The X Files / Die Hand Die Verletzt / Notes

 

One of my most popular X Files reviews is for this second season devil worshippers episode, "Die Hand

Die Verletzt", with an amusing "parting gift" to the FBI Agents, Mulder and Scully, from "The Devil", Ms. Paddock (Susan Blommaert), a written chalkboard "adieu", "Goodbye. It's been nice working with you." Conjuring the Devil has its repercussions if your faith isn't exactly on the level. That snake eating a man sequence, along with the raining frogs, complete mind-planted story of sexual molestation, baby breeding, murdered babies, and Satanic worship really offers plenty of memorable developments! The horrifying faked suicide orchestrated by Paddock, essentially sacrificing a teenage girl, along with her causing the python to strangle and swallow the principal then have one among a faculty kill the others in his group and then turn the gun on himself as Mulder and Scully remain tied up in a gym showers as it all transpires--all during a major thunderstorm, with plenty of the kind of lightning that punches up the eek factor--certainly establishes the "substitute teacher" as quite the hard-to-forget "monster of the week". Her eyes even mimicking the python as she organizes the principal's eventual demise, and the discovery of the victim's acidic bones left behind (with shed python skin), really are the stuff of nightmares. Even the Devil seems irritated by apathetic followers. Mulder and Scully really are such a non-factor in this episode. Paddock has her way and leaves the school with nary a difficulty, really.