Friday the 13th: The Series (TV Series) Vanity's Mirror (1988) User Reviews

One of the very best episodes of the series...

[Jim-D · 8/10 · 21 December 2007]

Vanity's Mirror tops off Friday the 13th: The Series' best episodes, a shining example of the simplicity of storytelling. In this ep, a small hand-held mirror causes madness on the campus of a high school, as the plain, bookish girl that everyone ignored finds a seductive power in its magical spell.

The acting from series regulars is great, and the supporting cast is top-notch. Special props go to Zack Ward (Farkus of "A Christmas Story" fame) as a heartless jock who finds himself magically obsessed with the episode's central antagonist.

As soon as this series gets it long-overdue DVD release, skip ahead to enjoy these great 46 minutes of television frights. Vanity's Mirror is class-act television horror.

All in the eye of the beholder

[allexand · 8/10 · 8 July 2009]

A cursed compact is discovered by a homely high school student who uses it to get revenge on the boys who tease her by making them fall in love with her and then killing them.

I know what some of you might be thinking here: they did this one already. While "Vanity's Mirror" bears an uncanny resemblance to "Cupid's Quiver" from earlier in the season, I'm willing to overlook it as the writing is far superior, the premise is executed much better and "Cupid's Quiver" is so bad I prefer to pretend that it didn't exist.

In this episode, the makeup department gets a chance to shine as the makeup jobs on both Helen Mackie and Sylvia Unger are excellent. Both women look very unattractive and when the actress who portrayed Helen Mackie (Ingrid Veninger) later appears as a different character in the second season entry "13 o' Clock," you get the chance to see that she actually looks normal.

While the story is very simple, it's effective and very relatable. It does a good job at capturing the high school experience. Helen Mackie has no friends, feels ugly, gets teased constantly by classmates, pines for a man who doesn't even know she's alive and is jealous of her sister. I'm sure a lot of people can identify with one of more of these themes when reflecting back to their high school days.

I will say the acting in this episode is a bit of a mixed bag. Helen's sister, Joanne, and her boyfriend I felt gave the best performances. Most of the boys who tease Helen couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. Helen, while definitely the most interesting character, gives a performance that is somewhat touch-and-go. Sometimes she's really good and really convincing but other times her acting is over-the-top and forced. As for the main characters, Micki actually cries at the end which was a nice touch.

Always in search of ways to keep the show's formula fresh, we actually get to see the Curious Goods folks fail to retrieve the antique. The coda sets things up for a sequel, which would eventually come to fruition in the form of the season two episode, "Face of Evil."

There are some really good scenes. Despite lacking the usual supernatural elements, Helen Mackie engineers some pretty gory deaths for her enemies. While not shown in great detail, they can still make you wince. There's a great scene where a slovenly Helen scarfs down a sandwich while showing indifference to the news of the death of the boy she just killed. Helen makes a grand entrance in her prom dress that is tacky and extremely memorable. The writers manage to even finally give Helen a conscience at the end as she can't bring herself to kill Scott. However, in a meager attempt to generate suspense, Ryan is shown unconscious on the floor with rats surrounding him. I thought this was totally unnecessary.

While I would normally criticize "Vanity's Mirror" for recycling an earlier plot, it's actually quite good when taken on its own merit. What makes it even better is that it washes out the bad taste in my mouth left by "Cupid's Quiver."

A Remake of "Cupid's Quiver"

[Gislef · 7/10 · 6 September 2020]

Vanity's Mirror" isn't bad, and it presents a distaff view of "Cupid's". But that and the ending where the trio don't recover the compact, isn't enough to make this a "great" episode. It's okay at best, and Ingrid Veninger as Helen is a lot more sympathetic than Eddie in "Cupid". The problem is that she turns into a sadistic killer way too easily. Yes, she has reasons, which make her a better character than Eddie. But the gender 180 means the episode isn't that good. It's not bad, just not good. "Mediocre" sums it up .

It also doesn't help that the episode plods along. It takes forever for Micki and Jack to find Ryan. Who is put into danger, rather than falling under the compact's love spell. The time would have been better spent exploring the relationship between the sisters. Helen's jealousy of her much-better-looking sister is again, understandable. And Joanne's trying-to-help attitude toward her ugly-duckling younger sister: Joanne seems happy that Helen is going out on a date. But Helen wanting to see Joanne dead is a bit much. That level of animosity isn't built up enough.

