X FILES LYCEUM

X FILES LYCEUM
402 UNRUHE

"I committed a horrible crime."
Howard Unruh

SYNOPSIS

TRAVERSE CITY, MICHIGAN
LONG LAKE ROAD, NORTHERN MICHIGAN, 5:10 AM
THE RESIDENCE OF MARY LEFANTE
NEXT TO A HIGHWAY IN A NEARBY RURAL AREA
HOSPITAL
MIDLOTHIAN CORPORATE PARK
FBI SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC UNIT, WASHINGTON D.C.
TRAVERSE CITY POLICE STATION
OUTSIDE AN APARTMENT BUILDING CONSTRUCTION SITE IN MICHIGAN
INTERROGATION ROOM AT THE POLICE STATION
COUNTRYSIDE
POLICE STATION
ALLEY
POLICE STATION
FORMER OFFICE OF GERALD SCHNAUZ, SR.
CEMETERY

A psychotic killer unknowingly leaves clues of his victims' torment by way of psychic photographs.

SCULLYVISION

This time it is Scully, rather than her partner, who looks in to the abyss. She doesn't need to get in to the mind of killer Gerry Schnauz, the way that Mulder did with Mostow/Patterson in Grotesque to catch him, her good detective work accomplished that. In this case, Scully has to get in Schnauz' mind in order to save herself.

Early in the investigation Scully offers lots of explanations for the strange photos and who may be the culprit. So many explanations that at one point she stops herself in mid sentence knowing that not even she believes it. However, she doesn't buy Mulder's theories either.

Her first confrontation with Gerry is indeed a chilling one. He seems like a nice guy, but somehow being up on the stilts gives the impression that he is "off balance." When she is on the phone with Mulder and he mentions the killer having long legs, Scully looks at Gerry and the creepiness begins. Creepy indeed as Scully finally gets to hang up on Mulder. Gerry's temporary escape on stilts was oddly wonderful, and Scully catches him quickly. When she reached into his pocket her finger is pricked by the lobotomy weapon. We sense that this foreshadows a future meeting between Scully and the lobotomist.

MONSTERVISION

This time out, we get a crazy man who stalks and goes in for the kill of all bystanders to get his victims. He does his handiwork in order to 'save' his victims. He doesn't do it quickly; he makes them squirm, know what's coming, see the tool that will do the actual dirty work, and talk to them like a Bond villain. He doesn't actually kill the victims, which makes it worse, as their lives are a living nothing after he gets a hold of them. Chilling. He mourned Lennon, making him human. He even leaves psychic photographs behind as a 'calling card'... but wait... he didn't know he was doing that... so, he loses a point for what could have been classified finesse, which makes a great villain. So, Gerry gets 3 out of 4 ice picks.

OH, COME ON!

Mulder connects six skeletal fingers to six graves? Spooky or not, that's quite a leap.

THINGS LEARNED

Twilight Sleep consists of morphine and scopolamine, an anesthetic used by dentists and gynecologists.

When your partner is abducted, repeatedly shouting her name doesn't help much.

Expired film, even when stored near heat, can still be good.

SFX

They could have just made due with some old blurry photographs instead, the art crew did some very artistic work with the "thought-o-graphs."

WRITER
Vince Gilligan
BILLY It's just a damn passport photo. It's not the cover of Vogue.
MARY There's no reason I have to look like hell in it, is there?

Once again Gilligan makes great ironic dialogue, as sadly, it's not going to matter how much prepping she does before posing for that picture. Putting Scully in trouble is a pretty simple task, but in his hands, Scully still has power (able to speak and understand German, able to talk rationally to him even as he's getting that ice pick off the table, etc.) while her ordeal is horrifying. Wonderful interaction between the agents as they work this case, Mulder using his far fetched theory and leaping to a conclusion that turns out correct, while Scully was able to deduce where the perpetrator had his opportunity to zero in on his victims. Tense, suspenseful episode with touches of humor.

DIRECTOR
Rob Bowman

Mr. Bowman has been at the helm of many a Scully in Trouble episode: Genderbender, Our Town, Wetwired, as well as showcasing the interaction between the agents nicely in tense situations: Paper Clip and Pusher. Nice touches here, one when the camera is above Scully by her Ford Explorer as she turns reaching for her gun after being injected with Gerry's sleep cocktail. Shades of a creepy, Vertigoesque, Hitchcockian sense for what Scully is feeling. When Mulder and Scully interrogate Gerry in prison, the close ups and lighting of Scully's face made her eyes look crystal clear, almost like ice. Foreshadowing?

RUNNING TALLIES
Scully drives!
Scully is abducted
Mulder shoots people
Mulder rescues Scully
Mulder acknowledges that Scully's theory might be right with the construction site's visual access to two of the victims (Unusual Thing)
Scully flashes her badge
Cell Phones
Mulder ditches Scully
Guns
Scully uses her laptop
Scully types out a report
Raining

RECURRING CHARACTERS
NONE

SCORE CARD FOR SAVING EACH OTHER'S ASS
Scully 7 - Mulder 6
BIG TIME! Go Mulder!

