Friday the 13th - The Series: Hellowe'en

For this year's Halloween post, let us return to the world of Friday the 13th: the Series (aka Friday's Curse). Today's excursion:

Season 1, Episode 5.

"Watchin' horror movies, right there on my TV! A horror movie, right there on my TV! Horror movie, right there on my TV, and it's shocking me right out of my brain! (waa-aaa!)"

That Skyhooks song doesn't appear in "Hellowe'en" anywhere. I just felt like starting things off with it. Nor does the episode contain any music from the band Helloween - apologies to any fans who found their way to this post under false pretenses.

What does this episode have? For starters, a little something I'll call -

So, so much Robey insanity in this episode. It's been almost a year since I last looked at a Friday the 13th - the Series episode, so just a reminder of Robey's modus operandi: one part Shatner, one part alien-in-human-form-forever-experiencing-feelings-for-first-time, and one part J-Lo. 

Things kick off with Robey getting her costume ready and checking herself out in the mirror.

She hears something in the corner and thinks Ryan is in there spying on her. She's close - it's Ryan's random buddy, who Ryan has stashed in there to watch her get dressed. It's all part of the Halloween prank tradition, he explains.

"It's all right," he says, "he's pre-med. Come on, let's get to the party."

Jack has thrown open the doors to Curious Goods and invited everyone in the neighborhood to a Halloween party. 

He flirts it up and makes boob-jokes and performs magic tricks for the ladies.

But what about all the haunted items the Curious Goods gang has in the vault? Isn't this asking for trouble? Not to worry - Ryan hung up a sign.

Unsurprisingly, a couple of partygoers (one of them is the aforementioned pre-med student) find a way past this formidable obstacle and head into the basement.

This didn't screencap too well, but they simply move the sign and head down into the basement. It's tough to see, I know, but Ryan has hung the sign from a string that is apparently tied to the (open) door. I guess closing the door (maybe even locking it) and then hanging the sign was too much to expect from Ryan.

It takes about ten seconds for them to invoke The Evil.

When Jack's magic act is interrupted by supernatural shenanigans, he first admonishes ("Those friends of yours threw out a psychic line and hooked something. There are people who think that Halloween is a kid's game- it isn't. It's the one night of the year the spirits of the dead can roam the earth with freedom!" In other words: perfectly cromulent night to throw a party in a haunted antiques shop...) then slips into action:

"In the name of Melchesidek, Belerephon and Set, I command you, spirit, to be gone! From the depths of hell to the halls of darkness to the black pit, I command you to be gone!"

From here on out, things move pretty quickly. Jack warns Ryan and Robey to stay alert and then wanders out into the street. 

He meets an unchaperoned little girl and volunteers to safely escort her home.

But turns out - she's a demon.

Oops.

While Jack works to free himself from the demon's trap, Ryan and Robey are visited by the ghost of Uncle Lewis, the former proprietor of Curious Goods, whose disbursement of the haunted items before the devil pulled him into Hell is the show's reason for being. I suppose you could call this one of the show's mythology episodes for that reason. 

He reveals a hidden room behind a bookcase and convinces them he's returned not to spread more evil but to atone for his lifetime of strenuous devil worship. All he asks is for one of them to retrieve the Amulet of Zohar from the vault and give it to him. This will allow him to free the soul of his wife, cursed to wander between the worlds like some eyeless Comanche. 

Naturally, it's all a ploy just to get the amulet.

Oops.

Uncle Lewis and the little demon ("Greta") make their escape. Robey and Ryan spend some time bemoaning their gullibility then escape the secret room behind the bookcase via an old fireplace. (I guess it's somewhat possible that no one would have known this room existed, as they're all relatively new tenants, but you'd figure Jack would have done some mapping of the place. There has to be a spell for that, no? Anyway.) They look up the amulet in one of Jack's books and discover that it's primarily used in a ritual where spirits can come back from the dead into the body of someone who died peacefully. 

Reasoning that this means a mortuary and that he'd choose the closest one (since the ritual has to be performed before sun-up), they race off in pursuit.

Leaving a note for Jack, of course. This is even funnier when you consider that neither Robey nor Ryan have communicated the re-appearance of the very dead Uncle Lewis to Jack.

Sure enough:

Uncle Lewis dispatches Greta to deal with them, since he has to concentrate on his spell. ("Toth-Agremmon, hear me!" yadda yadda.) 

Greta rounds them both up with little difficulty.

She stashes them in coffins on a conveyer belt, bound (slowly) towards the incinerator. Luckily, Jack arrives (having freed himself from Greta's earlier trap with the unknowing help of some street hooligans) in time to free them.

Jack has some impressive Doctor Strange / Ronnie James Dio mojo in this episode.

Normally he relies only on the power of his inspirational speeches.

Back to the abyss with you, Uncle Lewis.

Rather than engage them with the hypnosis and paralysis spells that have worked so effectively throughout the episode, Greta chooses to try and physically take them out. Maybe she's like a D-and-D magic-user and can only cast certain spells once or twice a day. Whatever the reason, she manages to trip over something and impale herself. 

Adios, bruja.

Back at Curious Goods (presumably after telling someone about the mortuary break-in) Jack muses about the hidden room he never suspected. Robey asks how much of Uncle Lewis's story was true. "Oh, some of it," Jack says. "He was married, and his wife was called Grace. She's not in there. She never was. She died and was buried, and we all lost a great friend. She was a wonderful woman, Micki *, beautiful like a sunrise. She had the kind of beauty that shone out of her like a beacon."

* What Jack insists on calling Robey.

Jack's reverie leads Robey to ask him how well he knew her.  

"Better than I ought to, perhaps. But not as much as I'd have dearly wished."

The End.

It's a surprisingly touching ending, actually, mainly because Jack manages to sell the somewhat flowery dialogue. It's kind of an odd coda for all the events we've seen. But, on this show, they almost all are.

Happy Halloween 2015!

~

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The TV Tomb of Mystery is an ongoing attempt to stave off  acquisition of any more impulse-buy DVDs by taking better inventory of the ones already in hand.