We Remember Billy Connolly as The X-Files’ Father Joe

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Billy Connolly is and always will be a favourite of mine that has made me laugh from a young age. He began acting and has played many roles but one that is so unlike the man we love is Father Joe in the second X-Files movie I Want To Believe.

The movie did come under criticism for not being X-Files enough given the Doctor Frankenstein elements, but Father Joe Crissman was the X-File of the movie. The show had never been afraid to tackle gore and horror and hard hitting issues and with the inclusion of Father Joe, Mulder and Scully find themselves forced into an alliance with the Devil himself.

Before we know anything about him, we see Father Joe in the movie’s opening scene walking across a frozen lake with a team of police officers. He drops to a point shouting, she’s here. There they find a body part.

Sully is asked to recruit Mulder again to help with the disappearance of an FBI agent. They meet Father Joe who is a disgraced paedophile priest who is allegedly having psychic visions of the missing woman given he found the body part.

As a practicing Catholic, Scully is horrified to be near this man never mind having to work with him. In her eyes how can he call himself a man of God when he has committed such abhorrent things to children. Joe is so calm in his demeanour that that in itself irritates her. He has self mutilated himself. His vision seem accurate but also has ones that seemingly mean nothing at all to do with the case. Mulder tests him and remains unconvinced. However as the movie goes on he becomes convinced that Father Joe is the link to the case. Scully on the other hand hates him for being even breathing after his atrocities. She is having issues at the hospital she works at over a patient. A teenager is dying from a disease but Scully wants to try a new untested treatment which the board rejects. Her main opponent is another man of the cloth Father Ybarra who does not believe she is right. He wants the boy moved to die in order to give the bed to someone else. Scully’s patient is just another statistic to him rather than a person. Scully has always been a fighter but caught between two priests that represent nothing of the vows they took as priests takes its toll on her and her faith. Ironically Father Joe seems the most reliable of the two which causes Scully serious internal conflict.

Connolly seems to be always playing the martyr with Father Joe and finds himself drawn to Scully because of her beliefs. In the most intense scene of he movie she confronts him about what he is and what he is doing playing magician. Is he playing mind games or is he really seeing things? Father Joe told her not to give up and it has thrown her completely. Was he talking about the terminally ill boy or the missing agent?

They wisely cut a scene where Father Joe turned up at the hospital and sees the boy for himself in some weird attempt to help Scully. Thankfully, its removal makes the exchange a lot more intense and his talk about the boy and his condition more ambiguous.

She asks what he meant and he says he has no idea. He reveals he castrated himself at 26 and lives here among these other perverted priests because they hate each other. His voice is calm as if she has entered a confessional and is free to speak in confidence. Father Joe is good at reading people and comes across as a manipulator at times. He knows nothing about Scully bar she is a woman of faith but not in the same things her husband, Mulder, does. She is quick to correct him that Mulder is not her husband. He claims he has no idea where his base tastes come from. He calls her out for judging him revealing he hates himself for what he did. She slaps him down for quoting scripture to her but she demands to know what he meant by don’t give up. Her doubts about him are manifest as she believes he does know what he meant. She is convinced it is all an act. Father Joe represents a thing that has corrupted all Scully sees as good and has helped her through the years on the X-Files through episodes like Beyond the Sea and One Breath. To still wear the clothes of a priest and practice scripture is abhorrent to her given the depth of her family’s faith. He equally repulses her because Mulder is drawn in to what Father Joe says. He takes a fit and on another occasion begins bleeding from the eyes, one of the signs of the stigmata. Further confusing Scully.

Now hospitalised it is still unclear if Father Joe is somehow playing them. Mulder believes not. It turns out Father Joe died at the same moment Scully turned off the life support machinery support of the transplanted head. It was also one of the altar boys Joe molested, one of the 37 victims. Could it be it created some sort of psychic link caused by the trauma? As a penance was this God’s way of Joe making up for what he did?

In the end she decides to press ahead and give the teenager the untested treatment. This comes after Mulder finds the missing agent and busts a ring where body parts are used in body transplants based on Joe’s visions. More specifically transplanting heads on to healthy bodies.

Connolly portrays the character brilliantly. He comes across as the penitent man and jumps the divide between a real psychic or a fraud in a cool collected way. He is a man resigned to death for his sins but when pushed by Scully reveals a man filled with self-loathing uncertain why he has feelings for children yet preach the word of God. He is dying from lung cancer and is resigned to it. But you have no sympathy for Father Joe even if it is Billy Connolly. He is a vile human being and maybe this is his final way of making amends for his sins. After all, he meets a wall of hate and disgust whenever he steps foot out the door. He could have easily said nothing and let the FBI carry on but he couldn’t stay silent. In no way does this redeem him but shows that Billy Connolly is more than capable of playing a multilayered character.