Notes

The brand of film, ETAP, is the last name of assistant prop master Jim Pate spelled backwards.

In a Vince Gilligan script, no Holly or Rice! If you know of one, please let us know.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

MULDER: I was right about those photographs after all, Scully.
SCULLY: Big deal, Mulder. I nearly got an ice pick in my brain while you were out chasing ghosts. Not even ghosts, photos of ghosts. If I hadn't come up with the solid, irrefutable evidence of the construction site, leading me to the weirdo, I'd be a walking zombie mumbling unruhe while you're still checking out dentists' offices.
MULDER: I would love to hear you whisper unruhe. Do you know any naughty German words, Scully?
SCULLY: Schmutzig.
MULDER: What is that?
SCULLY: Go look it up.

ATHENAEUM

"Agent Scully, welcome," greeted the Curator from behind the information desk as she walked in the door. "You are looking a little down and disheveled."

"Do I know you?" Scully inquired, finding something in the Curator that was familiar, but couldn't put her finger on it.

"Well, yes and no. Maybe. Eventually."

Scully was used to non-answers from the Curator of the museum, so she just pushed on. "I've come to find out what I can about the term-"

"Well, in German it means," the Curator said before Scully interrupted him.

"You know exactly what I'm going to ask? All right. I know what unruhe in German means. It just seems to me that for me to get more of a handle on the case there has to be something more to learn."

"Did you take German in High School?" asked the Curator.

Scully stated, "College."

Curator continued. "Well then, there's not much else to tell other than information about Unruh. Howard Unruh."

"Go on."

"In Camden New Jersey, on September 6, 1949, Howard Unruh, a 28 year old World War II vet pharmacy student, believed his neighbors were out to get him. For a year Unruh (later diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia) plotted his revenge. Shortly after nine am, he took his Lugar and 33 rounds of ammunition for a walk. Twelve minutes later, his "Walk of Death" earned him the distinction of the Nation's worst mass murderer up to that time. He killed five men, five women, and three children. Some he knew, some he didn't.

Scully grimaced, so the Curator continued, "A tavern owner shot Unruh in the thigh, but that didn't deter him. Only when he ran out of bullets did he return home where the police soon arrested him. 'I would have killed a thousand if I'd had bullets enough,' he was quoted as saying.

"One of his potential victims who survived was twelve year old Charles Cohen, whose mother had once complained to Unruh about playing the radio too loud. Little Charlie hid in a closet as instructed by his mother while Unruh entered their apartment and began shooting. When Charlie finally felt safe enough to come out, he found his mother, father and grandmother all shot dead.

"Unruh confessed to the killings but was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. He spent his life in a psychiatric hospital. In the late 1990's Charles Cohen noted that Unruh had outlived many of the people whose families he ruined."

Scully felt even more depressed. "How horrible. I think I've heard enough."

"Wait, don't you want to hear about Dr. Walter Freeman?"

"Doctor who?"

"Freeman. He was a neurologist at George Washington University Hospital in the late 40's and early 50's."

"What about him?"

"He traveled the country performing transorbital lobotomies. Among his surgical instruments was, indeed, an ice pick."

"Uh, I think I skipped that class in medical school, and I think I'll skip it again."

"Sometimes, Agent Scully, fact is stranger, and more horrible, than fiction."

QUOTES

SCULLY I'm still not sure how you and I figure into this investigation.
MULDER Don't you see the photo?
SCULLY I assume that was taken by whoever it was who abducted her.
MULDER It was taken by a sixty-five year old druggist moments before she was abducted. That's a passport photo from a local drugstore.

SCULLY Your film's out of date.
DRUGGIST Is that against the law?
SCULLY No, I was just making an observation.

MULDER (smiling) So which one of us gets to use the stun gun on Bruno Hauptmann back there?
SCULLY All right, so he doesn't exactly stand out as a suspect. 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, the emulsion probably melted.
MULDER So you think that would make it look like she posed screaming for a passport photo?
SCULLY Plus, the film is two years out of date.
MULDER Oh.
SCULLY The, the photographic chemistry could have changed. The, the dyes ... fade, they ... all right, so what's your theory?
MULDER I'm not sure I have a theory.

MULDER Yeah, but why would she stab her boyfriend through the ear? The magic was gone?

SCULLY So you're thinking this woman planted that photo of herself in the drugstore?
MULDER What would be the point of that?

SCULLY What are you doing?
MULDER In the sixties, a bellhop named Ted Serios became kind of famous for taking what he called thoughtographs. He claimed that by concentrating on an unexposed film negative, he could create a photographic representation of what he saw in his mind. He did landscapes, cathedrals, the Queen of England.
SCULLY Thoughtographs?
MULDER Also known as skotographs. The literature on thought photography dates back almost to Louis Daguerre.
SCULLY So that makes it legitimate?

MULDER I think he was here, Scully.
SCULLY Who was here?
MULDER Mary LeFante's abductor. I think he stalked her.

SCULLY Psychic photography? Mulder, I think that it's obvious that somebody doctored these images and planted them to be found here. Maybe as some kind of a smokescreen.
MULDER Meant to conceal what? This isn't about mail fraud, Scully, that's just incidental. What if ... what if ... someone had this ability? An image like this would be a peak into that person's mind.
SCULLY Into their darkest fantasies.
MULDER The fantasy of a killer.

