The Best Episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series

#1 Fan Favorite
Click to reveal
7.0/10(433 votes)
#1 - The Inheritance
S1:E110/3/1987
In the opening segment (to be repeated throughout the first two years), we see Lewis Vendredi try to recover the cursed antiques, and end up condemned to hell. Distant cousins Ryan Dallion and Micki Foster find out they have inherited an antique shop from Uncle Lewis. Micki wants to simply sell off the place, and Ryan reluctantly agrees. They sell off the antiques in the store, but then are greeted by Jack Marshak, Vendredi's partner and procurer. They find out about Vendredi's deal with the devil, and realize that some of the antiques they sold were also cursed. The first antique they recover, a toy doll, comes to life and kills for its owner, a young girl. They recover the doll, and vow to recover the other antiques as well.
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Bill Taub
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Bill Taub
7.0/10(233 votes)
#2 - The Great Montarro
S1:E611/7/1987
A magician creates a new death-defying act using a pair of cursed antique ""magic boxes"" created by the famous magician Houdin. Anyone placed in one box can survive any danger...because someone placed in the second, hidden box suffers all the harm. Jack, a magician himself, enters a magic competition as the trio try to ferret out who is using the magic boxes.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(223 votes)
#3 - Root of All Evil
S1:E911/28/1987
A gardener's assistant gets hold of a cursed mulcher. The more wealthy and valuable the person you feed into it, the more money that comes out. The trio manage to feed the assistant into the mulcher, and nothing comes out. Meanwhile, Micki's fiancee Lloyd tries to convince her to give up the antique business, but at the end she declines, feeling obliged to continue recovering the cursed antiques.
Director:Allan King
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Allan King
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(233 votes)
#4 - Tales of the Undead
S1:E101/30/1988
A old and embittered comic book writer, Jay Star, gets hold of a cursed comic book that allows him to transform into Ferrus the Invincible and take vengeance on the individuals who stripped him of his legal rights to the superhero character he created.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Marc Scott Zicree
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Marc Scott Zicree
7.0/10(249 votes)
#5 - Scarecrow
S1:E112/6/1988
A small farming community has excellent harvesters. Little do they realize that one of the farmers uses a cursed scarecrow. She must pin the pictures of three victims on the scarecrow's chest. When it claims all three victims, tracking them down and beheading them, the result is a good harvest. Micki and Ryan come looking for the scarecrow, but the scarecrow's owner soon realizes what they are up to and tries to use Micki's driver's license to make her the scarecrow's third victim.
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Marc Scott Zicree
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Marc Scott Zicree
7.0/10(316 votes)
#6 - Faith Healer
S1:E122/13/1988
Jack is asked by a friend to investigate a ""faith healer"" who uses a cursed glove to heal one person...by transferring their ills magnified tenfold to another victim. Jack must not only recover the glove, but deal with his friend, who is dying of cancer and needs the glove to cure himself.
Director:David Cronenberg
Writer:Christine Cornish
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:David Cronenberg
Writer:Christine Cornish

