A doctor is trying to develop a cure for a childhood syndrome lending towards hyperviolence. Due to his mistake, his daughter was inadvertently infected with the disease from a contaminated needle. Now, the doctor uses a cursed silver syringe to suck out the essence of a small gland that controls violent behavior from unwilling prostitutes, and inject it into his daughter to give her a temporary cure. Unfortunately, the process renders the donor hyperviolent as well. A friend of Micki's is grabbed by the doctor and submitted to the treatment. Trying to locate her friend, Micki herself is kidnapped and subjected to the process.

Better Off Dead

Louise Robey

Chris Wiggins

John D. LeMay

Armand Mastroianni

Scarlet Cinema

Face of Evil

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.

Doorway to Hell

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.

The Voodoo Mambo

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.

And Now the News

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.

Tails I Live, Heads You Die

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.

Symphony in B#

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.

Master of Disguise

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.

Wax Magic

Micki's college roommate wants her to be bridesmaid at her wedding. However, the woman's fiancee, a ventriloquist, appears to be going insane. He spends most his time talking to his dummy as if it were a real person. A string of murders in his past are also starting to show up. Ultimately the groom goes insane, but a new ventriloquist takes over the dummy. Since there is no antique ventriloquist dummy in the Manifest, the trio aren't sure what's going on. Ultimately they figure out that the lapel flower is the cursed item in question. Unfortunately, the curse hs finally allowed the dummy to animate itself. Ryan manages to pull the flower from the dummy, rendering it inert once more.

Read My Lips

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.

13 O'Clock

A young hot rodder is given a gift by Lewis Vendredi: a silver key chain that lets him win car races. However, he has to kill those he races against to get the curse to work. His ultimate goal is to beat his rival, Deacon, and show he's worthy of his abusive father's respect. Micki and Ryan try to get the key chain away from him, but only succeed in crashing the rodder's car...and causing the key chain to enter his heart! Ultimately, the boy's father sacrifices himself to stop his son by ramming him head-on during the final race.

Night Hunger

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.

The Sweetest Sting

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.

The Playhouse

An antiques collector, Atticus Rook, makes a fortune selling new antiques from the Civil War era. It turns out that they are "as-new": by fueling a cursed "magic lantern" with the blood of a victim, he can travel back in time through a slide of wherever he wants to go, until the lantern "fuel" burns out in three hours. Ryan and Micki follow, but Ryan is captured as a spy trying to get close to Lee (whose sword Rook is trying to grab). A local woman, Abigail, helps Ryan only to be killed by Atticus. Ultimately Micki helps Ryan to escape, and they go back to the present and blow out the lamp... just as Rook emerges behind them, dying a particularly gruesome death caught partway in a wall where the image was projected.

Eye of Death

The compact lost in last season's ""Vanity's Mirror"" is found by the dead girl's sister, who is now working as a make-up artist. Inadvertently, the aging starlet she works for gets hold of it, and discovers it has a new ability: by flashing light from the compact into a victim's eyes, they die a horrible, disfiguring death but the actress looks are rejuvenated. Our intrepid trio manage to get hold of it, leaving the actress to suffer all the disfigurements she inflicted on others as the curse snaps back.

An outcast college film student is obsessed with werewolves. Mercilessly teased by frat boys and rejected by the girls, he stumbles upon a cursed movie camera. When he films someone with it, he sees them being killed by a werewolf through the viewfinder. The victim is then actually killed by a mystically summoned werewolf. According to the camera, when the student kills three victims, he will get his fondest wishes. He does so, and becomes a werewolf himself. Ultimaitely, he tracks the trio back to Curious Goods, where they kill him by strangling him with the camera's film...made out of silver nitrate.

A World Series ring for the infamous Black Sox game allows its owner to predict winning games to gamble on...if the owner puts the ring on a sacrificial victim and condemns them to a gory death. A three-time loser gets hold of the ring left to him by his deceased father, and tries to use it to gain wealth.

The Mephisto Ring

This is essentially two half-episodes. In the first, Micki and Ryan are trying to recover a cursed piece of rock, the Shard of Medusa, from a sculptress. Using it, she can kill a victim and transform them into a prize-winning piece of art. The cousins fail to get the Shard, and the sculptress escapes. In the second half, Micki's visiting nephew J.B. stumbles upon a haunted house and befriends a young boy, Ricky, who is living there. It is revealed that Ricky's parents were Satanists who bought a cursed childs' coffin from Lewis Vendredi. The coffin can resurrect a child, but at the cost of an adult's life. Ricky is revealed to be a ghost, and tries to claim Micki's life. J.B. persuades him not to out of their friendship, and Ricky passes away for good.

