The Host (The X-Files)
Encyclopedia
"The Host" is the second episode of the second season
of the science fiction
television series The X-Files
. It premiered on the Fox network
on September 23, 1994. It was written by Chris Carter
, directed by Daniel Sackheim
, and featured guest appearances by Darin Morgan
. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology
. "The Host" earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.8, being watched by 9.3 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received positive reviews, praising the creepiness of the villain. Although the character is only heard and not named, "The Host" also introduced the character of X, the successor of Mulder's former Syndicate informant Deep Throat.
After being reassigned to different departments FBI
special agents Fox Mulder
(David Duchovny
) and Dana Scully
(Gillian Anderson
) investigate a dead body in New Jersey that results in the discovery of a bizarre fluke
-like man.
n freighter on the coast of New Jersey
, a crewman trying to fix the ship's toilets is pulled into the septic system. His half-eaten body appears in the sewers of Newark
days later. Agent Mulder
is assigned the case and visits with a Detective Norman in Newark, being shown the still-unidentified body. Mulder angrily confronts Assistant Director Skinner
about the case, feeling that it is a form of punishment. That night, Mulder talks to former partner Dana Scully
, telling her that he's thinking of leaving the FBI
. He shoots down Scully's idea that he request transfer to Quantico
, since he believes the FBI doesn't want them working together. Scully performs the autopsy on the crewman's body, finding a tattoo on its arm and a flukeworm inside its back.
In Newark, a city worker is pulled underwater in the sewers but is rescued by his co-worker. He believes he was attacked by a python. He decides to visit a doctor (with Mulder observing) and complains of a weird taste in his mouth. An abnormal four pointed wound appears on his back. Scully shows Mulder the flukeworm she found, whose mouth, though much smaller, matches the wound on Craig's back. Mulder receives a call from a mysterious man telling him he has a friend at the FBI. That night, Craig coughs up a flukeworm in his shower and dies. Mulder visits a sewage processing plant and find a large humanoid with a fluke-like mouth.
At Quantico, someone slips a newspaper article under Scully's door enabling her to identify the original body as a crew member on a Russian ship. Mulder and Scully meet at the processing plant and they look at the strange, fluke-like man. Skinner wants to prosecute the creature and subject it to a psychiatric evaluation, which Mulder thinks would be difficult. Skinner tells Mulder of Craig's death and admits that this would have been an X-File had they still been open.
That night workers put the flukeman into a U.S. Marshal's van, but it kills the driver and escapes to a local campsite. The flukeman hides in a portable toilet and is pulled into a truck the next day when the toilet is drained. Mulder receives another phone call from the mysterious caller. When he questions Scully about it, she denies any involvement. The flukeman is brought back to the processing plant. Scully believes that the flukeworm she found in the body is a larva, attempting to reproduce. One of the men at the processing plant is pulled underwater by the flukeman while investigating a storm drain overflow. Mulder heads in and saves him, apparently killing the flukeman by closing a sewer grate on it, slicing it in half. Scully concludes her investigation, thinking that the creature was brought to the U.S. by a Russian freighter that was hauling salvage from Chernobyl
, and that the creature was created in a 'soup' of radioactive sewage. Elsewhere, the flukeman's remains open its eyes.
claimed to have been inspired to write the episode after his dog
had worms. He also had been reading about Chernobyl
and the extinction of species at the time and blended all three of these concepts when writing the episode. Carter described his mood while writing the episode, "I was in a funk when I wrote that episode. We were coming back from hiatus and I was trying to find something more interesting than just the Flukeman. I was irritated at the time and I brought my irritation to Mulder's attitude. Basically, he had become fed up with the FBI. They had given him what he felt was a low assignment, which was sending him into the city after a dead body. But lo and behold, he finds that this is a case that for all intents and purposes is an X-File. It's been given to him by a man he's never looked at as an ally, Skinner. So it's an interesting establishing of a relationship between them." Producer J.P. Finn described the episode as a departure from Carter's usual work as it did not deal with an alien subject matter.
The Flukeman was portrayed by Darin Morgan
, brother of executive producer
Glen Morgan
. He would become a staff writer for the show later in the second season
. The Flukeman suit used by Morgan, which included flipper-like feet, yellow contact lenses, and fake teeth, took six hours to put on; this process was eventually sped up. Morgan wore the suit as much as 20 consecutive hours during shooting. As a result, he was forced to go to the bathroom while still wearing the suit. Morgan was rarely on set without being in full costume, and recalled that when he met up with David Duchovny again upon joining the series' writing staff, the actor had no idea who he was, despite having enjoyed an amiable relationship with the costumed Morgan previously. The suit dissolved in water, forcing special effects artist Toby Lindala to reconstruct the suit each day. Because the suit did not permit Morgan to breathe through his nose, he was unable to eat while wearing it. Carter described the character as "the embodiment of everyone's sense of vulnerability, the idea of something that exists in the underworld of the sewer system and might in fact come to bite you in the least elegant of places". The original intention was showing even less of the Flukeman, but some angles and lighting ended up revealing more of the creature's design. Carter still felt it helped to "get more creepy", as the Flukeman is not shown fully until the final scenes.
The sewer processing plant scenes were shot at Iona Island Sewage Treatment plant in Canada. The sewer scenes were shot in a pit on the show's stage, with Carter using his father, who worked as a construction worker, as a consultant on how to build it. Carter had to fight with Fox's broadcast standards department over the scene where a victim vomits up a flukeworm while in the shower. James Wong
described it as the grossest piece of television ever put on the air. As Gillian Anderson
's pregnancy was getting more apparent, the producers started to shoot Scully's scenes in a way it would be disguised, with "very fancy trick angles, trench coats, and scenes where she is seated rather than standing".
on September 23, 1994, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom
on BBC Two
on September 4, 1995. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 9.8, with a 17 share, meaning that roughly 9.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 17 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 9.3 million households.
The episode received glowing praise from critics. Entertainment Weekly
gave "The Host" a rare A+, noting that it was "a refreshing instance of a fully and satisfactorily resolved episode — like a perfect meal, although you definitely don't want to eat during this one." Reviewer Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club
described the episode as "the first really, really icky X-Files", and while considering redundant the "circular" nature of the plot, with the creature coming back to the sewers after escaping, he felt that "The Host" "holds up because of the Flukeman's irreconcilable ugliness, and because it continues down the path that "Little Green Men" started on". On a more negative view, Critical Myth's John Keegan gave the episode 6/10, considering that "as fun as this episode can be, there are some places were it just doesn’t quite add up", criticizing writing elements such as the lack of resolution, the explanation for the Flukeman's origins, and the "heavy-handed" introduction of X. "The Host" was later picked for the 2008 DVD The X-Files: Revelations, with eight episodes Chris Carter considered "essential grounding" for the film The X-Files: I Want to Believe
. A writer from the Vancouver Sun listed "The Host" as one of the best stand alone episodes of the show, saying that it broke the "B-movie fun at best" quality of most X-Files standalone episodes, saying that "thanks to its cinema-grade made-up effects, claustrophobic sets and chilling subject matter, this Chris Carter-penned episode not only took the show to new heights of horror and suspense, it offered a fresh alternative on network television".
The Flukeman character has also attracted positive criticism. Writing for Den of Geek, John Moore listed the Flukeman as one of his "Top 10 X-Files Baddies", writing that "the idea of a man size biter running around drains in a city near me – looking like a giant, fanged maggot - was always likely to induce a goodly amount of cheek-shifting on the sofa. " The A.V. Clubs Zack Handlen described the flukeman as a "beyond icky" monster that "just looks wrong", adding that "the plain fact of its existence is horrifying enough that it doesn't need to do more". Connie Ogle from PopMatters
ranked the character among the "best" monster-of-the-week, describing it as "something of a poster boy for XF villains," and considering that "never has toxic waste seemed so dangerous as when the big slimy white fellow slithers onto the screen and starts attacking people in the sewers."
The X-Files (season 2)
The second season of the science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on Fox in the United States on September 16, 1994, concluded on the same channel on May 19, 1995, and contained 25 episodes.- Production :...
of the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
television series The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
. It premiered on the Fox network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
on September 23, 1994. It was written by Chris Carter
Chris Carter (screenwriter)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He is the creator of The X-Files and Millennium.- Ten Thirteen Productions :...
, directed by Daniel Sackheim
Daniel Sackheim
Daniel Sackheim is an American TV and film director. He has directed several episodes of the TV show The X-Files, 3 episodes of Harsh Realm, House, and Life, the last two of which he also served on as an executive producer.-External links:...
, and featured guest appearances by Darin Morgan
Darin Morgan
Darin Morgan is an American screenwriter best known for several offbeat, darkly humorous episodes of the television series The X-Files and Millennium. His teleplay for the X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" won a 1996 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Drama...
. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology
Mythology of The X-Files
The mythology of The X-Files, sometimes referred to as its mytharc by the show's staff and fans, follows the quest of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder , a believer in supernatural phenomena, and Dana Scully , his skeptical partner. Their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner was also often...
. "The Host" earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.8, being watched by 9.3 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received positive reviews, praising the creepiness of the villain. Although the character is only heard and not named, "The Host" also introduced the character of X, the successor of Mulder's former Syndicate informant Deep Throat.
After being reassigned to different departments FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
special agents Fox Mulder
Fox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
(David Duchovny
David Duchovny
David William Duchovny is an American actor, writer and director. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and as Hank Moody on Californication.-Early life:...
