- Die Hand Die Verletzt
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"Die Hand Die Verletzt" The X-Files episode
Susan Blommaert as Phyllis H. PaddockEpisode no. Season 2
Episode 14Directed by Kim Manners Written by Glen Morgan
James WongProduction code 2X14 Original air date January 27, 1995 Guest stars - Susan Blommaert as Mrs. Phyllis H. Paddock
- Dan Butler as Jim Ausbury
- Heather McComb as Shannon Ausbury
- P. Lynn Johnson as Deborah Brown
- Shawn Johnston as Pete Calcagni
- Travis MacDonald as Dave Duran
- Michelle Goodger as Barbara Ausbury
- Larry Musser as Sheriff John Oakes
- Franky Czinege as Jerry Thomas
- Laura Harris as Andrea
- Doug Abrahams as Paul Vitaris
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List of The X-Files episodes"Die Hand Die Verletzt" was the fourteenth episode of the second season of The X-Files science-fiction television series created by Chris Carter, and deals with the occult. The title roughly translates from German as "the hand that injures."
Contents
Plot
A group of high school students go out into the forest at night to play around with black magic. The experiment causes unexplainable things to happen, such as fire erupting from the ground, and rats swarming to the location. The next day one of the kids is found dead and mutilated, and agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are called in to investigate. Locals claim that the children have unleashed a demonic force in their rituals, a theory which is given validity by strange occurrences, such as frogs falling from the sky and water in the drinking fountain draining the wrong way.
Unknown to the agents, substitute teacher Mrs. Paddock is revealed to have the eyes and heart of the victim in her desk. One of the Parent-Teacher Council members, Jim Ausbury suspects one of his colleagues killed the boy, but the others believe it is an outside force. Jim's stepdaughter Shannon suffers a breakdown during science class while dissecting a hog fetus. Meeting with Mulder and Scully, she tells them that her stepfather held occult rituals at her house while her mother was away, which included raping her and her little sister and sacrificing the babies. She claims that her sister eventually became one of the sacrifices. Shannon's mother denies Shannon's claims of ever being pregnant and says her sister actually died at 8 weeks old.
When Shannon stays after school to make up her assignment of dissecting the pig, Mrs. Paddock takes her bracelet then uses it as part of a spell that causes Shannon to slit her wrists. When Ausbury hears of the others planning to blame everything on his stepdaughter, he admits all to Mulder. Scully meanwhile researches Mrs. Paddock and finds that no one knows anything about her or who hired her. Mrs. Paddock steals Scully's pen when a power outage occurs. Mulder handcuffs Ausbury in the basement when Paddock fakes a call to him by Scully, and when he leaves a giant snake comes in and eats Ausbury.
Mulder arrives at the school, where Scully claims she never called him. The three still living members of the PTC are convinced that they need to perform a sacrifice and capture the two agents. As they are about to kill them Mrs. Paddock causes them to instead kill themselves. Mulder and Scully escape their bonds and find Mrs. Paddock missing, with only the message "Goodbye. It's been nice working with you." on the chalkboard.[1][2]
Production
The episode originally came out of an idea from Glen Morgan's idea to have a scene where a snake eats a man.[3] Chris Carter described the episode as "a cautionary tale about playing with fire, playing with things bigger and badder than you might imagine".[4] Morgan and co-writer James Wong left the series after this episode to produce the series Space: Above and Beyond.[3] The line written by Mrs. Paddock on a chalkboard at the end of the episode, "It's been nice working with you," also acted as a goodbye to the crew of the show.[3] The two later returned to the show in season four.
Crowley High School refers to British ceremonialist Aleister Crowley.[3] The character names Deborah Brown and Paul Vitaris were based on internet X-Files fans.[5] The episodes title means "The hand that wounds" in German.[5]
While fake frogs were considered for the scene where they fall from the sky, the producers decided to change to real ones, dropped from a short distance, as, according to Carter, the "fake ones looked too bad and didn't hop away after command". The snake going doing the stairs proved difficult to film as the animal kept on falling onto the floor after slithering down the steps.[4]
Reception
This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 10.7, with an 18 share, and was viewed by 10.2 million households.[6] Series creator Chris Carter said of the episode "It was a fun script that turned this big corner when the girl had the emotional breakdown. It suddenly became a very creepy, dark, disturbing episode. It was vintage Glen and Jim, and we had a great, great performance by the guest stars. A really good, solid episode that actually veered a little more toward the horror genre. But it worked because of Mulder and Scully." [7]
Footnotes
- ^ Lowry,Brian (1995). The Truth is Out There: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. pp. 193–194.
- ^ Lovece, Frank (1996). The X-Files Declassified. Citadel press. pp. 143–145.
- ^ a b c d Lowry,Brian (1995). The Truth is Out There: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. p. 195.
- ^ a b Chris Carter (featurette). Chris Carter Talks About Season 2: "Die Hand Die Verletzt". The X-Files: The Complete Second Season: Fox.
