The X-Files Monster Episode So Gross It Made The Entire Crew Sick

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 minute ago

The X-Files is a show with many fine qualities, including inventive scripts and top-notch actors. Arguably, though, the show’s biggest strength was its ability to gross its audience out with some of the creepiest creatures to ever grace the small screen. The best example of this is the Flukeman, a horrific monster that haunts the sewers and can emerge from the toilet to kill its victims.

The episode does a wonderful job of capitalizing on its audience’s fears, and more than a few fans started taking a second glance at the toilet after watching “The Host.” After all, this episode (written by X-Files creator Chris Carter) had enough freaky details to make you sick, and many of us are still processing what we first saw all those decades ago. However, what most fans never realized is that this episode made the crew quite literally sick for a simple reason: it was partially filmed at a real sewage treatment plant!

The Smell Is Out There

The plot of “The Host” is that FBI Agent Fox Mulder (who is stuck on dead-end cases because the X-Files has been shut down) is assigned to investigate the death of a Russian whose body washed up in Newark, New Jersey. After pounding the pavement and visiting a sewage treatment plant, Mulder discovers the horrifying truth: the Russian was killed by a human-sized flukeworm. He captures this Flukeman, but after it escapes custody, Mulder ends up cutting the creature in half with a sewer overflow pipe, preventing it from escaping into the ocean and creating more of its kind.

“The Host” is considered the gold standard for “monster of the week” episodes, and The X-Files crew did a great job bringing this terrifying tale to life. They really went the extra mile, including creating a sprawling sewer set that even included real tanks and running water. However, other shots required even more verisimilitude, and that meant getting down and dirty by filming in an actual sewage plant.

Nobody Was Ready For The Smell

As you might imagine, this location stunk to high heaven. Making matters worse, this X-Files episode was being filmed on a hot summer’s day, so the producers offered crew members an option: they could either take the day off or wear special rebreathers (which cost the show a small fortune to acquire) to help ward off the smell. In a stunning show of solidarity, nobody took the day off, and the breathing equipment helped ward off the awful smell long enough for them to finish shooting the episode.

However, there was just one problem with this plan to manage the stench: the location of the catering truck. The truck for the crew was located outside, upwind, and as far away from the sewage treatment plant as the producers could manage. On paper, this would allow the crew to grab some much-needed lunch without having to worry about the horrific smell of the plant.

Unfortunately, the catering truck wasn’t as far upwind as it needed to be, and the results were instantaneous: several production staff members who had ditched their breathing equipment to grab a bite got violently ill. They all gathered at a fence on the outside perimeter of the sewage treatment plant, and they all shared the same purpose. Namely, to empty out their stomachs, vomiting until there was absolutely nothing left!

Trust No One (Especially Your Nose)

Still, the crew got back to work and finished shooting one of the best episodes of The X-Files to ever grace the small screen. It wasn’t easy, though, and production staffer Al Campbell (as reported in X Marks the Spot (On Location with The X-Files)) later reported his trick for whenever he felt queasy: “I’d visit the primary sedimentation tank – the place where the raw, untreated sewage came in.” He reported that after “a couple of minutes of that, and I’d go back to whatever I was doing, feeling relieved and grateful that nothing else was as bad as where I’d just been.”

The X-Files remains one of the most captivating shows in television history, and this story proves that the cast was never afraid to get down and dirty to provide us with one killer episode after another. “The Host” literally made the crew working on it sick, but this didn’t keep them from creating the ultimate monster of the week episode. Forget blood, sweat, and tears: it turns out that puke is the real secret ingredient of the creepiest TV show ever made!