Hellish money

In Chinatown, San Francisco, a young Chinese man, Johnny Low, runs to his home in fear. Inside, an unknown person is waiting for him, whom, after a short conversation, Lowe is stabbing. Turning around, Low sees three masked ghosts. Later that evening, the guard of the funeral home had time to catch a glimpse of these three figures, as well as how Lowe burns alive in the crematorium. Mulder and Scully investigate Low's death, similar to the deaths of Chinese immigrants in other major US cities. Agents are assisted by police detective Glen Chao. In the crematorium’s oven, agents find a scratched hieroglyph “ghost” and a half-burned scrap of “hellish money” - symbolic money, donated to spirits in Chinese mythology . Mulder makes a version about ghosts, while Scully suggests some kind of cult. During a search of Low's apartment, Mulder discovers hieroglyphics on the door and blood stains under the newly laid carpet .

An elderly Chinese man, Sin, is caring for a daughter with leukemia at home. Later, Sin participates in an underground lottery, where participants, drawing chips from a vase, can win a large sum or lose some internal organ. One-eyed Chinese gets the right to pull the chip, but fails. The next day, his body is found in a cemetery, secretly buried in a freshly excavated grave for another deceased. At autopsy, Scully discovers the absence of many internal organs or parts of a person, as well as many surgical scars.

Chao finds out that the fresh carpet in Lowe's apartment put Xing secret from his employer. Agents and Chao arrive at Sin’s apartment, whose eyes are blindfolded due to a “work accident”. In fact, Sin lost his eye the day before, losing to the underground lottery. Xing gives only evasive answers to agents, but he throws a couple of words in Chinese with Chao. When Chao returns home, there are three masked men waiting for him. Agents find out that Chao was attacked, but escaped from the hospital. Sina is visited by a Man with a stern face - one of the organizers of the underground lottery. Sin begs him to not participate in the lottery, but is refused. Agents determine that the blood in Lowe’s apartment is the same as Chao’s blood. Thanks to Sina's daughter, agents understand that her father is participating in an underground lottery. On the same day, they calculate the venue with the help of a donor agency that has repeatedly dealt with a suspicious Chinese doctor.

Sin gets the right to play the lottery, but pulls out a chip, symbolizing the "heart". Intervening Chao tries to convince the lottery organizers to let Sina go, but they refuse, while their henchmen drag Sina into the operating room adjacent to the gaming room. In anger, Chao overturns the lottery table, discovering that the game is rigged and it is impossible to win the game from the organizers. Having burst into the operating room, Chao shoots a Man with a stern face, after which they are both arrested by Mulder and Scully. Sina is sent to the hospital, and his daughter is added to the donor list. Agents interrogate a Man with a stern face at the police station, but they understand that the case against him will fall apart, since none of the participants in the events wants to testify, and Chao mysteriously disappeared. Chao wakes up in a crematorium furnace, where seconds later it burns alive ^[1] .

The script for Hell's Money was written by Jeffrey Vlaming, who reworked Chris Carter's idea of ​​a pyramid with human organs instead of money ^[4] . Vleaming added ideas to the plot with a lottery held in a small town (later becoming a small district of a big city) and with a certain group controlling the poor in Chinatown. Vlaming also wanted to make it clear in the end that Scully's theory was correct, and not, as usual, her partner ^[5] . Carter edited the first version of the script, combining these three storylines into one ^[4] . “ Entertainment Weekly ” later noted that “the swirling grotesque nature of the plot suggests that it is based on real events,” but Carter claimed that the plot was fictitious from beginning to end ^[6] . Also, after processing, Mulder turned out to be right again, who realized that the city held an underground lottery with a fatal outcome ^[5] . For Vlaming, the episode was the second and final collaboration with the series after the 2Shy series ^[7] .

The director of the series was Tucker Gates, for whom it, on the contrary, was the debut work in the framework of The X-Files. However, like Vlaming, Gates worked with the series only twice: his second and final work, also as a director, was the episode " El Mundo gira " ^[7] . Hell Money is also notable for the fact that here, at the dawn of her film career, Lucy Liu played. Subsequently, the actress became widely known by playing in the series " Ellie McBeal " in 1998 ^[8] and in a number of box office films.

The full-scale shooting of the episode was carried out in Vancouver's Chinatown, while the scenery depicting the crematorium was built in the studio ^[4] . Scenes in the lottery hall were shot in the Welsh Irish Scottish English community building ^[9] . The directors made a balcony for the episode, which, by agreement with the owners of the premises, had to be dismantled at the end of the shoot. However, the owners later changed their minds by asking them to leave the balcony in place “for aesthetic reasons” ^[10] .

For a scene in which a frog crawls out of the stomach of one of the victims, an artificial torso was imposed on the actor. For close-ups, the torso was placed on the autopsy table, in which a hole was made. Through this hole, an animal specialist pushed the frog into the cut in the torso ^[4] .

The premiere took place on Fox on March 29, 1996. Nielsen's rating was 9.9 with a share of 17.0, meaning that approximately 9.9 percent of all US-equipped households and 17 percent of all households watching television that evening were set to premiere the episode. The number of viewers watching the premiere is estimated at 14.86 million people ^[11] .

From the critics, the episode received mixed reviews with a polarity uncharacteristic for the series of ratings from mostly positive to negative. “ Entertainment Weekly ” rated the series “A–” (3.75 points out of 4 possible), calling it “excellently shot” and highlighting the scenes in the game room ^[6] . Television Without Pity put Infernal Money in 11th place on the list of the most horrific episodes of the series, noting that "if there is anything you shouldn't flirt with, then this is the Chinese mafia . Especially the part of it that dresses like the Slipknot group and a) burns you alive if you are lucky or b) forces you to participate in the lottery in order to slowly cut you into pieces and sell your organs on the black market ” ^[12] . Robert Shirman and Lars Pearson in the book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, rated the episode four stars in The Wanting to Believe: Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen five possible. According to writers, this episode is “hard to love, but it’s sincere and whole.” Shirman and Pearson also praised the presentation of the situation from the point of view of the Chinese emigrants, in which both Chao, Mulder and Scully look "clumsy and arrogant" ^[13] .

Unlike the critics previously mentioned, Critical Myth rated the series only 5 points out of 10. Having endorsed the idea of ​​clashing Mulder and Scully with a foreign culture that makes the banal murder case interesting, Keegan found the episode structure unsuccessful. According to the critic, the viewer will recognize the whole background faster than the main characters, which makes a significant part of the episode only a mechanical movement to the denouement ^[14] . The AV Club columnist Todd van der Werff delivered the C + series (2.5 points out of 4), writing that even though the episode is “quite bold for its time, it feels like a series of shocking moments strung on a fairly standard the plot ” ^[8] . Paula Vitaris (“ Cinefantastique ”) was also stingy with good grades, giving the episode two points out of a possible four for the lack of a paranormal component and calling the actors in black costumes and masks “not very convincing” ^[15] . Co-producer of the series Paul Rabwin did not at all consider the series as real "secret material". Besides the absence of a paranormal phenomenon, Rabbin was not delighted that if both Mulder and Scully were withdrawn from the plot, this would not change anything and would not affect them in any way ^[5] .

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