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.
Notes
The title is German, meaning "unrest."
The pictures are quite effective, they really unnerve you when you first see them.
Spooky.
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: "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: (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."
Scully's voiceover at end: "Addendum to case report. After his death, a diary was
found along Gerald Schnauz's belongings written in the second person and apparently
intended as an open letter to his father. It includes the names of his victims, the women
he desired to save. My name is contained in the last entry. I have no further explanation
for the existence of the photographs, nor am I confident one is forthcoming. My captivity
forced me to understand and even empathize with Gerry Schnauz. My survival depended on it.
I see now the value of such insight, for truly to pursue monsters we must understand them,
we must venture into their minds. Only in doing so do we risk letting them venture into
ours.