TRENDING NOW

The 20 WORST Episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series

READ

7.0/10(213 votes)
#7 - The Baron's Bride
S1:E132/20/1988
A cursed broach possesses several strange abilities, including the ability to transform its wearer into a vampire and the ability to, when daubed with blood, let its wearer travel through time. Micki and Ryan find that the broach's owner, a female vampire, is trying to transform her new male tenant into a vampire. They manage to kill the female, but the transformed tenant, Frank, uses the broach to travel back into time to London in the late 19th century. Micki and Ryan managed to follow him. Befriended by a destitute writer, Abraham, and his fiancee, they manage to track down the vampire and kill him, but not before Abraham's fiancee is killed. They return to their own time, and Jack can only speculate that ""Abraham"" may have been Bram Stoker.
Director:Bradford May
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Bradford May
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(251 votes)
#8 - Vanity's Mirror
S1:E153/5/1988
A homely girl, overshadowed by her prom queen sister, gets hold of a vanity which she can use to bedazzle any boy into falling in love with her. However, as soon as they do, she must then kill them. She eventually takes over her sister's boyfriend and has him hang her up by a noose. Micki and Ryan manage to save the girl, but the younger sister eventually commits suicide along with the boyfriend. The vanity is lost (although it will resurface in the second season episode ""Face of Evil"").
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(199 votes)
#9 - Tattoo
S1:E163/12/1988
A young man, Tommy Chow, gets hold of a set of tattoo needles. He tattoes an innocent victim, and the tattoo then comes to gory life and kills the victim. In return, Tommy, a compulsive gambler, gets good luck in the games. The trio team up with Tommy's grandfather, Lom, a Chinese medicine man, and try to save Tommy's sister, the next victim, before the snake tattoo kills her. Unfortunately, Tommy is playing a game of high-stakes Russian Roulette when they save his sister.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(181 votes)
#10 - The Electrocutioner
S1:E174/23/1988
An innocent man is condemned to the electric chair, but manages to survive. Embittered, the man buys the electric chair from Lewis Vendredi. A dentist, he takes a job in an orphanage and disguise it as a dentist's chair. He then kills the orphans and covers up their disappearance by claiming they are runaways. The killings let him electrically charge himself into a living dynamo, so that he can go out and kill those responsible for finding him guilty at his trial. The trio must ground him before he can kill again.
Director:Rob Hedden
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Rob Hedden
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(183 votes)
#11 - The Quilt of Hathor: The Awakening (2)
S1:E205/14/1988
Jack and Micki, depressed because Ryan stayed with the Pennitites, learn that the Quilt of Hathor they have is a forgery when they are able to harm it (all of the cursed antiques are indestructible). They return to the religious community to discover that Reverend Josiah, Ryan's father-in-law to be, is using it to destroy his enemies in their dreams. Josiah, unhappy with an outsider romancing his daughter, has framed Ryan for the deaths. Ryan must fight in an old Testament-style trial by combat while the others recover the Quilt.
Director:Timothy Bond
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Timothy Bond
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(197 votes)
#12 - Double Exposure
S1:E215/21/1988
Winston Knight, a TV anchorman, gains great fame because a serial killer, the Machete Killer, will only contact him. What no one knows is that Knight is using a cursed camera that lets him create an exact duplicate of himself that goes out and kills for him, providing him with an ironclad alibi and great ratings. As long as he destroys the negative within the allotted time, Knight is fine. Unfortunately, Ryan's new girlfriend Cathy witnesses one of the murders and realizes Knight is somehow the Machete Killer. One of Knight's photo-duplicates kills her, but the trio are close on Knight's trail. Knight eventually fails to destroy one of his indestructible duplicates in time, and disintegrates. However, the duplicate has little time to savor its new life before it dies of previously inflicted wounds.
Director:Neill Fearnley
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Neill Fearnley
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(180 votes)
#13 - The Pirate's Promise
S1:E227/2/1988
Tracking a cursed foghorn, Micki and Ryan arrive at an isolated community. Initially unbeknownst to them, the local lighthouse keeper is using the foghorn to summon up the ghost of pirate Angus MacBride, who kills his descendents in return for revealing more and more of his hidden treasure to the keeper. Ultimately the keeper discovers that he is the last descendent of MacBridge, and the pirate captain completes his crew at last.
Director:Bill Corcoran
Writer:Carl Binder
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Bill Corcoran
Writer:Carl Binder
7.0/10(167 votes)
#14 - Pipe Dream
S1:E247/16/1988
Ryan's father Ray, a small-time inventor, rolls into town and announces that he's achieved great financial success and is planning to finally marry. Ray's managed to do so with the aid of a pipe given to him by Lewis Vendredi, which allows him to totally disintegrate first the young inventor whose ideas he stole, and then his rivals in the company he's working for. Eventually Ryan and Micki discover the truth. When Ray tries to kill Micki with the pipe, Ryan throws himself in the way. Ultimiately reconciled with his son, Ray then takes the blast of smoke for himself, dying to save his son.
Director:Zale Dalen
Writer:Marc Scott Zicree
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Zale Dalen
Writer:Marc Scott Zicree
7.0/10(173 votes)
#15 - What a Mother Wouldn't Do
S1:E257/23/1988
Two desperate parents were given an antique cradle by a symathetic Lewis Vendredi. The cradle belonged to a female passenger aboard the Titanic. Trying to rescue her child, she accidentally capsized a lifeboat that killed seven passengers, but her child floated to safety. Now, the curse of the cradle lets the parents cure their ailing baby if they kill seven people by water while the baby is in the cradle. However, they must do so before the anniversary of the Titanic's sinking. Ultimiately, trying to kill the child's babysitter, the parents themselves both manage to die by water, inadvertently giving their lives to save their child. The babysitter ends up with the cured baby, and the trio recover the cradle.
Director:Neill Fearnley
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Neill Fearnley
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(157 votes)
#16 - Doorway to Hell
S2:E19/30/1988
