By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The X-Files had a somewhat uneven television debut, but most fans agree that the Season 1 finale “The Erlenmeyer Flask” was a perfect showcase of the series’ potential. This was also an episode that drove home how vulnerable our favorite characters are by killing off Deep Throat, the mysterious informant who helped Fox Mulder with his quest to discover the truth about alien life. What most fans don’t realize about this shocking death is that it was influenced by none other than Alfred Hitchcock, as veteran X-Files director R.W. Goodwin wanted the informant’s sudden death to be as surprising as Janet Leigh’s death in Psycho.
How Alfred Hitchcock Inspired The X-Files
Alfred Hitchcock was scaring audiences decades before The X-Files hit the air, and some of his influence on the show (like the episode “Triangle” being filmed in the style of the director’s movie Rope) are relatively obvious. However, because the scene where Deep Throat dies doesn’t copy any of Hitchcock’s visual elements, it can be harder to detect the legendary director’s influence. Nonetheless, episode director Goodwin told Cinefantastique that “I wanted it to be extremely shocking when [Scully] saw Deep Throat shot…wanted that to be completely unexpected, like Hitchcock killing off Janet Leigh in Psycho.”
If you’re still puzzled as to why this makes for a great Alfred Hitchcock homage, then it’s time to take a break from The X-Files and go watch the classic horror movie Psycho. Going into that film, audiences had every reason to assume that major Hollywood star Janet Leigh was playing our main character. However, she is killed off relatively early during the film’s famous shower scene, and the combination of sudden violence and the death of someone everyone thought was the main character made this one of the most shocking scenes in cinematic history.
R.W. Goodwin is a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock and for this X-Files Season 1 finale, he wanted to replicate the shocking murder of Janet Leigh’s character. As with her Psycho character, X-Files fans had every reason to think that Deep Throat was “safe” because he had been a major character throughout the entire season. Killing him off (in this case, by having the Crew Cut Man shoot him) did for the show what the shower scene did for Psycho: let audiences know that nobody is safe.
While Goodwin didn’t fully confirm this, it sounds like he was further inspired by the voyeuristic nature of Alfred Hitchcock’s shower scene because of Scully. The episode director clarified that “I really felt it was important to get a real clear point of view” for Deep Throat’s death, and he decided that “the point of view was Scully.” Giving her a clear view of the informant’s murder replicates how Psycho lets us see Janet Leigh’s character through the eyes of her killer, making her brutal murder that much more shocking.
In short, Alfred Hitchcock walked so The X-Files could run: the famous director had an impact on a number of episodes throughout this spooky show’s many seasons. Arguably, though, that influence was never greater than in “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” an episode in which a fan-favorite character is suddenly and brutally killed. It’s the kind of scene that leaves you feeling dirty, but after learning about Hitchcock’s influence on this Season 1 finale, we won’t be grabbing a shower anytime soon.