- ^ a b Lovece, Frank (1996). The X-Files Declassified. Citadel press. p. 146.
- ^ Lowry,Brian (1995). The Truth is Out There: The Official Guide to the X-Files. Harper Prism. p. 249.
- ^ Edwards, Ted (1996). X-Files Confidential. Little, Brown and Company. p. 113.
External links
- Die Hand Die Verletzt on The X-Files Wiki, an external wiki
- Die Hand Die Verletzt at the Internet Movie Database
- Die Hand Die Verletzt at TV.com
The X-Files episodes Season 1 "Pilot" · "Deep Throat" · "Squeeze" · "Conduit" · "The Jersey Devil" · "Shadows" · "Ghost in the Machine" · "Ice" · "Space" · "Fallen Angel" · "Eve" · "Fire" · "Beyond the Sea" · "Gender Bender" · "Lazarus" · "Young at Heart" · "E.B.E." · "Miracle Man" · "Shapes" · "Darkness Falls" · "Tooms" · "Born Again" · "Roland" · "The Erlenmeyer Flask"Season 2 "Little Green Men" · "The Host" · "Blood" · "Sleepless" · "Duane Barry" · "Ascension" · "3" · "One Breath" · "Firewalker" · "Red Museum" · "Excelsis Dei" · "Aubrey" · "Irresistible" · "Die Hand Die Verletzt" · "Fresh Bones" · "Colony" · "End Game" · "Fearful Symmetry" · "Død Kalm" · "Humbug" · "The Calusari" · "F. Emasculata" · "Soft Light" · "Our Town" · "Anasazi"Season 3 "The Blessing Way" · "Paper Clip" · "D.P.O." · "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" · "The List" · "2Shy" · "The Walk" · "Oubliette" · "Nisei" · "731" · "Revelations" · "War of the Coprophages" · "Syzygy" · "Grotesque" · "Piper Maru" · "Apocrypha" · "Pusher" · "Teso Dos Bichos" · "Hell Money" · "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" · "Avatar" · "Quagmire" · "Wetwired" · "Talitha Cumi"Season 4 "Herrenvolk" · "Home" · "Teliko" · "Unruhe" · "The Field Where I Died" · "Sanguinarium" · "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" · "Tunguska" · "Terma" · "Paper Hearts" · "El Mundo Gira" · "Leonard Betts" · "Never Again" · "Memento Mori" · "Kaddish" · "Unrequited" · "Tempus Fugit" · "Max" · "Synchrony" · "Small Potatoes" · "Zero Sum" · "Elegy" · "Demons" · "Gethsemane"Season 5 "Redux" · "Redux II" · "Unusual Suspects" · "Detour" · "The Post-Modern Prometheus" · "Christmas Carol" · "Emily" · "Kitsunegari" · "Schizogeny" · "Chinga" · "Kill Switch" · "Bad Blood" · "Patient X" · "The Red and the Black" · "Travelers" · "Mind’s Eye" · "All Souls" · "The Pine Bluff Variant" · "Folie a Deux" · "The End"Season 6 "The Beginning" · "Drive" · "Triangle" · "Dreamland" · "Dreamland II" · "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" · "Terms of Endearment" · "The Rain King" · "S.R. 819" · "Tithonus" · "Two Fathers" · "One Son" · "Agua Mala" · "Monday" · "Arcadia" · "Alpha" · "Trevor" · "Milagro" · "The Unnatural" · "Three of a Kind" · "Field Trip" · "Biogenesis"Season 7 "The Sixth Extinction" · "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" · "Hungry" · "Millennium" · "Rush" · "The Goldberg Variation" · "Orison" · "The Amazing Maleeni" · "Signs & Wonders" · "Sein Und Zeit" · "Closure" · "X-Cops" · "First Person Shooter" · "Theef" · "En Ami" · "Chimera" · "all things" · "Brand X" · "Hollywood A.D." · "Fight Club" · "Je Souhaite" · "Requiem"Season 8 "Within" · "Without" · "Patience" · "Roadrunners" · "Invocation" · "Redrum" · "Via Negativa" · "Surekill" · "Salvage" · "Badlaa" · "The Gift" · "Medusa" · "Per Manum" · "This Is Not Happening" · "Deadalive" · "Three Words" · "Empedocles" · "Vienen" · "Alone" · "Essence" · "Existence"Season 9 "Nothing Important Happened Today" · "Nothing Important Happened Today II" · "Dæmonicus" · "4-D" · "Lord of the Flies" · "Trust No 1" · "John Doe" · "Hellbound" · "Provenance" · "Providence" · "Audrey Pauley" · "Underneath" · "Improbable" · "Scary Monsters" · "Jump the Shark" · "William" · "Release" · "Sunshine Days" · "The Truth" · "The Truth II"Categories:- The X-Files (season 2) episodes
- 1995 television episodes
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