Friday the 13th: The Series (TV Series) The Baron's Bride (1988) User Reviews

another good episode, a tad step down from 'Faith Healer' though

[movieman_kev · 7/10 · 2 April 2009]

A cursed cape makes it's wearer irresistible to women and while Micki, Ryan & Jack attempt to get it back, some blood gets on the cape's brooch which sends Ryan & Micki (along with Frank, it's current wearer as well as a newly-turned vampire) back in time. They meet up with Abraham and his beloved Caitlin now they have to find a way home, recover the cape, and save an enchanted Micki.

This episode marks the first one to deal with time travel (but not the last) and the second time that Micki is enchanted by one of the cursed items (the first being "Cupid's Quiver"). Most of the film is shot in black & white, which is a great stylistic choice. This was also a pretty good episode with tight plotting (disregarding a few plot holes)

My Grade: A-

The Vampire Cape

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 26 March 2024]

A young man, Frank Edwards, rents a room in a house and wears a cape with a jewel he sees in the room. Out of the blue, he becomes irresistible to women and the landlady, who is a vampire, bites him. Meanwhile, Jack locates the cursed cape and goes with Ryan and Micki to the house. However, they arrive late and have to fight Jack, who has already turned into a vampire, and the landlady. Ryan succeeds to stab her with the For Rent stake while Micki tries to take Jack's cape. Micki is cut in the face and falls under the spell of the cape. When her blood falls on the jewel, they are transported to London, in 1875. Frank flees and Micki is still under his spell. Ryan and Micki are befriended by the young writer Abraham and his beloved wife Caitlin. They invite Ryan and Micki to stay with them at their home, while Frank kills a prostitute to suck her blood. Now Ryan needs to find Frank to return home.

"The Baron's Bride" is another great episode of "Friday the 13th: The Series". Vampire tales are usually entertaining, and this episode is no exception to the rule. The plot is different, with vampire and time travel and stylish, in black and white in 1875. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Noiva do Barão" ("The Baron's Bride")

Better Than Average, But Not Great

[Gislef · 8/10 · 16 August 2020]

The atmosphere isn't too bad, and it's the first of... three? time travel episodes. The use of black-and-white photography gives the episode a certainly visual feel. And Tom McCamus is always good.

But the episode feels awfully understuffed. Part of is that there's a lot of padding. Frank runs in slow motion. A lot. First from the townspeople, and then just through the warehouse chasing after Micki. There are also a lot of shots of Micki smiling, enraptured, waiting for Frank to come to her. We never see Ryan being so enraptured by the power of luv.

Kevin Bundy is okay as Abraham. And he and Susanna Hoffman do a lot with a little, as the doomed couple. But the episode is crammed full of stuff, and not a lot of it makes sense. How did the vampire and the cousins just happen to get transported to the 19th century at just the right time to meet Abraham?

Is Frank a good guy cursed to be a vampire? He bemoans turning into a living corpse when he takes off the corpse, and there's a general sense that he's just some normal guy that got screwed because he went to the wrong house and put on the wrong cape. We never find out enough about him to know, and Frank sure seems to embrace the night life the rest of the time.

Ditto for Marie. Who seems to be a hubby-looking MILF that falls for Frank and then gets killed a few minutes later. Maybe she's just into the undead. Who knows?

Like Jack says at the end, the whole thing seems like a waste. Ryan and Micki travel back a hundred years. But at the end, as Ryan says, all he saw was a flat, a basement, and a couple of dark streets. Yes, it's a low-budget show. But sheesh, it feels like the cousins should have got a t-shirt saying, "I traveled through time, and all I got was this t-shirt!" Nothing is made of the whole time-travel trope, except for Jack commenting on it at the end.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

one of the best in the whole series

[pmcguireumc · 10/10 · 8 March 2009]

This is a great episode. It was not only interesting visually (most all b&w photography), but the plot was excellent. Travelling back in time to rescue a cape that makes whoever wears it irresistible to women, the dynamic duo of Ryan and Mickie run into the future author of Dracula. of course, one doesn't find this out until the end, but Abraham (the character's name) helps the couple who are stranded in time to track down the killer wearing the cape. His wife Cate is gorgeous and Mickie (who is slowly turning into a vampire) is as beautiful as ever. Overall, a phenomenal episode in the series. It's too bad the others in the series could not have maintained such a great level of intensity.

Blood is thicker than water

[allexand · 5/10 · 6 July 2009]

Ryan, Micki, and Jack show up just in time to retrieve a cursed cape but when Ryan tries to save Micki from the cape-wearer, they are all transported back to 19th century London instead.

"The Baron's Bride" is entertaining, don't get me wrong, but this episode is so ridiculous that I just can't give it a higher score.

Where to begin? The cursed antique is rather silly. The idea of a cape is fine but it's supposed to make the wearer irresistible to women (tell me how this qualifies as a curse again...). Since that's rather flimsy on its own they had to spice it up by throwing in a brooch that somehow magically transports people back to 19th century London. Inconvenient? Yes. A curse? Not really.

There's the whole weird vampire angle. The woman originally in possession of the cape is revealed to be a vampire. How she became one is never explained. She, of course, converts the main villain after he dons the cape. I realize that Friday the 13th deals with a lot of supernatural occurrences but asking the viewer to believe in modern day vampires is a little out of touch with reality, even for this show.

Now that the antagonist is a vampire too, he has to wear the cape all the time or else he starts to decay. In addition to wooing the ladies and traveling through time, the cape now grants immortality as well. It really is quite an extraordinary cape as it appears to have more uses than a Swiss-army knife.

Another thing that really bothered me is that Micki's trance state seemed to appear and disappear for no rhyme or reason. In the beginning, she falls into a hypnotic trance in the presence of our lead vampire, which is fine. The spell seems to be broken once they get whisked to London and the vampire runs off. Micki seems normal and argues with Ryan about how they're going to get back. Once again, no complaints. However, Micki later slips back into her trance for no good reason. We're never told why she's fallen back under the spell as the vampire is not seen anywhere near her at the time.

Not to be outdone, all of this culminates in a "you gotta be kidding me" type of ending where Micki and Ryan are revealed to have befriended Bram Stoker and even inspired him to write Dracula! This ending is even harder to take seriously knowing that the real Bram Stoker was never married to a Caitlin and his real wife, Florence Balcombe, outlived him by 20 years.

You might think from this review that I didn't like "The Baron's Bride." That's not entirely true. It's a fun episode and the black-and-white shots of London create a nice mood. It feels a little out of place on this series, though.