Friday the 13th: The Series (TV Series) Hellowe'en (1987) User Reviews

Lewis rides again

[allexand · 5/10 · 2 July 2009]

A Halloween party at Curious Goods turns sour when two guests accidentally conjure up the spirit of Lewis Vendredi and he tricks Micki and Ryan into giving him a cursed amulet that will allow him to be resurrected.

"Hellowe'en" is another OK episode. The major highlight is that we're treated to another appearance by Uncle Lewis, and as always, he's up to no good. I really do enjoy his appearances. You can really tell that he's having fun with his devilishly evil character. The storyline provides a different spin on the usual antique fetch quests that would be the overall basis for the show. The dwarf is extremely campy and fun to watch.

However, the bad outweighs the good here. The party guests messing with the crystal ball is just too convenient. It seems to strain credibility that they would have left a crystal ball sitting out downstairs and that the dumb guests would have just happened to stumble upon the secret to using it. By now, Micki, Ryan, and Jack have been around the block at least once so why wouldn't they have put this thing in the vault? I thought this was lame and I could see it coming a mile away.

Jack is too easily fooled by the dwarf. He seems too smart for this and you can tell he's losing patience with this "girl" but he still falls into the trap. The scenes of him being lead to the trap drag on for an eternity. Anybody with a lick of sense can figure out this girl is conning him so why do we need to see ten minutes worth of it? Also, where does this dwarf woman come from in the first place?

I can buy Micki and Ryan being fooled by Lewis since this is their first introduction to him but what I can't buy is how they automatically know what mortuary he went to. Jack, of course, seems to automatically know that they're all hanging out here too. I can't really harp on this too much because all episodes have some events that require this kind of suspension of disbelief.

"Hellowe'en" is not one of my favorites and it's certainly better than most of the episodes to come before it. It will get much better though, so hang in there.

Fan favorite, but I found OK.

[The_King_of_Cool · 5/10 · 16 September 2017]

Episode 5: Hellowe'en- ** ½

Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) attempts at coming back to life and it's up to Micki, Ryan and Jack to stop him. Decent episode, but the plot seems to mostly drag; the saving grace again is the characters that keep this one interesting. R.G. Armstrong appears as Uncle Lewis, this was his 2nd of many appearances.

The Halloween Night

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 19 March 2024]

On the Halloween Night, Ryan. Micki and Jack decide to give a party to improve their relationship with the neighborhood. Ryan puts an off-limit sign near the vault area, but one silly guest trespasses and summons spirits using a cursed crystal ball. There is a havoc, the party ends and soon Lewis Vendredi and the demon Greta cross to the world of living. Greta disguises as a little girl and lures Jack, and he is trapped in a garage with bars. Lewis lures Ryan and Micki to get a cursed amulet and locks them inside a room. Now he has a few hours to find a fresh corpse that died in a non-violent way with Greta to use the amulet and a spell to reincarnate; otherwise, he will return to hell.

"Hellowe'en" is an entertaining episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series", with the return of the evil Lewis Vendredi. Jack, Ryan and Micki are easily lured by Lewis and the demon Greta, but the story is enjoyable and worthwhile watching. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Noite de Horror" ("Night of Horror")

the episode where everyone acts ridiculously dumbed down

[movieman_kev · 4/10 · 12 March 2009]

Ryan, Micki & Jack get to meet up with the ghost of Uncle Lewis for the first (but not the last) time during a Halloweed party. Thanks to some idiots at the party who mess in the basement, Lewis has returned along with a demon midget & it's up to the trio to get rid of them. At this rate, their new neighbors will never trust the 'Curious Goods' shop.

Their's one word that can sum up this episode in a nutshell: moronic. The demon dwarf cons and traps Jack way too easily (even after he starts to catch on). Micki & Ryan are all too eager to give their demonic Uncle a mystical amulet of unknown power. Hell if Ryan wasn't such a simpleton that he organized a raging party in a store that houses numerous cursed antiques this episode would've never happened in the first place. If it feels I've been so hard on this series thus far in my reviews, i'm sorry it's just that I know how great the series will get in an episode or two. But the first handful or so episodes can be a tad hard to sit through. This one being no exception as everyone is acting ridiculously dumb.

My Grade: D

Hellowe'en

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 4 October 2023]

"Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. But he broke the pact, and it cost him his soul. Now, his niece Micki, and her cousin Ryan have inherited the store... and with it, the curse. Now they must get everything back, or the real terror begins."

Friday the 13th: The Series was created by Frank Mancuso Jr. And Larry B. Williams and was going to be called The 13th Hour. Mancuso Jr. Never intended for there to be an outright link to the Friday the 13th film series, but instead referenced "the idea of Friday the 13th, which is that it symbolizes bad luck and curses".

That said, the creators did try to tie-in Jason Vorhees's hockey mask but the idea was discarded so that the show could exist on its own. Mancuso Jr. Was afraid that mentioning any events from the films would take the audience away from "the new world that we were trying to create."

That said, the title was what was needed to sell the show. It did so well in late nights that some stations moved it to prime time. In all, it lasted 72 episodes over 3 seasons.

