Case 07, File 14: Theef

AKA: It's A Psychobilly Freakout

One of the things that can make horror age so quickly is that it can take shortcuts to be frightening, and those shortcuts can be insensitive, if not abhorrent, to more modern sensibilities. The X-Files, for the most part, avoids race and class based horror, so it does manage to avoid a lot of that stuff. But, one of the few things it has indulged in, is in indulging in horror based around lower income people from rural areas. And while that's not usually enough to sink an episode, it can be...awkward.

Our episode begins with Dr. Robert Wieder and his family having a ridiculously happy evening after Robert won an award. And since having a happy family in a horror film is a big no-no, that night his stepfather finds a pile of dirt in the shape of a person in his bed, and then is found, his throat slit and hanging, with the word THEEF written on the walls in blood. That's on the weird side, so Mulder and Scully are called in, with Mulder being sure that witchcraft is involved, and also that THEEF means Thief.

Scully however believes that he probably just killed himself, and after an autopsy proves that he had Kuru (a brain disorder from Papua New Guinea caused by uh, cannibalism) she thinks she's right. But Mulder thinks that such a rare disease, it must have been caused by magic. And after a brief check in with a weirdo named Peattie at his apartment (where he promises to make some medicine for his landlady) we get some hints that Mulder might be right when Peattie steals a picture from the family, they find another person made of dirt in the bed, and then Wieder's wife collapses with lesions.

It turns out the dirt is graveyard dirt, and the disease the wife has is pretty rare too (I didn't catch what it was, sorry), so Mulder still thinks it's witchcraft (also the word Theef is on her X-Rays, that's important), and heads off to go talk to a mystic when Dr. Wieder dismisses him. Wieder gets more suspicious though when Peattie visits him, mentions a girl named Lynette and says he's going to take everything away from Wieder. Wieder begins to investigate, finding a Jane Doe he treated who had a bracelet with the phrase "Theef of Man's Heart" on it.

"That monster! It's spelled with an IE!"

Back with our intrepid heroes, the mystic they meet tells them that the caster they're after must be using a poppet (for our purposes, think a voodoo doll) to harm the family and also that he must be drawing power from a charm that's important to him. Back at the hospital, Mrs. Wieder gets an MRI, but Peattie sticks her poppet in the microwave, causing her to uh...cook? Gross. Anyway, this convinces Dr. Wieder that shit be weird, so he tells Mulder and Scully that he remembers Lynette, that she was in a bus crash, he couldn't save her and so he chose to euthanize her with morphine, which is probably why Peattie is pissed.

Mulder and Scully decide to dig up Lynette's body (since they figure the graveyard dirt must be from her grave) but he's beaten them to it and the body is gone. And before we wonder where, Peattie's landlady goes into his room to get some more medicine and finds the skeleton in the bed, which is less silly than it sounds. Wieder and his daughter go into protective custody, and Mulder stakes out the house to wait for Peattie, but when he sees a news story about the landlady catching the flesh eating virus, he realizes Peattie is going for them and warns Scully.

Mulder is, of course, never wrong, and Peattie has already found them, breaking into the car to get Scully's picture to create her own poppet, and immediately blinding her with it. He and Wieder have a standoff (which is hard to sum up here, but it's really tense) and Peattie is in the midst of toying with Wieder when Mulder arrives, finding Scully's poppet and removing the nails that were blinding her. And then Scully solves the problem the only way she knows how: Shooting. And thus the episode ends with Peattie in a coma in the hospital, Lynette's body being shipped back to West Virginia and Scully musing that she's not sure what happened.

If it seems odd to focus on the insensitive portrayal of Peattie, it's because the rest of the episode is so damned good, it's really the only negative thing I can talk about (and even it is more nuanced that a lot of similar media). The episode is one of the few classic Monster-of-the-Week we have left in The X-Files' original lineup, and it's honestly just another great example of what the series can do when everything lines up.

"You're lucky you came to me. Literally every other 'Alternative Medicine' person in California is a huckster."

For example, one thing that I love about this episode is that while Peattie is unambiguously villainous, his motivations and backstory are deeply sympathetic, and Dr. Wieder's role in it is also reasonably morally complex. It's easy to understand why Peattie feels wronged by Wieder, even while Wieder is right; All he did was end her suffering and Peattie wasn't there to help. It lends the climax some real heightened emotions, allowing what might have otherwise been a low key finale feel more intense.

It helps that we have a real good feel for the stakes. While a lot of magic heavy episodes of The X-Files suffer from not being very clear what the rules and abilities are (Fresh Bones comes to mind) this episode has one simple concept (basically just voodoo dolls) and milks it for all it's worth. It's got some pretty intensely gross effects too, which I really do appreciate, we are supposed to be a horror show. The death of Mrs. Weider is particularly gruesome and I like that when the stepfather bites it, they don't use "Hanging" as an excuse to keep it from being bloody.