Lewis Vendredi was defeated in the previous episode Bottle of Dreams, but he has another plan. Vendredi is using a mirror that he prepared before his death, hidden away in an old home that the cousins were unaware their uncle owned. The mirror will open a doorway to hell, and let Lewis escape. Vendredi possesses the body of one of two escaped convicts who has fled to hell. Jack must enter the doorway and destroy it from within, which he manages to do.
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Jim Henshaw
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:William Fruet
Writer:Jim Henshaw
7.0/10(145 votes)
#17 - The Voodoo Mambo
S2:E210/7/1988
During a local voodoo celebration, Jack meets an old friend, Hedley, who is a voodoo houngan, and the ""Keeper of Fire"". Hedley's granddaughter Stacey is to be initiated as a priestess. However, the other three priests of the other elements are being killed off by Cole, a rich young man using a cursed voodoo mask. He is working for Laotia, a priestess who has promised him power but plans to take it all for herself once Cole has killed the priests. We eventually find out that Laotia and Hedley were married, and that Hedley had killed his wife years ago when she turned to evil. The cousins, Jack, and Hedley must defeat Laotia once and for all.
Director:Timothy Bond
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Timothy Bond
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(158 votes)
#18 - And Now the News
S2:E310/14/1988
In an insane asylum, a doctor is using a cursed antique radio to enact miraculous cures on his patients. The cost, as usual, is that the radio then kills another doctor's patients, by bringing their greatest fears to life. Tracking down the radio, Micki and Ryan must break into the asylum and recover the antique.
Director:Bruce Pittman
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Bruce Pittman
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(151 votes)
#19 - Tails I Live, Heads You Die
S2:E410/21/1988
A Satanic cult leader gets ahold of the cursed Coin of Ziocles, and needs it to resurrect three powerful witches. Flip the coin and it comes up heads...killing the victim and allowing the user to resurrect someone else. Unfortunately, while spying on the cult Micki is captured and killed by the coin! Jack and Ryan are deeply hurt, and Ryan plans to quit antique-hunting once they've defeated the cult. Fortunately, they are able to substitute Micki's body for that of the third, mummified corpse, and the cult leader, Sylvan, inadvertently resurrects her instead. As the temple begins to crumble, Ryan grabs the coin and tosses it at Sylvan to deter him...but it's a fake. Unfortunately, Ryan loses the real Coin as well, leaving it buried under tons of rubble.
Director:Mark Sobel
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Mark Sobel
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(138 votes)
#20 - Symphony in B#
S2:E511/4/1988
Jack is a fan of deceased violinist, Janos Korda. Ryan's new girlfriend Leslie, a violinist, is Korda's widow. Each year a new album of Korda's ""lost"" music is mysteriously released. Also initially believing that The trio find out that Korda is still alive, but horribly disfigured and crippled by the car crash it was believed he was killed in. Only by using a cursed violin, and killing a victim with its razor-sharp bow, can Korda temporarily gain enough control of his hands to produce new music. Upon seeing his ex-wife Leslie, he becomes obsessed with her and tries to steal her away. Leslie sacrifices herself rather than let Ryan become Korda's next victim, and Korda kills himself in despair at her loss.
Director:Unknown
Writers:Carl Binder, Peter Mohan
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writers:Carl Binder, Peter Mohan
7.0/10(144 votes)
#21 - Master of Disguise
S2:E611/11/1988
The trio become involved in a movie production when they loan some (non-cursed) antiques out to a set. Handsome actor William Pratt is the star, and Micki and he soon fall in love. Unfortunately, Pratt has two secrets: he is actually a disfigured ""monster"" actor named Jeff Amory, and he owns an antique: a cursed make-up case that belonged to John Wilkes Booth. Using the case, Amory can temporarily hide his disfigurement by mixing a victim's blood in with the make-up. Unable to bring himself to kill Micki whom he truly loves, he reverts to his normal features but Micki loves him anyway. He is locked up and the make-up case returned to the Vault.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(146 votes)
#22 - Wax Magic
S2:E711/18/1988
An eccentric wax sculptor and his wife tour with a carnival. Not so coincidentally, a series of ax murders follow the carnival and the ""Hall of Horrors"" wax museum the sculptor runs. Ryan falls for the wife, only to eventually learn that she had actually rejected the sculptor...who killed her and turned her into a wax statue. Now he uses a cursed handkerchief to reanimate her and force her to love him. However, she must be sent out to kill to maintain the curse. Ultimately, the wife, realizing what she has become, kills herself and her ""husband"" in a flaming tent.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Carl Binder
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Carl Binder
7.0/10(157 votes)
#23 - 13 O'Clock
S2:E91/7/1989
A woman and her boyfriend get hold of a cursed pocketwatch that lets the owner stop time for one hour (13 o'clock) if they kill a victim at a particular train station. Two street orphans witness one of the killings, and meet up with Ryan and Micki. By holding on to the couple, Ryan manages to enter their ""frozen hour"" and manages to get the watch away from them, leaving them trapped in time for eternity.
Director:Rob Hedden
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Rob Hedden
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(136 votes)
#24 - The Sweetest Sting
S2:E111/21/1989
A demented bee keeper, McCabe, uses a cursed antique beehive in a complicated scheme. First he turns loose the bees in the beehive, which kill someone and make a blood-honey. Then McCabe sells the honey to dying businessmen in return for lots of money. The businessmen must then kill their ""replacement"", and they take over their victims' bodies, abandoning their old lives. However, they have to keep eating the blood-honey (and paying McCabe more money) to maintain the bodies' health, or they revert back to their original dying infirmity. The trio get wind of the scheme, and kill McCabe with the help of one of the businessmen who finds that his new life isn't worth the loss of his loving, abandoned wife.
Director:David Winning
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:David Winning
Writer:Unknown
7.0/10(170 votes)
#25 - The Playhouse
S2:E121/28/1989
Two children trapped in an abusive home stumble upon a cursed playhouse. The playhouse lets them enter a fantastical world of clown and parties in return for them luring in a child. The trail of missing runaways attact our trio's attention. Micki and Ryan have to enter the house where they confront its sinister presence. They manage to convince the two children to reject the house, which frees the other trapped children. The missing children are returned to their homes and the two siblings are put into a foster home.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown