The Time Warriors and Beyond

By Owen Quinn author Photos copyright Fox

When The X-Files came back for a revival, it reminded everyone just how good a show it was and could still deliver villains that would rank up with the Fluke Man and Eugene Tooms.

One in question is the terrifying Mister Chuckleteeth, a popular children’s television show character that suddenly appears to a young boy, lures him into the forest and murders him.

In The X-Files Season 11 episode, Familiar, the title doesn’t give a hint just to how creepy and horrible this would be. Things and characters children love have been used by both the horror and television shows as instruments by evil to hurt children.

Chucky of course. Sapphire and Steel did it with nursery rhymes and dead Victorian street kids controlled by a faceless entity. Doctor Who did it with dolls that could kill disguised as Autons and characters in the land of fiction. The eleventh Doctor helped young George fight his night terrors, the Poltergeist movies sent us running and the fifteenth Doctor recently fought Mister Ring-A- Ding, a cartoon come to life straight out of a cinema screen. In fact, Ring-A-Ding would be similar to Mr Chuckleteeth in appearance but the opening of Familiar gives a nod to more than just a kid’s icon.

We open with young Andrew Eggers singing Chuckleteeth’s theme song to his Mister Chuckleteeth doll. The lyrics of the song are creepy enough. They tell how much kids love him and that he will always play with them when they are lonely. This theme of loneliness is repeated in the second verse and young Adam is playing alone. Andrew is dressed in a bright yellow raincoat. Now what other famous horror opening came with a kid dressed in a bright yellow raincoat? Do the parents never watch IT? You might as well have painted a target on the kid’s forehead. It is clear that mum is distracted. As we discover, she is trying to break off an affair with Sheriff Strong over the phone and when she turns round, Andrew has gone. The sheriff’s daughter, Emily, watches from the swings as Andrew goes off.

Mister Chuckleteeth is prancing inside the treeline of the forest and so Andrew, when dismissed by his mother, goes to him.

Now, while Andrew’s raincoat is an alarm to all horror fans and a homage to IT, it actually plays very well into evoking the horror here. Forests are green and big and scary. But Andrew is searching for Chuckleteeth, still singing his song. Thanks to several long shots, we see tiny Andrew walking through the huge forest. his bright coat makes him stand out amid the vastness of this place.

Chuckleteeth is running from tree to tree like a game of hide and seek, luring Andrew blissfully further into the forest. Andrew is so happy to see his friend, that you feel the horror of what’s coming. He is so innocent and happy just as a kid should be.

Andrew calls out to him but with a camera point of view, something is racing up behind Andrew. He turns round last minute and it is that last minute, little gasp of shocked fear that chills the viewer to the bone. It strikes a chord with us as parents, aunts, uncles, guardians as a collective because it is the last thing he does before being murdered. The police find his body, a further tragedy as his father is one of the policeman that discovers his little son’s torn body, setting off a chain reaction that bring Mulder and Scully in. Officer Eggers is devastated by the death of his son but Scully thinks it may have been him. We’ve seen similar things before as in Silver Bullet when Grady’s father finds his son ripped apart by the werewolf, his kite soaked in blood. Come to think of it, the kite was bright yellow with a smiley face too. Am I seeing a trend here? We need to stop making bright yellow things and pairing them with frozen smiling faces. It never ends well.

Mister Chuckleteeth doesn’t speak or sing. He just dances and makes funny gestures. His face is frozen in that inane grin, quiff and eyes that look different directions. He is unnerving to say the least. There’s something almost Pee-Wee Herman like about him. But kids love what they love.

Mulder discovers that a little girl, Emily, daughter of Sheriff Strong, saw Chuckleteeth in the forest before Andrew disappeared. Given the dark history of the town and its history of Salem Witch trials, Mulder thinks something has been summoned and that something is using familiar faces that kids would go to, like their favourite television characters. Scully battles with the evasive Sheriff Strong to prove that a man, usually a parent or relative, murdered Andrew and not an animal attack as assumed. When an unregistered sex offender is found living in the town and outed by the grief stricken father, it seems Scully is right but another murder proves him innocent.

Little Emily is next when she is watching her favourite show, the Bibble-Tiggles. They are a type of Teletubbie but I have to say, with more demonic looking faces. One appears to Emily and she vanished under her mother’s nose. That shot of the Bibble-Tiggle staring at the child through the window is so demonic looking and fits right in with the lore of the area. I have never seen the lure of the Teletubbies ever but kids love them. The X-Files version is so creepy that I never want to see one in real life. They truly are terrifying.

But Mister Chuckleteeth is far from finished. He plays a game of cat and mouse with Eggers in Strong’s home. Eggers has gone to confront him over the affair but meets Chuckleteeth instead. Eggers hears his dead son singing Chuckle Teeth’s theme song. The television turns on to the Chuckle Teeth show where he becomes demonic, surrounded by flame and warns off Eggers. He whirls round only to find Chuckleteeth right behind him. He runs after it out the door but meets Strong instead who shoots Eggers dead where he stands.

Ultimately, Mulder discovers that Sheriff Strong was having an affair with Andrew’s mother and his wife, Anna, found out. Anna used witchcraft to get revenge but it all went wrong. Chuckleteeth and the Bibble-Tiggles were indeed vengeance demons that did as Anna commanded them to. Both families have been destroyed. Strong has been mauled by what Mulder believes is a Hell Hound while his wife bursts into flames when a final spell goes wrong.

Familiar would not have been out in place in any season and would have worked effectively well in Season One and Two especially. But it is a testament of any good show that it can take normal things and things we love and twist them into something terrifying.

In one fell swoop, The X-Files successfully made me think twice about letting the kids watch TV ever again. I’ll certainly never look at the Teletubbies again in the same way.