SCULLY She's been given what's called a transorbital lobotomy. It used to be known as an icepick lobotomy. It involves inserting a leucotome through the eye sockets.
MULDER So we're looking for a doctor? Someone with training?
DOCTOR Not judging by this.
SCULLY Whoever did this, Mulder, did it wrong.

MULDER Yeah. I keep thinking about that word that Mary LeFante was repeating, unruhe. I checked the Michigan phone directory. It appears under three different spellings but none within eighty miles of here.
SCULLY It might be significant as a word.
MULDER That's what I've been thinking. Apparently in German, it means trouble or strife.
SCULLY Unrest.
MULDER You took German in high school, Scully?
SCULLY College.

SCULLY Is that what we're looking for here, Mulder? More evidence of psychic photography?
MULDER That may be the only evidence we get.
SCULLY I've got a bureau forensics team coming up from Detroit.
MULDER What's here for them to find? This guy is obviously very good at what he does. He's left behind no witnesses, no latent prints. The only thing he's left are those photos, which leads me to believe he doesn't even know that he has that ability.

SCULLY What if the kidnapper was working construction at both sites? From these two vantage points, he would have been able to pick out the two women.
MULDER You may be right, Scully, you should check it out. Let me know what you find.
SCULLY Where are you going to be?
MULDER I'll be back in DC. I want special photo to run this. I still think the answer is in here.
SCULLY What if it's not, Mulder? This woman's time is running out.
MULDER Well, that's all the more reason to fully investigate the one and only hard piece of evidence we do have. I'll be in touch.

MULDER (on the cell phone) Scully, I may have something for you on the kidnapper. It's something about his legs.
SCULLY Yeah?
MULDER They're unusually long, they're out of proportion. I'm thinking he's either very tall, or he's not but wants to be. Scully? Scully, are you there?
She looks back at Schnauz on stilts

MULDER You want to tell us about the first time you were arrested, Gerry? In 1980, you attacked your father with an axe handle. You beat him so severely that he spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair.
SCHNAUZ I was not jailed, I was institutionalized. I had a kind of chemical imbalance.
MULDER Yeah, Gerald Thomas Schnauz, diagnosed and treated for a paranoid schizophrenic disorder six years in Melvoin Psychiatric Hospital, released 1986. So what you been up to since 1986, Gerry?
SCHNAUZ Taking care of my father. Looking after him 24 hours a day. Making amends. He... passed away January.
MULDER Well, how did you feel about that?
SCHNAUZ Sad.
MULDER Says here that you have a sister. Where is your sister, Gerry?
SCHNAUZ She passed.
MULDER Actually, it says here she committed suicide in 1980. That was a bad year. What else happened in 1980, Gerry?
SCHNAUZ Well, John Lennon got shot. Where the hell are you going with this? What are you, Sigmund Freud?

MULDER Gerry, tell me where Alice Brandt is.
SCHNAUZ She's safe from the howlers. She's all right now.

MULDER Hey, Scully, that word unruhe, unrest, is bothering me. Maybe he thought he was curing them somehow, saving him from damnation, from those things in the pictures, you know, 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.

MULDER He took the passport camera and all the film in the store.

SCULLY He also took morphine, scopolamine, hydrobromide and insulin syringes. He's making more twilight sleep.
MULDER He wants to continue his work.
SCULLY You know, that job site that I arrested him at, Mulder. What if he's ... what if he's already picked out his next victim? There were ... there were apartment buildings on all sides.
MULDER You think you interrupted his stalking?
SCULLY Let's go.
MULDER Hold on a second. You bring the car around. I just want to wait for this. I'll be right there.

SCULLY Send units to the 300 block of Belmont Avenue. Check all of the apartments in the vicinity of that job site. I think he's heading back there.
CORNING Got it.
SCULLY Thanks.

CORNING It's his father's obituary.
MULDER Recipient of the Bronze Star medal during the Korean War ... Gerald Schnauz, Sr., DDS. He's a retired dentist.

SCULLY It's over, Gerry. Let me go right now. Why me, Gerry? Do I remind you of your sister? Why did your sister kill herself, Gerry? What did your father do to her?
SCHNAUZ He didn't do anything. It was the howlers.
SCULLY OK, then let's talk about the howlers.
SCHNAUZ 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 - right there. Don't you feel them?
SCULLY I don't have them, Gerry.
SCHNAUZ See? They made you say that, just now, because they know I'm going to kill them.
SCULLY What if you're wrong, Gerry?. What if there are no such things as howlers? What if you made them up inside your head to explain the things your sister said your father did?
SCHNAUZ Great. Now they 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.

MULDER Six fingers, right. Why are there six?
CORNING We've got the State Police looking as far south as Grand Rapids. Still no sign of him.
MULDER Damn it!
CORNING What do we do?
MULDER That's five headstones. And the father makes six. Come on!

SCULLY Addendum to case report. After his death, a diary was found among 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 and 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?

THE END