Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Fighting the devil before cell phones

I'm fascinated by "Friday the 13th: The Series." As I mentioned before, the series came out in 1987. It's about distant cousins retrieving cursed antiques -- antiques sold by their uncle who made a pact with the devil.

The lead actress has big hair.

Besides this being a (pretty darn good) precursor to the male-female partner shows like X-Files and Fringe, this is a supernatural drama in a pre-PC world. It features:

  • No cell phones -- the first episode had a rotary phone. The characters actually have to sit around and WAIT for each other to arrive. This is a world with phone booths!
  • No digital cameras -- they just flashed a packet of negatives at a suspect.
  • They get their news from a daily newspaper -- no Internet.
  • Paper schedules and calendars instead of PDAs.
  • Actual keys, not fobs or keycards.
  • Cranky paper maps, no sat nav.
  • Radios and record players -- no CDs or mp3s.

Amazing! The protagonists are practically handicapped by today's standards of technology. And yet they still manage to get the job done and find the bad guy every week.

Bonus Fascination: So far in my viewing, a couple of the episodes have been directed by big deals, such as Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg.

2 comments:

Alejo said...

I remember watching this when it aired, and I remember the days of wondering when the hell someone was going to show up, but I also remember the cousins looking for things like cursed combs.

Folly Blaine said...

I do keep wondering how they make money. They run an antique store that never sells anything -- that in fact, actively repossesses everything they've ever sold.

I guess when you're dealing with murderous antiques, property taxes are the least of your worries.