The cringing starts immediately with Robert Patrick playing a DJ. I have become convinced that it is impossible to play a DJ on screen. They are always dreadful and would have zero audience in the real world. I’m looking at (but not listening to) you Clint Eastwood, Adrienne Barbeau, Stephen McHattie, Arte Johnson, Eric Bogosian, Kathy Bates, and the casts of WKRP in Cincinnati and NewsRadio. I would include Wolfman Jack in that list, but he actually was inexplicably successful on the radio.
Robert Patrick, a very good actor, is particularly awful playing Lothar, a bandanna-wearing hipster in dark glasses who seems to be playing to a late night goth crowd, although his shift ends at 10 pm. After his shift is over, the next host David Warner enters — he is a child psychologist and author of “The Art of Ignoring Your Child.” WTF is programming this station?
He gets a call from Nora, a frequent caller. Her daughter has taken to banging her head against the wall; most likely because her mother keeps the radio tuned to this station.
In order to prove his worth and save his show, Warner agrees to come to Nora’s home to see Felicity.
He goes to Nora’s house accompanied by his producer (Twiggy) and the station manager (Joan Severance). After Joan is knocked on her fine, fine ass by an electrical short in the doorbell for no reason, the door is answered by Zelda Rubinstein, the imbecile in Poltergeist who prematurely declared the house “clean.”
They go in and hear Felicity screaming upstairs. Zelda says Felicity’s father will be home any day . . . from WWII. So the nut didn’t fall far from the tree.
They look for Felicity and go down a hall covered in the chewed grape bubble gum that her mother bribes her with. They enter her bedroom and find a lot of crazy stuff, including Joan’s dead, though still crazy-hot, body.
At the bottom of the stairs, Warner and Twiggy see Felicity, a little girl wearing a mask. Warner runs down to meet her, but she runs away. Twiggy, still at the top of the stairs is decapitated, in a complete non-sequitur, by a descending ceiling fan blade and tumbles down the stairs; followed by her head.
Warner regains consciousness tied to a chair. He asks her to sit on his lap and maybe make her happy. He tricks her into loosening his restraints and begins choking her.
Zelda enters and tells him he should be ashamed of himself. Felicity falls from his lap, and her mask falls off revealing a face not unlike the Cryptkeeper. “I spoiled her to death,” Zelda admits. “She’s been dead 40 years.” They spin Warner’s chair around so he sees several eminent child psychiatrists, dead, mummified and cob-webbed.
Zelda places a radio on Warner’s lap on which Lothar announces he has taken Warner’s time slot. Felicity dances around his chair as he repeats, “Ignore it. Ignore it.” The End.
Many questions are left unanswered, and uncared about.
Post-Post:
- Title analysis: So who is the new arrival? Warner is the latest in a string of child psychologists, but that doesn’t seem enough to merit the title.
- On the plus side, I did like the girl in the mask. It started to lose me when I thought it was just going exploit a deformed child; but a 40-year dead zombie is A-OK.
- Sadly, not pictured.
I thought David Warner was great as the arrogant child psychologist who though he knew it all and seen it all! Nora and Felicity proved him wrong and it is scary Felicity might be naughty for another 40 years!
Scared me as a kid one of the best episodes!
didnt explain how she died or how shes a zombie this is why i disliked the ending tbh