User Reviews

Mulder and Scully are investigating the deaths of several, middle aged Chinese men, an American born Chinese Detective assists.

I enjoyed this very, very much, it's a very gritty, intriguing story, one which is enough to give you several chills.

Two of my close friends are Chinese born, and have explained to me over the years that gambling is quite a big thing in China, so the story does make sense, it works well. I love the whole concept of the gambling game here, a morbid curiosity.

The opening sequences grab your attention, several scenes will have you sat feeling uncomfortable, and the ending will also surprise you.

Overall, this one's a real gem, 8/10.

With episodes like "Irresistible" and "Grotesque," The X-Files proved it could weave together some fairly interesting stories without steadfastly adhering to the canon of paranormal activity. "Hell Money" is one such episode and perhaps in this regard strays farthest from the status quo. The script, after all, isn't quite so interested in exploring the foreign on an extrasensory level than it is on a cultural level, with the Chinatown of San Francisco serving as an effective and mystical backdrop. Much of the dialogue is daringly, although brokenly, presented in Cantonese and coupled with subtitles, a convention that, though in the modern television world has been made common practice with such culturally-inclusive programs as Lost, was a far more courageous move in 1996.

The premise is interesting enough: a Chinese-American mafia operates an organ-bidding lottery that has been murdering its defectors. When the corpse of a living man is discovered in a crematory oven, the talents of Mulder and Scully are summoned to the case.

It is a shame then that this episode so easily falls between the cracks of the Clyde Bruckman's and Jose Chung's of season three. More shameful is that it falls victim to the exact same problem as the previous episode (though, very thankfully, to a CONSIDERABLY less extent). "Hell Money" does not feel like an episode of The X-Files, and curiously enough it has nothing to do with the absence of paranormal occurrences. Instead, it is the relative absence of Mulder and Scully in the resolution of the crimes.

The arguable protagonist of the script is Detective Chao, played by B.D. Wong. Chao is an amiable enough character to interest the viewer's attention but it becomes rather apparent early on that he has a personal stake in the case. Although this stake determines his fate by the episode's end, his dilemma is unique in that he is clearly caught in the rift between two cultures, one reflecting the plight of the immigrant and the other the requisite of universal justice. The racial tensions presented in this episode, though touched upon, are never fully explored in-depth.

Lucy Liu appears as the daughter of Mr. Hsin, a luckless participant of the lottery. Known primarily for her more abrasive roles in Kill Bill and Charlie's Angels, it's interesting to see Liu in a gentler, more diffident performance.

Ultimately, "Hell Money" is an intriguing, albeit thin, look at human savagery in a culturally-bound setting, playing out similarly to a procedural drama (much like writer Jeffrey Vlaming's earlier offering, "2Shy"). As such there is not a lot of breathing room for either Mulder or Scully. Despite the occasional red herring, there is not much in the way of paranormal manifestation, but the underlying plot is competent enough to compensate for this. Though not one of the more memorable excursions of its particular year, "Hell Money" is certainly one of the more overlooked. 6 out of 10.

Bought the whole set from amazon as I missed some episodes/some series!

To me, this episode is quite annoying...for 2 main reasons:

1. I am Chinese & speak Cantonese which was the language the Chinatown characters spoke...I found all those Chinese ppl spoke rather slow, seems Cantonese is a foreign language to them...I am not sure if this's the real case for immigrants...but Lucy's Liu's father claimed he lived there for several years only...so I supposed he won't lose his mother- tongue??

2. The gangster called Lucy's Liu's father's name wrong! His surname written on the plate for "lucky draw" was "Suen", but the gangster called him "Sum", this was a HUGE mistake!! The two names in Chinese is very different!

XD this made me wonder if the research for other x-files relate to other nations would have errors as well...

The plot of this Chinese game-based X-File appears to be loosely similar to Showtime's Lexx #3: "Eating Pattern" (1997) where Rutger Hauer hosts a game where the stakes are body parts. It's also possible that the Lexx movie was loosely based upon this X-File, but both shows were generally being filmed at the same time, on different coasts of Canada. Eventually Brian Downey from the Light and Dark zones (and the "cluster") of the Lexx multiverse would join Chris Carter's X-Files/Millennium universes, as a member of the Millennium group. So, it's all related...

In the Lexx "Movie", they are playing for a substance called "Pattern". But the men themselves do not drink it, snakes come out of their brains via a hole in their necks, and that's what drinks the "Pattern". Pattern, you don't want to know what that is made out of... but just in case you do, head over to the light universe and watch "Eating Pattern".

Similar game here, but the stakes are instead monetary, although they are still playing basically for "body parts", after a fashion.

But whether in this X-file or in the Lexx movie, "the results are the same when you lose the game". Even though in this X-file there is the lucrative promise of a Brobdingnagian Jackpot. Which nobody seems to win, ever.

Here are some well known Chinese actors including Lucy Liu in one of her first guest roles, and James Hong is a less than grandfatherly game-patriarch here, who at one time was very lucky. BD Wong from "Jurassic Park" and "Seven years in Tibet" is an "ABC" Cop (American Born Chinese), who is not treated very well by those people he serves.

Although this apparently takes place in the Chinatown district of San Francisco, the surroundings look nothing like the area around Columbus and Broadway, for one thing we would have seen Lawrence Ferlinghetti's famous "City Lights bookstore", where all of the beat poets used to hang out, even through the 70s and 80s - because it is right in the middle of that area. Even the apartment complexes and hotels (like Carol Dodas' Condor Hotel) of that area are very distinctive and we see nothing in this episode that even loosely resembles what San Francisco's Chinatown skyline actually looks like.

As far as the people, that's a little bit more authentic because I spent considerable time in that district. It takes a long time to develop trust, which means visiting the same restaurants repeatedly, which is a good start. Once your face has been seen in the area a lot, then you are approached and spoken to. The police station that services the area is "Central" on Vallejo Street.

Even in 1996 when this episode was made, there were several distinctive bars on Columbus and Broadway where you could watch whatever beat poets were still alive that year being ejected by bouncers out of old-fashioned dual saloon doors like in the old west... at one time I was walking past one of these saloon doors with my father and girlfriend and who was ejected from the bar but Gregory Corso? Who I had met the night before at the "On Broadway" (which used to be above The Mabugay Gardens (aka "The Mab" when that was still there), he had helped Allen Ginsberg recite "The Howl"... that is another thing that was severely missing from this episode, in Chinatown, one would have met at least one beat poet. When making a show based upon famous areas of various cities, it is good to read up on the histories, learn about the landmarks and the various, diverse peoples that live there.

Other than those small gripes, a very well done cultural episode that takes a slightly different tack than most cultural episodes do... And creates a beautiful horror story, even without supernatural elements, this is one scary episode.

I think some of the Chinese character were played by japoneses or korean actors, because the accent sounded really off to me, and I'm not even chinese.