The X Files - Hellbound

 

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I’ll give “Hellbound” some credit: the skinned alive victims gore is damned effective! Monica Reyes, to Gish’s credit, remains a character the ninth season desperately tries to get over with fans by focusing stories on her. I have been rather critical of this season, mainly not to the fault of the principles, although the first seasons of the series just yearn for my interest yet again. I continue to watch the ninth season and episode after episode, the loss of Fox Mulder can be felt distinctively.

And poor Anderson once again gets to pass through the episode from time to time without much real importance. She is called in by Reyes to investigate a skinned corpse (of an ex-felon and long-time criminal sweating it out with a cynical friend from a pig-skinning plant at a church support group for crooks trying to go straight and work out their issues) while hoping Doggett will help her on the case. Something about the case is drawing her to it…and this soon is verified when Scully is provided a file of an old John Doe case from 1960, where his skinned corpse is eerily exact to the dead felon she just studied in the morgue. When Scully visits the retired coroner who performed the autopsy on the 1960 body, she learns of other cases, of criminals whose deaths coincide with birth dates of current day victims.

Reyes soon dreams of a skinned victim while trying to locate the group therapist, a compassionate Dr. Lisa Holland (Katy Boyer)…this is foreshadowing later to be established when Reyes and Doggett locate a mine, the sheriff of 1909 with a bullet hole in his skull, skins of victims both old and fresh hanging on hooks (right out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and a cop working their current skinned victim cases who happens to be housing the reincarnated spirit of the former victim of a mining accident who returns time and again to “get revenge”. It seems when certain victims are skinned alive, their souls (never to be “pardoned”) return to a new body, born after the deaths of their current bodies…yeah, a bit outré, but the X-Files has dealt with reincarnation before and old crimes and new crimes tying together. Scully does have a scene at the end with Reyes where the two contemplate her role in the soul hopping/eternal damnation tragedy that continues to torment the souls of those who committed the egregious misdeed in the mine (those responsible never were punished for the crime) way back in 1868. The mine, closed and abandoned, housing the sheriff’s skeleton, has clippings detailing the 1868 murder. Ed (Cyril O’Reilly), the third victim in current day, who had teased the first victim, Victor (David Figiloli), trying to get his life right, had a coal-soot rag stuffed in his mouth which signaled to Reyes (who envisioned this much to Doggett’s shock and awe) and Doggett where to next investigate, heading to the mine for the finale.

Patrick Swayze’s brother, Don, has a nice role (which doesn’t end well for the poor guy who actually reformed and was on the rebound after a rough criminal life) as the second victim, Terrance Pruit. Pruit is shown at the beginning telling the group in a circle, as Dr. Lisa listens, his story of redemption after a failed life, with Ed mocking him. This is where Victor tells Lisa of his dreams of seeing a skinned alive figure. Pruit even sees Ed skinned alive while leaving the pig-skinning meat plant at end-shift.

This episode received critical acclaim even as viewership for the series continued to unimpress anymore. Fans like me, sad to say, no longer followed the show as we once did. And I followed the series religiously after the first season, often even catching reruns on late nights. But with no Mulder and Scully’s role scaled back in importance as opposed to Doggett and Reyes—although she would still get some time yearning for Mulder and trying to be a decent mother when the job wasn’t demanding her to be away—I admittedly fell away. Watching the ninth season this year, I sigh after each episode so far because I so badly want to like at least one of them. This one calls back to Hellraiser, reminding me of Frank Cotton, fed victims provided to him by his sister-in-law. The grisly story and far out there plot development, along with the gruesome results of being skinned alive (for extra yuck, as poor Don hangs there upside down, is still alive, his skin later found in the mine!), will appeal to gore fans. Reyes does indeed get central focus while Doggett, to his nature, remains grounded. As you might expect when Reyes tries to explain that the victims had premonitions and souls are transferred at the moment of their deaths to born babies to relive the same fates Doggett, on cue, is bewildered by her. It is a lot to swallow, to accept.

Reyes tormented by the detective that nearly killed her, his body possessed by the serial killer skinned at the mine, not eased by Scully’s talk of possibly stopping the cycle, is proven to have failed…as she “always does”.

*Hellbound is a tattoo on Swayze's arm and is often used by Ed as a mocking device towards his Pruit.