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There's a kind of perverse marketing genius at work in this cheesy sci-fi hit from 1995 in which scientists create a half-human, half-alien woman named Sil (Natasha Henstridge) who's capable of morphing from a slimy, tentacled creature into a blonde babe with the body of a
Playboy centerfold. This makes it easy for Sil to lure gullible guys who are only too willing to indulge her voracious mating urge, realizing too late that sex with Sil is anything but safe. As the body count rises, a handpicked team of specialists tracks the alien's killing spree, but their diverse expertise is barely a match for the ever-morphing Sil. Borrowing elements of the
Alien movies (including bizarre alien designs by Swedish artist H.R. Giger) and spicing them up with some tantalizing nudity,
Species is a wet dream for creature-feature fans--kind of like watching a sci-fi vampire fantasy while browsing through the
Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
--Jeff Shannon
In Los Angeles, where no one can hear you scream, a comely young blonde (Natasha Henstridge)-who is, in fact, half human and half extraterrestrial-roams the streets in search of a man to mate with. (Her biological clock runs at warp speed.) Hard on her heels are five alien-hunters (Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, and Alfred Molina), who intend to destroy the Babe from Another Planet before she can have unsafe sex and drop a litter of nasty mutants. Roger Donaldson's film is itself a hybrid: it splices together bits of DNA from vampire stories, the "Alien" series, and the energetic 1987 B picture "The Hidden," and the result is pretty unsightly-it doesn't make sense, it isn't funny, and it isn't scary. In a way, though, that's a blessing. The movie is too dull and too plain to seduce even the most desperate viewer, and there's some comfort in the thought that this pathetic specimen probably won't be spawning any sequels. Screenplay by Dennis Feldman. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker