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Defending Friday the 13th: The Series probably isn't all that dissimilar than defending Halloween III. I know, I know - some fanfolks don't care to see horror franchises overlap in any kind of qualitative way - but there are connections. First and foremost, Michael Myers (Halloween's notorious Shatner-mask-wearing killer) is nowhere to be seen in Halloween III; in Friday the 13th: The Series: The Final Season, I don't see Mr. Voorhees anywhere. Yet somehow in both works, the spirit of the original franchise-starter somehow remains (I've started many geek fights by claiming Halloween III is hands-down my favorite flick of the series, but we'll rustle those bushes later...). 

So, yes - in Friday the 13th: The Series, creepy-crawly things happen. Gross killer creatures from this world and beyond are constantly popping up and tormenting unsuspecting victims. Long story short: Even though there aren't a ton of hockey masks in the series, there's absolutely a macabre slasher ethic to notice that will hearken all fanatics back to a certain summer camp we all know and love.

The premise of the show is fairly straight-forward - Micki (Louise Robey) and Ryan (John D. LeMay) used to have an uncle named Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) who kinda sorta almost sold his soul to the devil, a pact that insisted that all items from Uncle Lew's antique store carry a curse. So each episode here involves Micki, Ryan (well, in the first two episodes), and eventually their buddy Johnny (Steve Monarque) coming into contact with these possessed possessions (I couldn't resist) and figuring out what the Hell to do with them.

Ryan gets gored early on - sorry for the spoiler - by a weird-ass roving shaman/priest in The Prophecies, but the adventures don't stop there: We take a stroll down necrophilia lane in Epitaph for a Lonely Soul, some seriously inbred crazies house Micki and Johnny get stranded in the backwoods in The Long Road Home, and Micki even has time to get turned on by the Marquis de Sade in 18th century France in The Charnal Pit (the show's final episode).

At the end of the day, there is definitely a lot of stupidity in Friday the 13th: The Series: The Final Season, but it sticks so close to its slasher-flick-meets-The-Twilight-Zone ethos that once I started watching this box set, I couldn't stop. Just as it's more fun to laugh at the idiocy of Jason Voorhees as it is to be legitimately scared by a Friday the 13th movie, Friday the 13th: The Series succeeds both by concocting an interesting concept and making said concept brainless, oozing fun.

It's almost as good as Halloween III.

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