Cinemavenger

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Species

Tits! Aliens! Giger aliens even (I mean, not Aliens aliens, but still)! Ben Kingsley slumming it! What more could your socially-isolated ass ask for to kill another 108 minutes or so of the ongoing Coronatine?

Is Species a great movie? Well, it was never going to win any Academy Awards or inspire a baby-naming craze, but it is a perfect example of a high concept, sci-fi B-movie full to the aforementioned tits of sex, gore, and stereotypes.

A mad scientist (Kingsley) creates an alien-human hybrid from a recipe that floated down to Earth from outer space. When the hybrid, Sil (Natasha "Mother" Henstridge), escapes, Dr. Dumbfuck gets a wee bit concerned that he's just sealed humanity's fate by introducing a new apex predator into the mix, so he assembles a crack, or possibly on crack, team to find it and kill it.

There's the tough guy badass with a heart of gold - we know this because we see him drop off his cat with a neighbor before he goes alien hunting - Pres (Michael "Mr. Blonde" Madsen). And, of course, the smart, sassy, sexy chick scientist, Laura (Marg "Arita" Helgenberger). The yin to her yang is a horny yet vaguely woman-hating nerdthropologist, Stephen (Alfred "Sem" Molina). Rounding out the group is an empath (yup, like Troi from Next Generation but in 1995 Los Angeles) named Dan (Forest "What Are You Looking At?" Whitaker).

If you have any question about what type of movie Species is, all you need to know is that when the mad scientist tells the relatively regular Joes and Jane that aliens do, in fact, exist, not a one of them blinks an eye. He might as well have told them they were hunting wabbits. Seriously, none of them raises an eyebrow, gulps, coughs, or says something even remotely realistic like, "Holy fuck! Aliens fucking exist?!"

Sil wants nothing more than get knocked up so that she can lay 1000 eggs, or squirt out a dozen babies, or whatever her species (ha!) does, so Species quickly becomes The Adventures of the Cockblocking Crusaders as Pres and crew keep showing up just in time to keep Sil from getting laid but not quite soon enough to get a shot at her.

Witty kill lines were huge in the 90s, and somewhere down at the very, pitch black bottom of that barrel is Species', "Let go, you motherfucker."

May 8, 2020