The X-Files - 4.

French title: Les hurleurs
translation: The Screamers

US Airdate: October 27, 1996

writer: Vince Gilligan

director: Rob Bowman

STARRING:

David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder

Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully

Guest Cast:

PRUITT VINCE as Gerry Schnauz

SCOTT HEINDL as the boyfriend

SHARON ALEXANDER as Mary LeFante

WALTER MARSH as the druggist

WILLIAM MACDONALD as Officer Trott

RON CHARTIER as Inspector Puett

MICHELE MELLAND as the doctor

ANGELA DONAHUE as Alice

MULDER'S ONLY HOPE OF STOPPING A PSYCHOTIC KILLER ARE PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHS THAT REVEAL THE MADMAN'S DARKEST FANTASIES.

Northern Michigan. A young woman is kidnapped and her boyfriend murdered. Her passport photographs, taken only moments earlier, don't show the expected smiling portraits. Instead, they display nightmarish images of the terrified girl. The photographs fascinate Mulder. Scully tries to find a logical explanation: the pictures were planted, or the film is damaged. But to Mulder, they are an example of "psychic photography": the paranormal ability to create images on film with the mind. Mulder theorizes that the suspect doesn't even know he possesses this gift...and that the photographs reveal the killer's darkest fantasies.

The kidnap victim is found: alive, but almost brain-dead. Her abductor had given her a primitive, botched lobotomy with an ice pick inserted through her eyes. Her mind almost gone, she endlessly repeats the word "unruhe", the German word for "trouble" or "unrest." Soon, the kidnapper abducts and kills again.

Scully realizes that the same construction company had job sites near each crime scene. While Mulder is in Washington to examine the photos at the FBI labs, Scully follows up on her lead. She knows foreman Gerry Schnauz is the kidnapper by his terrified reaction to the word "unruhe." She arrests him.

Schnauz is a formerly institutionalized paranoid schizophrenic with a history of violence. When confronted by the photographs of his victims, he's startled at the sight of his own paranoid delusions brought to life on film. Admitting the crime, he tells them where to find his other victim. She too has been lobotomized.

Schnauz kills a guard and escapes from jail. He returns to the scene of the first crime to steal the camera and film. Mulder's blood runs cold when he sees exposed photographs of Schnauz's next victim: Scully! Now, Mulder's only hope of saving her is studying the photos to get deep inside Schnauz's mind.

In captivity, Scully, too, must use everything she knows about Schnauz to keep herself alive. But she can't talk him out of his delusions. It won't be long before he wields the icepick to rid Scully of the "unruhe" he believes is tormenting her.

Mulder's insight into the madman's mind leads him to Schnauz's dark den. With hardly a moment to spare, he shoots Scully's kidnapper. And finds one last series of psychic photographs: Schnauz -- shot dead on the floor.

The pictures are quite effective, they really unnerve you when you first see them. Spooky.

Druggist: "Is that against the law?"

Scully: "No, I was just making an observation."

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Mulder: (smiling after elderly druggist leaves to answer the phone) "So, which one of us gets to use the stun gun on Bruno Hauptman back there?"

Scully: "All right, so he doesn't exactly stand out as a suspect. (she shows him the picture of the woman screaming) Mulder, take a look at this. See this smeariness here? I'm thinking that it's heat damage. With the heater sitting under the film right there that the emulsion probably melted."

Mulder: "So you think that might make it look like she posed, screaming, for a passport photo?"

Scully: "...Plus the film is two years out of date..that..."

Mulder: "Oh..."

Scully: "...that the photographic chemistry could have changed..."

Mulder: "Yeah..."

Scully: "...the dyes fade... they... all right, so what's your theory?"

Mulder: "I'm not sure I have a theory."

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Mulder: "Yeah, but why stab her boyfriend through the ear? The magic was gone?"

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Mulder: (holding a camera) "Stand back, Scully, it's loaded."

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Mulder: (holding up computer enhanced picture with a man's face) "Hey, Gerry, is this your father?"

Gerry: "Where'd you get that?" (he looks spooked)

Mulder: "You left that for me, you left it like a fingerprint. Is this what you see when you close your eyes, Gerry? Is that what you see?"

Gerry: (mouths the word) "Yes."

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Mulder: "Hey, Scully, that word -- unruhe, unrest... it's bothering me. Maybe, I mean, maybe he thought he was curing them somehow, saving them from damnation. Those things in the pictures, he called them the Howlers."

Scully: "It's over, Mulder."

Mulder: "Well then, that photo wouldn't be his fantasy, it would be his nightmare."

Scully: "What the hell does it matter?"

Mulder: "Because I want to know."

Scully: "I don't."

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Scully: (she's duct-taped to the dentist chair, held hostage) "Why? Why me, Gerry? Do I remind you of your sister? Why did your sister kill herself, Gerry? What did your father do to her?"

Gerry: "He didn't do anything. It was the Howlers."

Scully: (trying to keep him talking) "Okay, then lets talk about the Howlers."

Gerry: "They live inside your head, they make you do things and say things that you don't mean. And all your good thoughts can't wish them away. You need help. You've got them, (he jabs a finger at her forehead) right there. Don't you feel them?"

Scully: "I don't have them, Gerry."

Gerry: "See, they made you say that just now, because they know I'm going to kill them." (he picks up the awl he's used to kill the other people)

Scully: "What if you're wrong, Gerry -- what if there's no such thing as howlers, what if you made them up inside your head to explain the things your sister said your father did."

Gerry: "Great. Now they've got you talking like Sigmund Freud. I am on to you! I know your tricks. Besides, I've seen them. In that picture that your partner showed me. Pictures don't lie. You saw them too."

Scully: "If there are such things as Howlers, Gerry, they live only inside your head."

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