) and Dana Scully
Dana Scully
FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
(Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
) investigate a dead body in New Jersey that results in the discovery of a bizarre fluke
Trematoda
Trematoda is a class within the phylum Platyhelminthes that contains two groups of parasitic flatworms, commonly referred to as "flukes".-Taxonomy and biodiversity:...
-like man.
Plot
On a RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n freighter on the coast of New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, a crewman trying to fix the ship's toilets is pulled into the septic system. His half-eaten body appears in the sewers of Newark
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
days later. Agent Mulder
Fox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
is assigned the case and visits with a Detective Norman in Newark, being shown the still-unidentified body. Mulder angrily confronts Assistant Director Skinner
Walter Skinner
FBI Assistant Director Walter Sergei Skinner is a fictional character in the American FOX television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence...
about the case, feeling that it is a form of punishment. That night, Mulder talks to former partner Dana Scully
Dana Scully
FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
, telling her that he's thinking of leaving the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
. He shoots down Scully's idea that he request transfer to Quantico
FBI Academy
The FBI Academy, located in Quantico, Virginia, is the training site for new Special Agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was first opened for use in 1972 on 385 acres of woodland. It is a relatively small government academy, housing three dormitory buildings and...
, since he believes the FBI doesn't want them working together. Scully performs the autopsy on the crewman's body, finding a tattoo on its arm and a flukeworm inside its back.
In Newark, a city worker is pulled underwater in the sewers but is rescued by his co-worker. He believes he was attacked by a python. He decides to visit a doctor (with Mulder observing) and complains of a weird taste in his mouth. An abnormal four pointed wound appears on his back. Scully shows Mulder the flukeworm she found, whose mouth, though much smaller, matches the wound on Craig's back. Mulder receives a call from a mysterious man telling him he has a friend at the FBI. That night, Craig coughs up a flukeworm in his shower and dies. Mulder visits a sewage processing plant and find a large humanoid with a fluke-like mouth.
At Quantico, someone slips a newspaper article under Scully's door enabling her to identify the original body as a crew member on a Russian ship. Mulder and Scully meet at the processing plant and they look at the strange, fluke-like man. Skinner wants to prosecute the creature and subject it to a psychiatric evaluation, which Mulder thinks would be difficult. Skinner tells Mulder of Craig's death and admits that this would have been an X-File had they still been open.
That night workers put the flukeman into a U.S. Marshal's van, but it kills the driver and escapes to a local campsite. The flukeman hides in a portable toilet and is pulled into a truck the next day when the toilet is drained. Mulder receives another phone call from the mysterious caller. When he questions Scully about it, she denies any involvement. The flukeman is brought back to the processing plant. Scully believes that the flukeworm she found in the body is a larva, attempting to reproduce. One of the men at the processing plant is pulled underwater by the flukeman while investigating a storm drain overflow. Mulder heads in and saves him, apparently killing the flukeman by closing a sewer grate on it, slicing it in half. Scully concludes her investigation, thinking that the creature was brought to the U.S. by a Russian freighter that was hauling salvage from Chernobyl
Chernobyl
Chernobyl or Chornobyl is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, in Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city had been the administrative centre of the Chernobyl Raion since 1932....
, and that the creature was created in a 'soup' of radioactive sewage. Elsewhere, the flukeman's remains open its eyes.
Production
Chris CarterChris Carter (screenwriter)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He is the creator of The X-Files and Millennium.- Ten Thirteen Productions :...
claimed to have been inspired to write the episode after his dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
had worms. He also had been reading about Chernobyl
Chernobyl
Chernobyl or Chornobyl is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, in Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city had been the administrative centre of the Chernobyl Raion since 1932....
and the extinction of species at the time and blended all three of these concepts when writing the episode. Carter described his mood while writing the episode, "I was in a funk when I wrote that episode. We were coming back from hiatus and I was trying to find something more interesting than just the Flukeman. I was irritated at the time and I brought my irritation to Mulder's attitude. Basically, he had become fed up with the FBI. They had given him what he felt was a low assignment, which was sending him into the city after a dead body. But lo and behold, he finds that this is a case that for all intents and purposes is an X-File. It's been given to him by a man he's never looked at as an ally, Skinner. So it's an interesting establishing of a relationship between them." Producer J.P. Finn described the episode as a departure from Carter's usual work as it did not deal with an alien subject matter.
The Flukeman was portrayed by Darin Morgan
Darin Morgan
Darin Morgan is an American screenwriter best known for several offbeat, darkly humorous episodes of the television series The X-Files and Millennium. His teleplay for the X-Files episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" won a 1996 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing for a Drama...
