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Tales From The Crypt – Season 4, Episode 7: The New Arrival (1992) – Review

Never let it be said that the Crypt Keeper isn’t interested in the social issues plaguing our society, and in the latest sample of his sordid storytelling, it’s time for us to think of the children. That’s right, as every year passes, the innocence of many boy and girls (or, boils and ghouls in Crypt Keeper speak) all but evaporates, leaving exasperated parents trying to control kids with no boundies and no restraint. Take the troublesome tot featured in “The New Arrival” for example, who not only has to deal with the fact that her mother is the helium-voiced clairvoyant from Poltergeist, but who also has some particularly worrying attitudes towards personal safety.
Once again, we find a fourth season entry doing what Tales From Crypt does best: coughing up an eclectic, yet utterly random director and cast to tell a weird little tale that’s admittedly fairly ridiculous. However, ridiculous it may be, but when it comes to creepy kids, The New Arrival has certainly raised ’em right.

Dr. Alan Goetz may be a celebrated child psychologist with his own radio show, but that doesn’t mean he can’t also be something of an officious prick. In fact, the arrogant swine may be able to even teach Frasier Crane a thing or to when it comes to snobbish shrinks acting-out over the radio waves. However, while the short-tempered know-it-all promotes his own, personal mantra when dealing with problem children (“Ingnore, ignore, ignore.”), it seems that his listening figures could use a little boost.
In fact, if Goetz doesn’t think of something spectacular soon, ruthless station owner Rona will happily kill his show and replace him with trashy shock jock, Lothar, who fills the airwaves with phone-ins about ghost sex.
However, salvation is at hand in the form of Nora, a woman who constantly is ringing his show in order to get advice on how to control her increasingly violent child, Felicity, and in an act of desperation, Goetz accepts her offer of a house call.
If Felicity is as troubled as her mother suggests, Goetz believes he can save his ratings if he broadcasts his on-site therapy as it happens, but not long after arriving at Nora’s foreboding abode, both he, his long-suffering producer, Bonnie and a sneering Rona, start to suspect that something is worryingly amiss. While Nora seems fairly weird, Felicity is downright creepy. Running about the house wearing a spotted dress and an unnerving white mask, the trio soon notice that they haven’t seen mother and daughter together in the same room since they arrived and soon they surmise that there probably is no Felicity and that Nora is nuttier than squirrel shit.
However, soon “Felicity” starts to get violent and as the group tries to escape the maze-like house, Goetz discovers that she’s one problem child who will be impossible to ignore.

There’s something undeniably perfect about the set-up of The New Arrival that shows off Tales From The Crypt at it’s best. I’m not so much talking about the episode itself (although it’s full of legitimate creeps and enjoyable nastiness) as I am about the choice of the cast and director that prove to be one of the main reasons that the show is so fiendishly self-aware. For a start, the episode is helmed by Peter Medak, who gave us everything from the dizzying highs of The Changeling and Romeo Is Bleeding to the amusing lows of Species II, and he immediately has a shrewd understanding about how to balance a quintessential Crypt tone. Allowing the humour to mainly come from how shitty the characters are rather than relying on broad slapstick or a spoofy tone, the installment is free to up the scare factor with the genuinely unnerving sight of a husky child running around a boobytrapped house wearing a mask that makes Michael Myers seem expressive. Even better, the episode manages to deliver that wonderful horror trope where you know the main characters are in mortal peril while they remain utterly clueless to the danger that’s mounting.
This means that the cast is free to do their thing and as a result we get probably the most Tales From The Crypt cast we’ve ever seen – in fact, if I was to blindly list the actors that participate in this episode, you could probably predict which show it belonged to even if you didn’t know what the show was. For example, can you actually think of an actor more tailor-made for Crypt than David Warner; a man who has made a career playing pompous assholes in an endless number of low budget, cheesy fare. Here he gets to play to those strengths as his douchey therapist constantly insists that his patronising methods are vastly superior to everyone else’s (his book is named “The Art Of Ignoring Your Child”, which essentially says it all), despite the fact that a potentially hideous fate is staring him in the face.

Elsewhere, the horror contingent is further bolstered by the presence of the irreplaceable Zelda Rubinstein who does her thing and portrays the unhinged mother beautifully while getting us to keep believing Goetz’s theory of her and Felicity being the same person could still be the big twist. Of course, it wouldn’t be Tales From The Crypt without a bit of left-field stunt casting and while famous model, Twiggy, can’t quite nail a single, convincing line reading, it’s fun to see her run around and get killed by a wayward ceiling fan. Add to this Joan Severance in full bitch mode and a cameoing Robert Patrick as Goetz’s sleazy radio rival and there’s a high chance that we have the most on-point Crypt cast ever to do it.
Thankfully the episode manages to live up to their efforts, although there are one or two slight niggles. You could argue that the show shares many similarities with “Television Terror” (unscrupulous radio/TV personality enters house of death to boost ratings) and on a personal note, I wish the episode had more in the way of some gratuitous gore as it’s a little dry. Also, the reveal that Felicity is actually a separate entity, and a progressively feral zombie child who’s somehow been kept alive because of her mother’s love is one of those like it or lump it reveals that you have to except on face value because it gets virtually no other explanation elsewhere. Still, these are all minor points when compared to the episode as a whole and when you add the great production design and the final image of Goetz surrounded by the corpses of his peers who have all failed to curb Felicity’s nastier attributes, we have yet another season four offering that spares the rod and spoils both the child and us.

With yet another winner in the bag, the fourth season of Tales From The Crypt continues to prove that it’s got it’s format down cold. A great cast, a creepy plot and a seasoned director who gets the joke all combine to give us a mid-season treat that’ll fill you with child-like glee – no kidding.
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