A Friend to the End

While Micki and Ryan are on vacation, Jack has nightmares of his World War II experience when he was captured by the Nazis and nearly killed by Rausch, a commandant known as The Butcher. The Butcher used a garrotte made of barbed wire to kill his victims. Jack was saved by the rest of his battalion then, but now in the modern day his surviving friends are being killed off one by one with a barbed-wire garrotte. It turns out that an escaped Nazi, Mueller, is using a mystic talisman, the Amulet of Thule, to resurrect Rausch. Rausch, masquerading as a right-wing radio talk-show host named Walden, is seeking revenge on Jack and the others. Although the Amulet is not an antique, Jack must recover it to defeat Rausch and send him back to the grave.

The Butcher

A homely record-store clerk is obsessed with pop diva Angelica, and happens to stumble upon a jewelry robbery where the thieves drop one of the items: a cursed pendant that first belonged to Dr. Mesmer. The curse lets the clerk fulfill his every wish by mesmerizing a victim into doing whatever he wants them to. He wishes first for attractiveness, and then for the diva's love and the chance to be close to her. Ultimately, however, none of this is good enough for him, and his final wish is to _be_ Angelica. The wish is successful, but Micki and Ryan, close on his trail, manage to intercept him/her at a concert and grab the necklace, undoing all the benefits it bestowed.

Mesmer's Bauble

A mysterious snowglobe is mailed to Curious Goods. When Micki gives it a shake, an old boyfriend of hers shows up, and convinces her to join him at a bed & breakfast. Then Jack and Ryan are both visited by old friends when they shake the globe. It turns out that each of the three newcomers is working for Satan. If Micki can be tricked into sleeping with her boyfriend, then she will be considered wedded to Satan as she ""willingly"" did so. Jack and Ryan, lured to the hotel, are separated from her, able to witness what is going on but unable to contact Micki. It turns out they are trapped in the hotel within the snow globe. Ultimately, Ryan's ex-girlfriend helps them, and they manage to drive a car into the edge of the globe, knocking it off the shelf it is resting and shattering it (and freeing themselves) before Micki can consummate her wedding with the Devil.

Wedding In Black

While Ryan and Jack try to recover a pair of cursed snowshoes, Micki hears from one of Ryan's street contacts, a punk named Johnny. He's managed to track down a pool cue that bears a cursed. The player who owns it can't be beat, and there are the usual trail of impaled bodies. The pool player is hoping to make enough money to marry his fiancee. It turns out that he knows nothing about the curse, and it is his fiancee that is killing people so that he will eventually murder her. Eventually he finds out, and she kills him. The woman is locked up and Micki and Johnny recover the cue.

Wedding Bell Blues

A famous dancer, Anton Pascola, is crippled in an accident before completing his masterpiece, ""Shiva."" He obtains a cursed symphonia (music box). Using it, he can have students dedicate themselves to the dance, and they then begin to enact the parts of the dance. However, each one dies shortly in a frenzy of dancing. A daughter of one of Jack's friends is enraptured by Pascola. Ultimiately, knowing of the curse, she herself takes on part of the dance to help Pascola but it's still not enough. Ultimately, Pascola himself takes on the curse, which allows him to dance despite his crippled legs and give his greatest performance even though he dies in the process.

The Maestro

The son of an Indian shaman, who has embraced the white man's medicine and become a doctor, is frustrated by the patients he loses. He stumbles across a cursed Indian rattle hidden away by his father, which allows him to miraculously cure the sick at the cost of another's life. Unfortunately, the doctor's next patient is Vera, a friend of Micki's. She has to choose between getting her friend cured at the cost of another's life. Ultimately, the trio unite with the father and his daughter (also a shaman) to stop the curse. The son is killed and the shaman promises to keep the rattle safe in his care.

The Shaman's Apprentice

A crook names Railsback gets hold of a World War II kamikazi jacket. When smeared with the blood of a murderered victim, it lets the wearer become invisible. Railsback is in prison, but uses the jacket to escape and try to recover the stolen loot. He has to kill his former gang members to get it, a task made easier by the jacket. Railsback ends up killing Johnny Ventura's father, a security guard at a storage depot where some of the money is hid. Johnny is arrested for the crime, and put into the same prison as Railsback. He finds out about the jacket and tries to recover it, while Micki, Ryan and Jack try to clear his name from the outside. Ultimiately, Johnny manages to douse the invisible Railsback with gasoline and set him on fire, killing him and leaving the indestructible antique intact to be put into the Vault. Johnny is cleared of the charges.

The Prisoner

The trio attempt to recover a ""witches' ladder"", a beaded necklace that can greatly enhance a witch's power. It is in the safekeeping of a coven of white witches. Unbeknownst to them, a coven of black witches, led originally be Lewis Vendredi and then by his female lieutenant are also trying to get the ladder. They cast a spell on Ryan, turning him into a mindless slave who brings them the necklace from the Vault. Jack and Micki, tapping into Micki's latent occult powers, manage to break the spell on Ryan, recover the witches' ladder, and destroy the coven.

Coven of Darkness

Micki and Ryan with the help of their friend Jack try to recover cursed antiques so they can store them in safety inside the antique store's vault.

Better Off Dead

Seasons3

Season 2 Episodes26

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Episode Summary