True Story Inspired Shocking X-Files Episode: Home

As were creep ever closer to the return of The X-Files on Fox this January, nostalgia for Chris Carter’s seminal television series is at an all-time high.  And whenever the topic of “Scariest Episode” comes up, you can bet that Season 4’s Home tops the list.  The episode has achieved an almost legendary status, remembered for shocking even hard-core “X-Philes” and being cited in Congress as proof of the V-Chip’s necessity.

Home tells the story of the Peacock Family, a trio of inbred brothers who live in an abandoned farmhouse in Pennsylvania. When the body of a malformed baby girl is found buried nearby, Agents Mulder and Scully suspect the Peacocks may have kidnapped and raped a woman, later murdering the resulting child. When the Agents search the Peacock’s homestead, they find a quadruple amputee on a mobile stretcher hidden under the bed.  She is revealed to be the Peacock’s mother, who has been breeding with her own sons for years.

Last June, we told you about speculation that a Home sequel was in the works.  To recap:

While there hasn’t been an official announcement regarding a sequel, there are some tantalizing indications that make this conjecture seem highly probable. The 2nd episode, slated to air on January 25, 2016, is titled: Home Again; this air-date is almost 20 years after the broadcast premier of Home.  Most telling, Home Again is being penned by Glen Morgan and James Wong—the same writers who scribed Home back in 1996.

In a behind the scenes documentary available on the Season 4 DVD, Wong talks about how a story from Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography influenced him while writing Home.  He recalls a situation where the young, dirt-poor actor was lodging at a particularly seedy establishment when the proprietor invited him upstairs to see something interesting.  He then introduced Chaplin to his son, a quadriplegic, who was wheeled out from under a cot.  Chaplin watched in shocked befuddlement and the limbless man danced around for the actor’s amusement.

While Wong misremembered the details, Chaplin indeed wrote of the encounter in My Autobiography, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1964, which reads (in part):

A half man with no legs, an oversized, blond, flat-shaped head, a sickening white face, a sunken nose, a large mouth and powerful muscular shoulders and arms, crawled from underneath the dresser … “Hey, Gilbert, jump!” said the father and the wretched man lowered himself slowly, then shot up by his arms almost to the height of my head.

“How do you think he’d fit in with a circus? The human frog!”

I was so horrified I could hardly answer. However, I suggested the names of several circuses that he might write to.

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Have you seen Home from The X-Files Season 4?  What do you think about the episode’s connection to Charlie Chaplin?  Sound off in the Comments section!

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