An antique dealer named Lewis Vendredi (R. G. Armstrong) got wealth and power from Satan for selling his soul, along with being the conduit for people to purchase cursed objects from his store Vendredi's Antiques. When he tries to get out of the deal, the devil has him killed and gets his soul anyway.

The store is inherited by his niece Micki Foster (Robey!) and her cousin Ryan Dallion (John D. LeMay). They sell off many of the cursed antiques before being stopped by Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins), who once collected antiques for Lewis before learning that he was evil.

Airing on October 26, 1987, "Hallowe'en" was directed by Timothy Bond (The Lost World, Return to the Lost World) and written by Bill Taub. The cursed object in this episode is the Amulet of Zohar and it can transfer a spirit into a deceased body.

Jack thinks that Micki and Ryan should have a Halloween party at the antique shop to try and fit into the neighborhood. The basement - where all the evil things exist - is off limits, but you know that they'll soon be used and for the first time in the series, Uncle Lewis will appear. Well, the ghost of Uncle Lewis, who tries to come off as a hero and say that just wants to save the soul of his wife Grace, whose corpse is in a secret room in the store that they have never been to.

Now that he has the Amulet, Lewis has three hours to find a new body and escape back into the real world. He leaves behind Greta (Victoria Deslaurier), a demon who will do anything he asks, to battle Micky, Ryan and Jack.

I was let down that this show wasn't part of the Vorhees saga when I was young but now I love it. At all times, I have had a major crush on Robey. Come on. Who didn't?

What the Hell Was That?

[Gislef · 3/10 · 26 July 2020]

(Pardon the pun)

Another early-series episode, about the only things good about the episode are R.G. Armstrong as Uncle Lewis, and Chris Wiggins as Jack. Wiggins hams it up and clearly enjoys himself, whether he's flirting with two nubile women or taunting two thugs into releasing him and then disappearing in a burst of flash powder.

I would have paid good money for The Jack Marshak Show. But I suppose we had to put up with two younger leads. Watching Robey having hysterics later in the episode is definitely cringe worthy.

Also, it's a dumb title. It sounds like "Hello Kitty", and there's no "Hell" in the episode. Yes, Lewis came from Hell, but it's not exactly a Hellish feature. Unlike some later episodes. Maybe it's the juxtaposition of Hell and Hello, and the fact that it's "Hellowe'en". Regardless, it's a bad choice for a title.

Even Armstrong isn't well-served by this, the least of his several appearances on the show. He seems to come back only because the writers needed a filler episode and couldn't think of a cursed antique plotline. Or maybe they thought not every episode shouldn't be focused on an antique. The Amulet of Zohar isn't an antique. So Lewis capers about and his entire scheme seems to rely on a clock on the wall.

We also get Evil Greta, a demon dwarf. Which is offensive to little people and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Jack does identify Greta as a demon, but why is she hanging around Lewis. Is she a familiar, or an assistant, or a mentor, or a guard, or what? And her "death" doesn't make much sense. One minute she's throwing chairs, then she accidentally falls and impale herself on... something. Then disappears in a flash of smoke.

Greta also is responsible for one of the most painfully long scenes in the episode, as in her human child form she leads Jack astray. Even after Jack says he knows she's leading him astray, he continues to follow her.

While the concept isn't bad, with the cousins hosting a Halloween party at the store, it doesn't pan out. For one thing, they're too busy hunting down antiques in the future to socialize, and we never see them attempt to charm the neighbors to their side again. For another, who are the two goofs who unleash Lewis? Are they friends of Ryan? The leader, Larry, plays along with Ryan to scare Micki. But what's their connection, and why don't we see Larry again?

Also, don't they have a door for the basement? All Ryan does is string up a "stay out" sign across an open doorway. Duh, of course that doesn't keep anyone out. And why is there a crystal ball just sitting in the basement. Jack says that it's his, but then why does he leave a dangerous mystical artifact out in the open?

The last half is also lame, as Lewis and Greta just go to the closest mortuary. Since it's closest, Ryan and Micki, and then Jack, have no trouble tracking Lewis there. Greta hypnotizes Ryan and Micki, puts them in cheap coffins, and puts them on an industrial roller belt where they are slowly fed into a crematorium furnace. But the belt is unpowered, so what is moving the coffins slowly along the belt?

Jack somehow knows they're in danger and finds them. He has them distract Greta, where he has a no-stakes battle with Lewis (it seems to be... taunt brow-beating?) to Lewis until sunrise. But Lewis only fails because the big clock on the wall tells him he has two minutes left. But Greta knocked out the power a few minutes earlier, so the clock isn't running. Micki opens the window, letting the sunlight in and sending Lewis back to Hell because he only has until dawn. So... Lewis has to have sunlight shined on him to be sent back to Hell? If Micki hadn't been there to open the drapes, would he have succeeded? If the drapes aren't needed, shouldn't Lewis have disappeared as soon as the sun rose?

At the end there are some hints that Jack was romantically involved (or wanted to be involved) with Lewis' wife Grace. We never get any follow-up on that, and Jack will have a girlfriend of his own in a few episodes ("Brain Drain"). So none of it matters, even though Chris Wiggins sells the heck out of the last scene where he admits that he knew Grace more than he should have but not as well as he wished. Awww..

So not a particularly good episode, and pretty standard for the first half of the first season.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?