Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990)
If we are going to talk about horror on television, I would have to start with my personal favorite and the one I grew up with as I really began to dig into horror media. Friday the 13th: The Series. It had nothing to do with the film series of the same name but it did offer plenty of horror from campy killer robots to a more serious look at the horrors of racism.
The premise was simple and perfect for episodic television, two young cousins Mickey (Louise Robey), Ryan (John D. LeMay), and their mentor Jack (Chris Wiggins) must recover cursed objects that were sold from the antique store they inherited. Each week would introduce a new cursed object, half the enjoyment was discovering how the objects worked (usually the user had to kill someone to make the device do something beneficial). Mickey, Ryan, and Jack made interesting protagonists because they were just private citizens with no authority, none of them are particularly adept at combat or possessed unlimited resources. Their opponents were usually regular people caught up in a cycle of weakness who used these objects to stay alive or even the score with someone who wronged them.
Syndicated television of this era was happy to push the boundaries of gore and Friday the 13th: The Series was no exception, even on its limited budget and with the relatively low resolution of analog TV, the show managed to produce some impressive FX. The show even attracted notable talent including David Cronenberg and Rob Bottin.
 |
| "I knew our cable company was bad but this is ridiculous." |
No comments:
Post a Comment