All of this anchored by some really solid acting from the supporting cast. Wieder is pretty good, in a horror movie victim kind of way (and he does a really good job in the climax) but the big get is Peattie. A lot of horror villain acting is just having good screen presence, and Peattie has it in spades (even if the excellent makeup does help a lot). A lot of his scenes are just him standing around looking menacing and he makes that work.

You ever think that someone like Peattie should probably stop and go "Wait, what am I doing?" around the time he digs up his daughter's dead body?

The question of the episode's insensitivity is the last one I have to address and while I do think it's a little off, I don't think it's a huge issue. Mainstream culture's fascination with rural Appalachia has a consistent staple ever since the papers seized on the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the 1800s, and it's been a staple of horror for decades. And while there are a lot of cliches in Peattie's portrayal (I think most people in Appalachia can spell Thief) I think it's more sympathetic than some; Peattie is clearly intelligent (if not well educated) and his motivations are understandable. There's a lot of classism and condescension tied up in American opinions of Appalachia, and I don't feel super qualified to talk about it at length, if someone with more knowledge of it wants to clue me in, I'd love to hear it.

Regardless, Theef is a damn fine little episode, and probably the scariest one of the season as a whole. The X-Files has wandered pretty far from its horror roots at this point, which isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it's just true. I don't know if that'll continue to be the case next season when we don't have Mulder and Scully to lean on, but for now, it's nice to feel like we've got a nice, classic, gruesome episode at this stage of the game.

Hey isn't brain problems from cannibalism what happens in Our Town? How come they don't bring that up?

Case Notes:

• Even if it weren't The X-Files, the doctor's family in the opening is way too happy for them to not all suffer some horrible fate. I mean, he won an award for being a great doctor and he mentions how lucky he is, he's doomed.
• The doctor's father is way too calm about finding dirt in the shape of a person on his bed.
• The dude they get to play the villain is just excellent casting, right from the get go.
• Solid Mulder and Scully banter in the opening, especially love the meta jokes about how Mulder knows what Scully is gonna say and Scully going against it.
• I like the little interlude at Peattie's apartment, it's a good example of how Peattie isn't a one dimensional bad guy.
• I like the sudden twist with the first victim having Kuru, it's (as the episode points out) unexpected.
• I feel like in another show I might get annoyed at the episode making jokes about how it's doing unexpected things, but The X-Files is on its seventh season, it's earned a few meta jokes.
• Wait, the doctor got to look at Scully's autopsy? Are murder suspects usually allowed to look at autopsy results?
• The effects of the virus on the wife are pretty gruesome, good stuff.
• Mulder is still 100% willing to just start talking about folk magic to doctors, because he's Mulder.
• I like that Peattie has a confrontation with the doctor early in the episode. It's partially to get the doctor going on the right track, but it's also a good moment of what drives Peattie.
• On the flip side, the bit with Peattie and not knowing how a microwave works is uh...well it's awkward. The episode is a little too committed to the "Backwoods hick" vibe for him and it doesn't always click.
• I do really like the reveal of what happened to Peattie's daughter and why he's so angry. His motivations are sympathetic but also deeply unreasonable.
• The episode does really excellent cause and effect. I like that Mulder and Scully want to dig up  the body but Peattie has it and that the payoff to the landlady subplot is her getting nosy and getting killed, which lets Mulder know where he is. Good plot construction.
• The climax of the episode, where Peattie blinds Scully, is really clever too.
• As soon as she can see again, Scully solves the problem the only way she knows how: Shooting.
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. I don't know backwoods folk magic, so check it out to help me make money the less magical way.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Mrs. Wieder is played by Kate McNeil who had a lot of minor and major roles in stuff I've never heard of (apparently she was on As The World Turns for a while?) but for my money, her most famous role is as the lead in The House on Sorority Row, which is probably one of the best slasher films ever made and very much worth watching.

Future Celebrity Watch:

James Morrison, who plays Dr. Wieder, is another Space: Above and Beyond alumni, but he would go on to play Bill Buchanan in 24, which is a show that I still haven't watched. No, in my book his most important role was as the warden in Twin Peaks: The Return.

Billy Drago, who plays Peattie, never had any major roles but he did play the lead villain in the Hills Have Eyes remake back 2006, and was also the lead in the Takashi Miike directed episode of Masters of Horror. I've never seen it, but I heard about it because it got pulled from Showtime for being too graphic, and if you've ever seen Masters of Horror, you know that's saying something.