, brother of executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
Glen Morgan
Glen Morgan
Glen Morgan is an American television producer, writer, and director.-Biography:Morgan is best known for his screen work with long-time writing partner James Wong, including The X-Files, Millennium, Space: Above and Beyond, the Final Destination series, The One, Willard, and the 2006 remake of...
. He would become a staff writer for the show later in the second season
The X-Files (season 2)
The second season of the science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on Fox in the United States on September 16, 1994, concluded on the same channel on May 19, 1995, and contained 25 episodes.- Production :...
. The Flukeman suit used by Morgan, which included flipper-like feet, yellow contact lenses, and fake teeth, took six hours to put on; this process was eventually sped up. Morgan wore the suit as much as 20 consecutive hours during shooting. As a result, he was forced to go to the bathroom while still wearing the suit. Morgan was rarely on set without being in full costume, and recalled that when he met up with David Duchovny again upon joining the series' writing staff, the actor had no idea who he was, despite having enjoyed an amiable relationship with the costumed Morgan previously. The suit dissolved in water, forcing special effects artist Toby Lindala to reconstruct the suit each day. Because the suit did not permit Morgan to breathe through his nose, he was unable to eat while wearing it. Carter described the character as "the embodiment of everyone's sense of vulnerability, the idea of something that exists in the underworld of the sewer system and might in fact come to bite you in the least elegant of places". The original intention was showing even less of the Flukeman, but some angles and lighting ended up revealing more of the creature's design. Carter still felt it helped to "get more creepy", as the Flukeman is not shown fully until the final scenes.
The sewer processing plant scenes were shot at Iona Island Sewage Treatment plant in Canada. The sewer scenes were shot in a pit on the show's stage, with Carter using his father, who worked as a construction worker, as a consultant on how to build it. Carter had to fight with Fox's broadcast standards department over the scene where a victim vomits up a flukeworm while in the shower. James Wong
James Wong (producer)
James 'Jim' Wong is a Cantonese-American television producer, writer, and film director notable for his screen works of The X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond, Millennium, Final Destination 1 & 3, The One, and the remakes of Willard and Black Christmas along with writing partner Glen...
described it as the grossest piece of television ever put on the air. As Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
's pregnancy was getting more apparent, the producers started to shoot Scully's scenes in a way it would be disguised, with "very fancy trick angles, trench coats, and scenes where she is seated rather than standing".
Broadcast and reception
"The Host" premiered on the Fox networkFox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
on September 23, 1994, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
on September 4, 1995. This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 9.8, with a 17 share, meaning that roughly 9.8 percent of all television-equipped households, and 17 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. It was viewed by 9.3 million households.
The episode received glowing praise from critics. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave "The Host" a rare A+, noting that it was "a refreshing instance of a fully and satisfactorily resolved episode — like a perfect meal, although you definitely don't want to eat during this one." Reviewer Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
described the episode as "the first really, really icky X-Files", and while considering redundant the "circular" nature of the plot, with the creature coming back to the sewers after escaping, he felt that "The Host" "holds up because of the Flukeman's irreconcilable ugliness, and because it continues down the path that "Little Green Men" started on". On a more negative view, Critical Myth's John Keegan gave the episode 6/10, considering that "as fun as this episode can be, there are some places were it just doesn’t quite add up", criticizing writing elements such as the lack of resolution, the explanation for the Flukeman's origins, and the "heavy-handed" introduction of X. "The Host" was later picked for the 2008 DVD The X-Files: Revelations, with eight episodes Chris Carter considered "essential grounding" for the film The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a 2008 science fiction-thriller directed by Chris Carter and written by both Carter and Frank Spotnitz. It is the second feature film based on The X-Files franchise created by Carter, following the 1998 film...
. A writer from the Vancouver Sun listed "The Host" as one of the best stand alone episodes of the show, saying that it broke the "B-movie fun at best" quality of most X-Files standalone episodes, saying that "thanks to its cinema-grade made-up effects, claustrophobic sets and chilling subject matter, this Chris Carter-penned episode not only took the show to new heights of horror and suspense, it offered a fresh alternative on network television".
The Flukeman character has also attracted positive criticism. Writing for Den of Geek, John Moore listed the Flukeman as one of his "Top 10 X-Files Baddies", writing that "the idea of a man size biter running around drains in a city near me – looking like a giant, fanged maggot - was always likely to induce a goodly amount of cheek-shifting on the sofa. " The A.V. Clubs Zack Handlen described the flukeman as a "beyond icky" monster that "just looks wrong", adding that "the plain fact of its existence is horrifying enough that it doesn't need to do more". Connie Ogle from PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
ranked the character among the "best" monster-of-the-week, describing it as "something of a poster boy for XF villains," and considering that "never has toxic waste seemed so dangerous as when the big slimy white fellow slithers onto the screen and starts attacking people in the sewers."