That lack of build-up shows throughout. Like Jack saying at the end "Why did this one seem so hard?" There's no real reason shown or given. Yes, it has a vaguely sympathetic female villain instead of a diabolical bad guy, but that's it. The trio never interacted much with Helen, so they wouldn't know how sympathetic she was. Even if Helen was, which she wasn't really. She tried to kill her sister on her own, not because of the compact's spell. At that point, all the acting in the world from Veninger doesn't make Helen any more sympathetic.

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

The Evil Sister and The Cursed Mirror

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 27 March 2024]

The street vendor of flowers Sylvia Ungar uses a cursed mirror to seduce the client Charles Meniger. She brings him to an alley and kills him, dropping a fire escape ladder on his head. Then she runs back to the street where her flowers are and is hit by a car and dies. The high school student Helen Mackie finds the small case with the mirror on the street and takes it with her. Helen is bullied at school since she is weird and not beautiful or attractive like her sister Joanne. Her boyfriend Scott Thomas tries to protect Helen and tells his mates to stop offending Helen. When Helen's mirror reflects at the face of the athlete Greg Mazzey, he immediately falls in love for her. Helen humiliates Greg at school and takes him to a trash compactor, dropping her handkerchief inside. Greg enters in the equipment to bring her handkerchief, and Helen turns the device on, killing Greg. When Greg's friend Russel Weigan tells Helen that he knows that she is responsible for the fate of Greg, she uses the mirror to kill him at school. Meanwhile, Jack, Ryan and Micki are looking for Helen hoping to buy the cursed mirror.

"Vanity's Mirror" is another great episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series". The plot is excellent, and this time Jack, Ryan and Micki fail to retrieve the cursed mirror. The evil Helen Mackie is one of the worst villains so far in the series, trying to kill her sister. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Espelho da Vaidade" ("The Vanity's Mirror")

Solid episode.

[The_King_of_Cool · 7/10 · 17 September 2017]

Episode 15: Vanity's Mirror- *** ½

When an unpopular less than attractive girl comes a across a compact that by shining the light in someone's face will make them fall in love with the person she uses it to exact revenge on her bullies, but then uses it to get the man of her dreams who happens to be her sisters boyfriend. This is one of the more popular episodes of the series and while I enjoyed it I wouldn't rate it as highly as some; it does make for a fun watch and one of the few episodes that was left open at the end. It would be followed up in the episode Face of Evil in season 2.

Horrible episode and waste of time.

[VenusLilithAxe · 2/10 · 15 February 2023]

I hate this episode as much as I hate Cupid's Quiver! The only thing it had going for it was the open ending or cliffhanger. Thankfully, they remembered to eventually resolve it (I wonder about the writer's brain involved sometimes). Honestly, the entire show is dated and stupid as heck. The trio failing here wasn't very clever or strong because they're so close to failing in every episode anyway, they just finally did so here.

This episode shares slight aspects with the 1980 film Fade to Black with Dennis Christopher and like his character, the main villain in this episode, Helen is equally as unlikeable, probably more so. I felt more sympathetic towards him though than Helen as I felt she was an evil, horrible person without the compact's influence. Yes, she dealt with bullying and people treated her badly but she didn't make things any easier for herself. Plus, wanting her sister dead even though her sister always tried to help her was a stretch. Wanting her boyfriend, while crappy made more sense but I guess I just don't understand that form of extreme jealousy and I'm glad because she was a very unsympathetic character.

Ryan, Micki and Jack are useless again, spinning their wheels, being incompetent. All the time wasted on Micki and Jack looking for Ryan was dull and drawn out. I don't feel this episode was written anymore strongly than others. And it was upsetting that Helen didn't die alone, being able to take the object of her desire I felt was unfair and more than she deserved in death but least the sister is free of her but undoubtedly heartbroken having lost her boyfriend in front of her eyes.

I must admit that the deaths were fairly eventful and unique for the content, it wasn't necessary to be graphic (didn't expect it anyway) because the thoughts of them happening were squeamish enough.