“Squeeze” – Season 1 Ep. 3

Agent Tom Colton: “So, Mulder, whaddaya think? This look like the work of little green men?”

Mulder: “Gray.”

Agent Tom Colton: “What?”

Mulder: “Gray. You said “green men.” A Reticulian’s skin tone is gray. They’re notorious for their extraction of terrestrial human livers, due to iron depletion in the Reticulum galaxy.”

Agent Tom Colton: “You can’t be serious.”

Mulder: “Do you know how much liver and onions go for on Reticulum?”

Written by: Glen Morgan & James Wong

Directed by: Harry Longstreet

Original Air Date: September 24th, 1993

Principal Setting: Sioux City, Iowa

Episode Summary: 

Note: Some spoilers in here.

“Squeeze” introduces us to the first, and the most popular/creepy monster of the week, Eugene Tooms (played by the very creepy Doug Hutchison…the character not the actor, although he is very creepy in The Green Mile as well). Anyways, killings are happening in Baltimore, Maryland by a person that kill his victims by ripping out their livers. That’s disgusting on it’s own, but he does these killings by squeezing through very tight openings like an air vent or chimney.

Scully’s agent friend she used to work with, played in annoying tough cop role by Donal Logue, introduces her to the weird murder case and Mulder is immediately intrigued. They find a stretched finger print at the crime scene, and discover that these killings are happening every 30 years starting way back in 1903.

Scully’s intuition gets the idea to stakeout his recent crime scenes, and sure enough the find Tooms climbing an air duct He goes on to be given a lie detector test which he passes with flying colors. We do find that he truly was alive back in 1903 as Mulder finds microfiche evidence of him killing his neighbor above him. The last few scenes are chilling, which I won’t go into too much detail because you should watch this great episode. I will say it involves a lot of bile, newspaper and a very scary attack on Scully that made me jump, and I’ve seen this episode numerous times.

Personal Commentary:

This is by far one of the creepiest episodes of the entire series. The eerie string music whenever Tooms is on the prowl, his yellow eyes as he watches his victims and the way he can contort his body in very small spaces, all make this a fantastic, scary mess of an episode. The attack on Scully and the end scene of him in jail staring intensely at the open food tray slot in the door bring me goosebumps just thinking about it.

This episode is special because I read the book based on this episode before I had really watch a single episode of the show. It was just as creepy. The killings themselves aren’t violent due to not showing much, but just the build up of him stalking his victims and not really knowing if he is human or a mutant, makes this episode have a creepy factor cranked to 11.

This episode is the start of many of the trend of Mulder saving Scully and vice versa. I love how we don’t learn too much of who and what Tooms really is, and like a lot of episodes, it ends with the mystery still not completely solved and your left to imagine what happened.

Episode Grade: A

Favorite Scene: 

The attack on Scully is a very intense scene, although my favorite in building the atmosphere and dread of Tooms is definitely seen in the first opening scene. The music by Mark Snow sets the tone so perfectly. One of the best openings of the entire show.

Fun Facts:

• Doug Hutchison is one of the two actors that played the character of Tooms, a liver eating mutant, in the episodes “Squeeze” and “Tooms”. Hutchinson is actually a vegetarian, or was at the time. After filming “Tooms” he sent the liver of an animal to Chris Carter as a thank you for the opportunity to play a character on “The X-Files”.
• In episodes #1.2, “Squeeze” and 1.20, “Tooms”, two actors played the character of Eugene Victor Tooms. One who appeared as the main character, the other, a contortionist who was responsible for squeezing into the tight areas that Tooms was able to do.

Faces You May Recognize:

The wonderful Doug Hutchison plays the very creepy Eugene Tooms, where you’ll mainly know him as the annoying Percy Wetmore from The Green Mile. He’s also been in Con Air, I Am Sam, and a few episodes of Lost.