Warning: this post is one big plot spoiler.

the-x-files.jpgI was a fan of the X Files while it had its run on television. The show was an entertaining ride through all manner of paranormal experience--from UFOs to changeling monsters and mind twisting powers. So when the girlfriend, kid and I were looking to fill an afternoon on vacation in L.A., I suggested we go to the movies to check out the X Files: I Want to Believe movie.

I wanted to believe that it would be a decent flick along the lines of the old series. It wasn't. We spent most of the movie trying to decide which was worse: the acting, the screenplay, or the musical score. And I lost big points with the teen for suggesting this over Batman. Fandango, I want my money back.

But what's germane to this blog is that the movie contained some subtle and not-to-subtle LGBT defamation.

One of the main characters is a pedophile priest, but his criminal predilection is loosely connected with gay men as one of his alter boy victims has grown up to be a gay organ snatcher. He and his husband (the script says they "were married in Massachusetts") run a scam to kidnap women and harvest their organs and limbs in a back alley medical complex. Then, as the alter boy/now man lies dying of cancer, the camera shows him with a reattached female arm (note the nail polish) as he awaits a full body transplant from a woman. It all felt very Silence of the Lambs to me.

I wasn't quite ready to pick up the phone and call GLAAD on this one. It was just too difficult to pick apart what was a terrible script and what was defamation. But if you've had the displeasure of plunking down $9.50 to see this flick, I would love to know if the reference to the killers' Massachusetts marriage and the male-to-female body snatching raised your hackles as well.

At the very least, can we organize around making sure the next X Files movie isn't such a pathetic imitation of a good TV series? Scully and Mulder, we've come to expect better.

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