The X Files - El Mundo Gira

 X-Files gives you fungal growth caused by yellow toxic rain seemingly brought about by some sort of meteor/space "germ" explosion that surfaced in a particular area of Fresno, California, poisoning Raymond Cruz. Anyone Cruz touches or breathes on is reduced to deteriorating husks webbed with extreme fungus...it is quite gross. The makeup effects work for the bodies and the icky growth that surrounds them (like a grocery store clerk who accidentally touches a peanut) are of the skin-crawling variety...big grossout moments. Of course, Mulder and Scully find one of those construction foreman looking for illegal immigrants to exploit in the cab of his truck practically cocooned in a fungal web, his body eaten up and petrified in yellow crust. There is a joke Scully says to Mulder about his pursuit of aliens that reallllllly doesn't age well. Mulder is interested in the legend of El Chupacabra, a mythic creature a small migrant village considers very real to them, labeling Cruz that when a young woman he (and his brother, played by Jose Yenque) was interested in is found dead. It doesn't help Cruz that almost everyone he comes in close contact with winds up dead and in a bad way. Rubén Blades is always great, in this episode as an INS agent, helping Duchovny's Mulder locate Cruz, while the two locate victims on that trail. Even a truck driver carrying immigrants back to the border is found dead while many escape into the valley nearby when Cruz rides up in the cab with him because those in the back refuse to have him close to them. There is this Telenovela emphasis included as Simi (as Gabrielle, a friend to Cruz, who needs her help while she is frightened of him) gives the villagers a big melodramatic climax to the story of the brothers squaring off over the dead woman they loved, with the INS agent who tries to stop them, while they head off to Mexico, now both El Chupacabra. Scully, to Skinner, is more scientific about how it is an enzyme that is causing Cruz to change dramatically...it isn't just irony, to me, that he looks alien since whatever poisoned him was from outer space. Lillian Hurst really stands out as a member of the village who talks up El Chupacabra and when she sees Mulder and Scully accompanied by scientists in hazmat suits, they carry the appearance of arriving aliens. The episode really does try to bring attention to the worries of migrants in the US trying to remain elusive to the government and how their plight is taken advantage of by citizens holding a job out for a select few to fight over. 2.5/5