Species **** (1995, Natasha Henstridge, Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Alfred Molina) – Classic Movie Review 822

Roger Donaldson’s 1995 sci-fi chiller film Species piles on the thrilling, edge-of-seat horror. Natasha Henstridge plays a sensual but deadly creature, who can change from a beautiful woman to a killing machine in a flash.

Director Roger Donaldson’s and screenwriter Dennis Feldman’s 1995 sci-fi chiller film Species piles on the thrilling, edge-of-seat horror.

A message comes from outer space with instructions on how to modify human DNA. It’s heard by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project.

It all sounds great, but Utah scientists are in for a terrible shock after they splice an alien DNA structure with human DNA and create a splendid shape-shifting alien called Sil (Natasha Henstridge). She’s a sensual but deadly creature, who can change from a beautiful woman to a killing machine in a flash.

Government agent Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) desperately assembles a team of scientists and mercenaries to try to find and destroy Sil before she succeeds in finding a mate and breeding.

Species is a great B-movie in the old style, with plenty of jolts, shocks and scares, and an excellent monster. Sil is designed by the Swiss artist H R Giger, who also created the creatures in the Alien films. Giger said he wanted to design ‘a monster in another way – an aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly, like the women look in my paintings’.

Very, very good of its kind, Species is robust, tough-toned and neatly acted by an unexpected and classy cast, also including Forest Whitaker, Alfred Molina, Whip Hubley and Michelle Williams as young Sil.

Donaldson’s direction is stylish, classy and ideal. The main stars Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger are on good form as Press Lennox and Dr Laura Baker.

Partly because of the hype over Henstridge’s nude scenes in tabloid newspapers and lad mags, it was a big hit, costing $35 million and grossing US $113 million.

You can’t keep a good monster down: Species II followed in 1998, Species 3 in 2004 and Species: The Awakening in 2007.

The effects combine practical models with CGI by Richard Edlund’s Boss Film Studios. The practical models are made by Steve Johnson and his company XFX that had worked using Giger’s designs in Poltergeist II: The Other Side.

The film was conceived by Dennis Feldman way back in 1987, pitched as a police procedural film treatment named The Message. After studios rejected it, he re-wrote it as a spec script, which finally led to a film.

Giger felt that the film and the character were too similar to Alien and asked for script changes. He also sent ideas for the climax to the producers.

Filming took place mostly in Los Angeles, including at Sunset Strip, Silver Lake, Pacific Palisades, the Hollywood Hills and the Biltmore Hotel.

The cast are Natasha Henstridge as Sil, Michelle Williams as Young Sil, Dana Hee as Alien Sil, Frank Welker as Alien Sil (voice), Ben Kingsley as Xavier Fitch, Michael Madsen as Preston ‘Press’ Lennox, Alfred Molina as Dr. Stephen Arden, Forest Whitaker as Dan Smithson, Marg Helgenberger as Dr. Laura Baker, Whip Hubley as John Carey, Anthony Guidera as Robbie, Matthew Ashford as Man in Club, and Kurtis Burow as Baby Boy, Sil’s Offspring.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 822

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