Episode
Friday the 13th: The Series: Better Off Dead
Overview
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.
Details
- Series
- Friday the 13th: The Series
- Season
- Season 2
- Episode
- Episode 15
- Air date
- 1989-02-18
- Runtime
- 45 min
Episode context
Better Off Dead is Episode 15 in Season 2 of Friday the 13th: The Series. It aired on 1989-02-18. The runtime is 45 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 14: Face of Evil
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.
Episode 16: Scarlet Cinema
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.
More episodes from this season
Episode 13: Eye of Death
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.
Episode 17: The Mephisto Ring
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.
Episode 12: The Playhouse
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.
Episode 18: A Friend to the End
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.
Episode 11: The Sweetest Sting
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.
Episode 19: The Butcher
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.
Episode 10: Night Hunger
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.
Episode 20: Mesmer's Bauble
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.
Episode 9: 13 O'Clock
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.
Episode 21: Wedding In Black
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.