Species (1995)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

Coordinates: Aliens send Earth instructions on how to build a human/alien hybrid but what the scientists did not count on is just how horny it would be.

Here are some of my observations as I scanned the skies:

• More like “Feces” right? Shit, I didn’t mean to burn that joke out already…
• I was thinking this movie might be too mainstream for Schlocktoberfest, but you apparently you see Forest Whitaker’s taint, so that automatically rates it as either schlock or an Oscar contender, depending on wild pube count.
• The opening credits remind me of The Arrival, which isn’t horror enough for Schlocktoberfest, and is the best aliens-on-Earth movie period. No, not Arrival with Amy Adams, THE Arrival with Charlie Sheen. I’m not even joking about this.
• Who the fuck calls space “the heavens”? It sounds like something a Kevin Smith character would say in Jay and Silent Bob Smoke Weed and Finger Each Other on the Moon right before you gave up on watching it 37 seconds in because Jay’s meth mouth and Kevin Smith’s hyperdrive gastric sleeve bothered you even more than the ridiculously awful script.
  
  

  Oh my heavens, you guys look almost as bad as your trailer.

• Michelle Williams, like almost a big deal, but then not? Should’ve been one of the greats of her generation, but didn’t fully work out. She did just win an Emmy though. But that’s the thing, fantastic actress, but she doesn’t immediately come to mind when you think A-list. I have more notes on this in a ledger somewhere.
• So it seems like Michelle Williams is the Species (called Sil, for “Severely Intimate Lady”), and Ben Kingsley is like her daddy/evil scientist who tries to kill her in the government lab but she escapes by punching a hole in the glass and this is familiar because I saw The Fifth Element.
• I think even in the ‘90s you actually needed a ticket to ride a train.
• Oh so you can just by a ticket on the train on a passenger train from Nevada to Los Angeles? This ain’t the local on New Jersey Transit, bitch. Probably because the train left on time.
• When I was 17 my friend Chis and I made a video about an army man (Private Miller Highlife, played by Chris) who saw a UFO that was a smoke detector wrapped in aluminum foil on a fishing pole. Those special effects looked just as good as the special effects in Species.
• I like Forest Whitaker but you never really know which eye you’re supposed to look at.
• This is an all-star cast of good actors. And Michael Madsen is also in it. 
• Blobby space vagina. That would’ve been a much better name for this movie.
• You can always tell when Ben Kingsley is actually trying. This isn’t one of those times.
• She entered that train a girl, but left a woman. If I had a dime… actually that’s what they paid me.
• So she’s loose in L.A. and the science squad is after her. I’ll update you if anything happens.
• I suppose the alien DNA and the human DNA mix is meant to be genetically perfect and whatnot which is why Sil is a supermodel but it would be funny if she ended up looking like a female Chris Farley and her seductions were completely ineffective.
  
  

  “Let’s mate in a VAN down by the RIVER!”

• So the science squad just checked into a hotel in L.A., and now they’re back in the desert lab?
• It’d be sweet if something else happened.
• So Marg Helgenerburgers and Michael Madsen get trapped in a lab room with a blobby alien that grows rapidly and Ben Kingsley won’t let them out for absolutely no reason even though Alfred Molina opens the door and they easily escape at the last second which would have been much easier minutes before when Ben Kingsley refused to let them out and it doesn’t really matter but that whole thing was just stupid.
• Ben Kingsley is phoning this in like fucking Alexander Graham Bell.
• Sil takes home a man from a club and he turns on his lights and music by snapping his fingers and I know this is a movie about an alien maniac but that’s just ludicrous.
• So a bouncer at a club knew this guy’s exact address? That’s a friendly club.
• The casting process for Sil probably would’ve made Harvey Weinstein blush. 
• Sil is hit by a car, fortunately she’s saved by a guy who’s the living embodiment of a white man in the mid-‘90s, because he’s a white man from the mid-’90s and they all looked exactly the same.
• What guy has a gorgeous naked blonde throwing herself at him in a swimming pool and he tells her to take it easy? Possibly Rip Taylor.
• I can’t count how many times a squirrel has jumped out of a tree and onto my shoulder and screamed.
  
