Hell Money

"Hell Money"
The X-Files episode
Three unnamed men hiding their faces with Chinese masks
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 19
Directed by	Tucker Gates
Written by	Jeffrey Vlaming
Production code	3X19
Original air date	March 29, 1996
Guest stars
BD Wong as Detective Glen Chao Lucy Liu as Kim Hsin Michael Yama as Mr. Hsin James Hong as Hard Faced Man Doug Abrahams as Detective Neary Ellie Harvie as OPO Staffer Derek Lowe as Johnny Lo Donald Fong as Vase Man Diana Ha as Dr. Wu Stephen M.D. Chang as Large Man Paul Wong as Wiry Man
Episode chronology
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List of season 3 episodes List of The X-Files episodes

"Hell Money" is the nineteenth episode of the third season of The X-Files television series. "Hell Money" features Mulder and Scully investigating a Chinese lottery involving the selling of body parts.

Plot

In San Francisco's Chinatown, a Chinese immigrant, Johnny Lo, makes his way to his apartment. There, he is confronted by someone telling him its time to "pay the price", and is overtaken by three figures wearing shigong masks. A security guard later finds the three figures near a crematory oven, where Lo is being burned alive.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate Lo's death, the latest in a series of fatal incinerations in Chinatown; Mulder believes that ghost activity is behind the deaths, while Scully suspects a cult. The agents collaborate with Glen Chao, a Chinese-American detective with the San Francisco Police Department. When they find a Chinese character written inside the oven, Chao translates it as meaning "ghost" (鬼). Mulder also finds a scrap of burned paper in the ashes, which Chao identifies as "hell money", a symbolic offering to deceased spirits. The agents locate Lo's apartment, where they find his collection of charms, as well as bloodstains underneath the recently-installed carpet.

Meanwhile, another Chinese immigrant, Hsin, tends to his leukimia-stricken daughter, Kim. To pay for her expensive treatments, Hsin attends an underground lottery in which participants either win money or lose an organ, depending on tiles chosen from a pair of vases. One man wins the lottery but selects a bad tile, and his body is found later that day. Scully, performs an autopsy on his body and finds that he had been selling body parts, noticing his numerous surgical scars. The agents question Chao, who claims that the local community maintains a code of silence and doesn't reveal anything to even him. Chao finds information that leads them to Hsin, who installed the carpet in Lo's apartment. Hsin has a bandage over his eye, having lost it to the lottery earlier. Returning to his home, Chao is confronted by the three masked figures.

The agents visit Chao at the hospital. Meanwhile, Hsin visits the Hard Faced Man, one of the heads of the lottery, wanting to end his participation in the lottery. The man warns him that ghostly fire will consume him if he leaves the lottery. The agents return to the hospital, finding Chao gone. They trace his blood to that on the carpet in Lo's apartment, finding a match. This causes the agents to visit Hsin, but find only his daughter at his apartment.

The agents find Chao outside a nearby Chinese restaurant and follow him inside. Hsin wins the lottery, but selects the tile representing his heart. Chao comes in, demanding the lottery end, and knocks over the table with the vases, revealing the lottery to be fixed. Mulder and Scully stop the Hard Faced Man seconds before he is about to operate on Hsin. They interrogate him, but because no one who participated will testify against him, it is unlikely he will be prosecuted. Hsin is brought to the hospital and his daughter is placed on an organ donor list. Chao disappears, awakening in a crematorium oven, being burned alive.

Production

The episode originated from an idea that executive producer Chris Carter had about a pyramid scheme involving body parts. Writer Jeff Vlaming combined two concepts he had, one involving a lottery in a small town with another concerning corporate beings assembling the destitute in Chinatown. Carter combined the stories when the script was submitted. Vlaming had originally hoped that this would be one of those rare episodes where Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) was right, but in the end Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) put everything together.

The episode's exterior scenes were shot in Vancouver, Canada's Chinatown while the crematorium scenes were shot within a soundstage. The vase and tiles used in the episode were created entirely by the show's production department. The scene where a frog pops out of a victim's chest was created by using molds to create a fake human torso, which was placed over the actor. For a close-up shot, the torso was placed on a table with a hole on it, allowing the show's animal wrangler to push a frog through the opening in the torso.

Actors Michael Yama and Lucy Liu had to redo all of their dialogue in a Cantonese accent in post production. Their re-recorded lines were dubbed over the original soundtrack.

Co-producer Paul Rabwin wasn't much of a fan of the episode, thinking that it wasn't really an X-File. He claimed that if Mulder and Scully were removed from the episode it wouldn't have changed anything and that the two were not affected personally by the case.

Reception

This episode earned a Nielsen rating of 9.9, with a 17 share. It was viewed by 14.86 million people.

Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an A-, calling it "gorgeously shot". Television Without Pity ranked "Hell Money" the eleventh most nightmare-inducing episode of the show.

External links

• "Hell Money" on The X-Files Wiki, an external wiki
• "Hell Money" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Hell Money" at TV.com