![]() It drives home the terror of the episode in a way that makes sense for a story about death-by-surgery. The use of gore is unusual for the series, but in the context of this story, which is all about doctors whose job is to slice up other people turning that in to a weapon, it makes sense that the ickiness factor is turned all the way up to 11. This is one of the goriest episodes The X-Files ever did, which adds to the terror factor in this story about hex and counter-hex. More specifically, a doctor who practices black magic uses it to keep himself looking young and handsome by sacrificing patients who come in for plastic surgery. So of course, in The X-Files, we see a set of doctors abusing the trust placed in them by their patients. Allowing other humans to render you unconscious and then cut you open is simply a frightening prospect. Having an operation is a scary thing, however much you want it, however much it will help in the long run. But really, it’s the Flukeman’s monster design combined with Morgan’s performance that makes it so memorable, and so scary. ![]() ![]() And the prospect of being infected with a flukeworm that gives you a bad taste in your mouth before exiting that way is seriously icky. The Flukeman’s origin, as a human suffering from a mutation caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, adds another level of scary, tapping in to fears about mutation as a result of radiation that were around throughout the Cold War and during the rise of nuclear power in the late 20 th century. (Long before viewers were complaining about Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon, you had to, as the Barenaked Ladies put it, “watch X-Files with no lights on” because otherwise you couldn’t see what was happening). Played by one of the show’s later and best loved writers, Darin Morgan, the combination of the Flukeman’s design with the dark, dimly lit shots of him lurking like the shark in Jaws under the water in the sewers is a perfectly alarming effect. The ‘Flukeman’, the Monster of the Week in ‘The Host’, is best remembered for one of freakiest monster designs of the series.
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