  
• Natasha Henstridge, thank you. This role is 90% tits and you’re doing your best.
• I love that Sil knows how to drive. When did that happen?
• Sil wakes up next to a bound and gagged woman. If I had a dime…
• Why did Sil stop rapidly aging? Shouldn’t she look like Cameron Diaz by now?
• This movie should be called The Alien Who Wore No Bra.
• Who the fuck gets gas and leaves their keys in the car when they go in to pay?
• Alfred Molina is another one who seemed like he was destined for elite actor status but never quite got there. Probably because of the years between 2007-20016 when he was a pimp but like too vicious of a pimp and it ruined his reputation.
• Looks like Sil is trying to fake her own death with a car full of gas cans and that bound broad from before. Oh. Sil also cut her thumb off and the bound broad’s thumb off. It’s just a long way to go to fake her death. This movie is pretty stupid. 
• I said it earlier, but when Ben Kingsley isn’t trying he’s fucking abominable. Like John Malkovich. Watch Warm Bodies if you don’t believe me on that one.
• Sil cut her hair and dyed it brunette and she looks 1,000 times hotter, but I’m biased because my wife is a brunette and she’s gorgeous.
• Is the movie Under the Skin a complete ripoff of Species? I’d like to think so.
• Sil is banging Alfred Molina in a bed and it got me thinking how much I want to go to bed. 
• Well that killed him. This is Alfred Molina’s fault for not wearing a condom. But still, it took the doctors two hours just to remove the smile from his face.
• The score is actually really excellent. Meaning the music, not the sex scenes.
• “OK, H.R. Giger, how about you design an alien with a small head that’s a color other than black and without all those ridges and stuff.” “FUCK. YOU. HOMIE.”
  
• Man this finale is more dragged out than RuPaul’s bat mitzvah.
• So Sil has a child, who has a massive case of Shakma Syndrome, even though his fandangler is on full display.
• Remember in the ‘90s when we did CGI whether it was a good idea or not? Good times.
• These alien nipples aren’t as sexy as I’d hoped.
  
  

  I don’t even consider this nudity since it looks so bad, which is why there are several nude photos of me on this site.

• Sil and her baby both die in an underground tar fire. Film at 11.
• Rat burgers!

Scare Stars: Pretty much zero if you don’t mind Michael Madsen, but if you do it’s a solid 8.

Gore Galaxy: Not a whole lot. The blobby space vagina was the messiest part, as it usually is.

Nudity Nebula: You know, I don’t remember any.

Space Vacuum (how much the movie felt like it was set in space or about space): Pretty low. Everything takes place on Earth and Sil being an alien hybrid doesn’t really matter, she could have just been any Earth-bound monster.

Best Transmission:

Agent: Criminologist says there’s no evidence of semen in the hot tub water.

Preston Lennox: Well, maybe she took it with.

Best Visual: I liked the kissing scene because it reminded me of Alien Notebook.

Worst Visual: I’d probably just go with the CG Sil being egregiously awful-looking. There’s no real reason it couldn’t have just been a suit or erotic animatronic throughout, and in some scenes it is and it looks perfectly good. But they went with CG just because it was a new and exciting technology I guess?

Universally: This picture isn’t all that bad, but it really could have been a whole lot better if it was directed by someone who is good at horror and suspense. David Fincher or Brian De Palma would have been perfect for this. shit even someone like Tom Holland would have been better (the Child’s Play one, not the Spider-Man one). But it’s directed by Roger Donaldson who did fucking Cocktail and No Way Out and Thirteen Days and it just turned out flat and uninteresting. 

Analysis: 5.75 Blobby Space Vaginas (out of 10)