Friday the 13th: The Series episode review — 1.26 — Bottle of Dreams

Original air date: July 30, 1988
Director: Mac Bradden
Writer: Roy Sallows

Rating: 4/10

There are definitely less clever ways to incorporate clipshows into a series, but this is sort of that. And for a season finale? Talk about disappointing.

Anyways, they don’t seek out a haunted object this time around. It’s brought to them.

And it’s an Egyptian canopic jar, which opens itself and traps Micki and Ryan in the vault in the basement, while releasing some kind of green gas that makes them transport in their minds to their moments of greatest fear. Which of course is previous episodes.

We revisit the killer doll, the killer tattoo, the cursed Cupid thing, and a few others. My favourite is the scene is the scarecrow stuff.

Since Jack isn’t with them, he calls up a body of his and they’re working on some kind of concoction. I don’t know; it’s hard to explain.

To this episode’s credit, there is some creative stuff going on with Jack. It’s visually interesting and sort of surreal, and Jack’s given the option to either save his son from the past (otherwise he’s damned to hell), or try and save Ryan and Micki in the present.

So it’s a pretty lazy episode overall. It’s obviously got a very small cast, since a good portion of it is jus stock footage from other episodes. I think I only count four characters outside of the main three.

But it’s not quite a clipshow, either. There is a story here. It’s just not the best story.