cursed item.
Running from 1987 to 1990, and spanning 72 episodes before sudden cancellation, Friday the 13th: The Series was the fun, often creepy and dark, predecessor to shows like The X-Files that would follow. If you’d like a change a pace this Friday the 13th, the series is worth the watch. Here are 5 fantastic episodes to start with:
The Inheritance
The best place to start, of course, is the pilot episode. It serves as the introduction to the major characters as well as the plot setup for the cursed antique hunting. We get to see how it all began, with Lewis Vendredi’s death and Micki and Ryan’s submersion into the world of cursed objects. But, it also functions well on its own, with this episode’s cursed antique being a creepy antique doll. That doll pretty much possesses the 8-year old child that now owns it. It’s a sort of horror cliché, the creepy doll and the subsequently creepy girl, but it’s done well. Even cooler is that the little girl was played by an 8-year old Sarah Polley (2004’s Dawn of the Dead).
Scarecrow
The 11th episode of the inaugural season had the gang tracking down an antique scarecrow. Being that scarecrows are inherently creepy, this episode ranks highly as a fan favorite. The gang heads out of state to a rural farm town to track down the scarecrow, which brings bountiful crops to its owner, but only after satiating its bloodlust by decapitating three victims. Directed by William Fruet, no stranger to slasher films, this episode plays out like a very spooky slasher. It also helps that the scarecrow resembles the masked Dr. Decker from Nightbreed.
Tails I Live, Heads You Die
The fourth episode of season 2 centers around the cursed Coin of Zioclese, an object that can bring someone back to life after killing another. A Satanic cult leader uses it to bring back powerful magicians, long dead, to summon Satan and rule the world. As one does. The underground lair beneath the cult leader’s taxidermy shop is somewhat creepy, but his use of the coin makes him powerful and deadly. There’s a few dead bodies that pile up in the episode, as well as a surprising reminder that working against Satan might lead to dire consequences.
Faith Healer
Before he would appear in Jason X long enough to get killed by Jason Voorhees, David Cronenberg directed one of the most interesting episodes of the TV series. The episode follows a discredited faith healer who stumbled upon the cursed object of the week, a glove that transfers the sickness or ailment from one person to another. This should come as no surprise to fans of Cronenberg’s work in horror; it’s an episode centered around gooey, gross body horror.
The Prophecies (Part 1 and 2)
Season 3 begins with a two-parter, written and directed by Tom McLoughlin. The cursed object isn’t one that originated from Vendredi’s shop, but still functions the same. It’s one of the Books of Lucifer, and prophecies written in it come to fruition. Naturally, a disciple of Satan plans to use it to bring the Antichrist into the world. An action-packed two episodes that revolve around Satanists and demonic possession brings about one of the boldest send-offs for a major character ever to take place in television. Spoiler alert: Lead character Ryan (John D. LeMay) makes his final appearance of the series in Part 2, having become a homicidal servant of Satan.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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