Curious Goods: Behind the Scenes of Friday the 13th: The Series

by Alyse Wax

Lewis Vendredi made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques, but he broke the pact, and it cost him his soul. His niece Micki, and her cousin Ryan, inherited the store—and with it, the curse. Now they must get everything back—and the real terror begins.” So opens Friday the 13th: The Series. In 1987, Paramount Studios found success selling a new Star Trek series into syndication. Eager to cash in on other studio-owned properties, Paramount asked producer Frank Mancuso Jr. to develop a series around Friday the 13th, and the television series was born. It had nothing to do with the popular slasher film franchise, which was both a blessing and curse. It was a largely young, inexperienced cast and crew, and one of the first Hollywood productions to shoot entirely in Canada. In the first-ever examination of the TV series, author Alyse Wax delves into the series episode-by-episode, with more than sixty exclusive interviews with the cast, writers, directors, and producers, as well as nearly fifty never published behind-the-scenes photos from the cast and crew’s personal collections.

Genres: Nonfiction, Horror

492 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 11, 2015

Reviews

[Dann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Curious Goods: Behind the Scenes of Friday the 13th: The Series is an extensive review of this seminal syndicated ‘80s horror series by horror aficionado Alyssa Wax. Going episode-by-episode, Wax provides detailed plot summaries and cast & crew credits, along with interviews and analyses. Also included are rare production photos from the private collections of various cast and crew members. Unfortunately through, the writing is rather weak (aside from the plot summaries), as she tries let the interviews do most of the talking; which is sometimes disjointed and scattershot. Yet whatever problems it has, Curious Goods: Behind the Scenes of Friday the 13th: The Series is a solid TV companion that offers some interesting insight into the show.

[Chuck White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being a big fan of this series, when it first aired in the late 80s/early 90s, I picked up the complete DVD set and having recently finished it, came across this book on the series.

I just finished the book, put out by Bear Manor and all I gotta ask is: Who edits these books???

I don't think I have ever read a professional book with so many typos and grammatical errors.

Using waiver, instead of waver.

Using rights in the term "Last Rites", instead of, well...rites.

These are just two that I remember from near the end of the book. If I was more thorough, I would have kept track of them.

But, seriously, there were so many that it did start to detract from the book.

So, I ask again: Who edits these books put out by outfits like Bear Manor and McFarland?

[Matt Kratz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good synopsis of the series and all the episodes. I recommend it to any fan of the show.

[Miles Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

CURIOUS GOODS is not an easy book to review. As a fan of FRIDAY THE 13: THE SERIES I have to give it an extra star simply because the author, Alyse Wax, has given fans of the cult series (which ran from 1987 - 1990, and had a huge influence on many that followed, from THE X-FILES to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER to ANGEL, SUPERNATURAL and FRINGE, just to name a few) an absolutely unique behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show. As a purely objective observer, I had to penalize it two for being sloppily written and poorly structured. Thus the compromise of three stars. I'm sympathetic to any labor of love (which this work clearly is) and grateful for this perspective on one of my favorite television shows, but somewhat frustrated by the way it was put together.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES was a syndicated show, shot in Toronto, and produced by Frank Mancuso, Jr., of "Friday the 13th" horror movie fame. Despite this, the series has absolutely nothing to do with the slasher films of the same name -- Paramount simply wanted to cash in on the popularity of Jason Voorhees, and gave Mancuso a blank check to come up with a TV show that exploited that fame. Mancuso could have been forgiven for cobbling together a piece of crap, taking the money, and running to Antigua; instead he crafted a wonderfully dark, radically violent, often thoughtful premise about a curio shop whose entire inventory has been cursed by the devil. When its evil owner dies, two distant relations Micki Foster (Louise Robey) and Ryan Dallion (John D. Le May) inherit the shop, now aptly called Curious Goods. They soon meet up with a mysterious but benign father-figure named Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins), who explains the curse to them and convinces the two cousins to aid him in recovering the cursed items from their unsuspecting owners. The show was canceled near the end of its third season after a Christian group organized a boycott which frightened away its advertisers, but as I said above, its legacy is enduring, in an under-the-radar sort of way.

As a fan of the show, I was very excited to learn of a book dedicated to exploring its production, but I quickly discovered that CURIOUS GOODS is very much a mixed bag. On the positive side, Wax has done an amazing job of collecting interviews with just about every writer, producer, stunt man, actor, make up effects artist, musician, and director who ever worked on the show and is still alive or willing to talk about it, and these interviews are fascinating, insightful and often very funny. The conception of the show, its casting process, pre-production, and each of its three seasons, along with the immediate aftermath of its cancellation, are all covered, and there are some great photographs from the private collections of the cast & crew. On the other hand, the book is amateurishly written, somewhat sloppily edited and crammed to the nostrils with filler. Weighing in at 475 pages, it devotes around 2/3 of its length to recapping each of the 76-odd episodes of the show, often in exacting detail; I found this disappointing and a little ridiculous, because only hard-core fans of the show would ever buy this book, and they hardly need to read 2 – 5 page breakdowns of the story lines. And I found Wax's commentary on the episodes to be wildly inconsistent. Some of it is insightful and interesting, but too often her conclusions are ridiculous or read like a Reddit thread or the diary of a teenage girl (“I love the scene where our heroes have sushi with Mushashi. Johnny is so disgusted by sushi, which amuses me, because who doesn't love sushi? I guess sushi wasn't as popular in the 1980s as it is today, where there is a sushi bar on every corner. Micki, of course, loves sushi. The tuna tartar with quail's egg is her favorite.”). The price of this book is extremely high for a softcover, and since books are priced by weight, I truly wish she'd trimmed it down to a lean 'n mean 250 pages, which would have delivered both a better book and a more affordable one.

Having said all this, I do commend Alyse Wax for taking the time and effort to complete this labor of love. As it stands now, the book is unique and qualifies as a must-have for any true fan of the series.