The K Files takes a Stephen King vacation to Maine for Halloween Redux with a NEW investigation into Chinga. We're investigating the scariest, goriest, most skin-shower-iest episodes of The X Files in honor of the season, and Scully's venture into the special world of prolific scary story writer Stephen King is bloody enough to make Mulder betray his cool exterior (if he weren't riding the bench on the case). From the eye clawing (and impaling) to the milkshake machine scalping sequence: this episode is like a Halloween haunted house, where one horror leads only to another until our Scully does the sensible thing and chucks the demon doll causing the ruckus in the microwave.

Hollywood Redux runs red with almost as much blood as The Shining this week on The K Files - we're investigating fifth season gore-a-palooza, Sanguinarium. This episode pays heavily into the Shit You Can't Unsee Bank, from Ben Horn's extreme facial peel to skin laser beams, it's one of the best showings from SFX Makeup Artist Toby Lindala and one of the worst to watch while eating pizza.

Sanguinarium was written by junior writers, Vivian and Valerie Mayhew, and directed by resident creep meastro Kim Manners (RIP sensei). Horrific deaths in a hospital's plastic surgery unit compel Mulder and Scully to shine a light onto the nightmares of that industry. Oh yeah, and there's witchcraft also.

You'll never eat fried chicken the same way again after this episode! The K Files investigation into Our Town is the first stop on our tour of the most horror-filled X Files episodes for Hallween Redux. There are some disgusting highlights (the bucket of chicken feed, blood, parts, vomit, etc is unforgettable) but ultimately the episode provides airtight rational for not participating in cannibalism. For a number of reasons.

We're celebrating the end of VR Month with an episode that considers an augmented reality for some unlucky office workers in fourth season monster of the week, Folie a Deux. A madness shared by two. It could describe the whole of The X Files really - the story of how tall enigma Fox Mulder convinced Valkyrie healer Dana Scully to go on a wild spree investigating the invisible world. In this outing, Mulder believes his work is undervalued and Scully reminds him that it's not all about him, so let's get to work, already. And in the end, Mulder answers his question: Scully.

VR Month Special Episode First Person Shooter | The K Files | The X Files Podcast | Case File 327

In honor of #HRVR VR Month at Hollywood Redux, The K Files agents are diverting our flashlight beams toward William S. Gibson’s madcap follow-up writing offering, First Person Shooter, aka a worst case scenario for VR entertainment.

Open the case file below:

We’re in 7th season heaven now in terms of the MS relationship (a very far distance from where we previously were rewatching in the fourth season), with lots of flirty arm touching and bowed, conspiratorial heads. This era of the show that includes FPS can be summed up via an image of Scully with arms akimbo, a sparkle in her eye, and oodles of attitude. It’s a great look and especially fun when she saves the day, so bonus points awarded for that.

William S. Gibson’s previous entry, Kill Switch, was not a dissimilar episode – instead of meditating on VR, Kill Switch is concerned with the potentiality of artificial intelligence. In both, the technology starts murdering humans, and M and S have to intervene. Kill Switch has a few more twists to it than FPS (Twilight time, Esther Nairn/Invisigoth, etc), but both naturally feature Dana cakes going beast mode to rectify, which is a happy ending this Phile’s book.

Plot (Spoilers):

The episode opens with three men, fitted with futuristic combat gear and automatic weapons, entering the virtual reality game First Person Shooter. In a control room, Ivan and Phoebe, the game’s programmers, are monitoring the players’ vital signs. Only one of the players makes it to the second level of the violent game, where he encounters a female character in a fetishistic leather outfit. She introduces herself as Maitreya, stating, “This is my game”. She then kills the player with a flintlock pistol.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) visit the headquarters of First Person Shooters’s developers in Inland Empire, California, where they meet the Lone Gunmen, who work as consultants for the game. They look at the body of the player, which clearly displays a gunshot wound. Ivan claims there is no way a real gun could have been brought into the highly-secured building. The agents are shown a video from the game, featuring the female character who killed the player. Mulder takes the printout of the character and shows it to a detective, as he believes she is the killer.

Daryl Musashi, a famous computer hacker, arrives at the building and enters the game to kill Maitreya. However, the character cuts off Musashi’s head and hands with a large medieval sword.

Sympathy for the Devil should play quietly underneath every moment of this 4th season episode which for the first time on the show shines a light on XF's chief baddie, the CSM. No Mulder, no Scully, just CGB and the ghosts of his blood-spattered past. File this under A for Ancillary Characters (Lone Gunmen eps like Unusual Suspects are also here in addition to Skinman episodes SR 819 and Avatar).

Most notable for its touching scenes between Mulder and Scully (filed under P for Poignant Comfort, see also Paper Hearts, Closure), in which they candidly discuss their potentially deeply cosmic relationship. This episode also offers a great performance from guest actor (and current Mrs. Glen Morgan) Kristen Kloke as the multiple personalitied monster of the week, Melissa. Cross referenced under B for Bummer Endings - The X Files does not always offer happy endings and in this case, the supernatural offered hope which could have armed Melissa against Vernon Epheisan's very human/banal force for destruction, yet she succumbed.

Lots of great minutia in this one! Heuvelman's Lake is in Millikan County, named after Rick Millikin, a casting director on the show (good job Rick Millikin). Heuvelman's Lake is named for a Dutch cryptozoologist named Van Heuvels, who wrote a book on sea serpents. Also of note, Mulder's speech about wishing he had a peg leg so he wouldn't have to work so hard comes from a 1970's pop psychology bible called Games People Play.

It's a kicky episode from the Kims (Newton and Manners, writing and directing, respectively) that was rumored to have some script doctoring from Darin Morgan, which is why there are references to Morgan's previous scripts War of the Copraphages and Clyde Bruckman (and forward into the miniseries with Dagoo, Queequeg's successor).

Open the case file below for the full investigation

The agents continue this sprawling Piper Maru/Aphocrypha mythology case separated from each other and on different journeys as usual in their pursuit of the truth (see also: Terma/Tunguska two parter in 4th season). Cross reference an oft-expressed message of the XF: the truth Scully expresses, "Maybe we bury the dead alive." That justice is meted out through the living through conscious. See Momento Mori, Gethsemane, Amor Fati, and All Things for more ruminations on death, plus series finale The Truth, in which Mulder reiterates the sentiment of a more realistic kind of life after death for those who are remembered by the living (also filed under A for Afterlife is Improbable and Closure).

Another stellar, action -packed mythology two parter investigation begins on the K Files in Piper Maru! Similar to previous two part investigation Nisei and 731, Piper Maru was written by my mythology Einstein Chris Carter and his best mythos co-captain Frank Spotnitz, and directed by the best series action director, Rob Bowman. It introduces a key element of the alien threat in the black oil which would eventually play a much larger role in the series, including in the 1998 X-Files movie, Fight the Future.