SPECIES II (1998)
Director: Peter Medak
Genre: Sci-Fi/Erotic Thriller/Body Horror
A BRIEF NOTE
In Monster Movie of the Week, I have tried to profile movies that prominently feature a monster, creature, or monstrous robot that is significantly different from a human being. So vampires, zombies, and old school werewolves sort of fall outside the kinds of movies I like to look at. My other criteria is that the movie somehow have some sort of significance in history of monster movies, perhaps in terms of special effects, story-telling, being the work of a significant director, being an important example of a larger trend, etc. Now, that does not necessarily mean that bad movies are automatically excluded. As you can see from looking at my past entries, we’ve looked at some real stinkers (Anaconda, The Relic, and D-Wars come to mind) and for every Gojira and King Kong there are a Godzilla (1998) and King Kong (1976). As a fan of monster movies, I have built up a pretty high resistance to cinematic crappiness and can find genuine enjoyment in even a really bad movie. This week’s entry however, is significant for really only two reasons. First and most tenuously, it is the sequel to a mediocre hit movie that featured a memorable creature. Secondly, it is probably the second worst high-profile movie of the 1990’s behind Showgirls.
This is a totally legit scientific experiment.THE MOVIE
Whereas Species was an okay-to-bad creature flick, Species 2 is a searing hot mess of a movie. It is a poorly-written, badly-acted, offensive train wreck of a sequel. Let’s take a look at it!
You’ll remember that in the first Species, a cosmic signal was received via radio telescope instructing scientists how to build an alien hybrid and they do it FOR SOME REASON. The monster escapes and she tries to mate with numerous LA douches. She gets killed and a rat eats a piece of her and begins mutating. End of movie.
Species 2 begins two years later with a mission to Mars (!?), which is never a good sign. There are three astronauts and there is an abbreviated landing on the Red Planet in which they take some pictures and collect some core samples and take off. Billions of dollars well spent. On the ship the core samples begin melting and a weird oily slime (perhaps modeled after the films producers?) attacks the crew, which they later forget. See, in screenplayland, even though the aliens have been established as coming from light years away, they can still ALSO come from Mars. Cause, you know, it's all space.
Meanwhile, government scientists have made another version of the Sil hybrid from the first movie (WTF!) this time her name is Eve and Marge Helgenberger’s character returns as the scientist in charge of studying her. Helgenberger is one of the many actors in this movie that seems to be in it for the check and she in particular gives an outstandingly bad performance. Helgenberger alternates between giving Eve compassionate motherly looks and putting Eve through scantily-clad, Nazi-like experiments.
The leader of the Mars expedition, Patrick Ross, returns to Earth to great fanfare. His father is a U.S. Senator who is grooming him to run for office. The father is played by James Cromwell, who paid off his house with his earnings from this movie. Patrick begins experiencing strange sexual compulsions and, in a Cinemax-y sex scene gone horrible, he impregnates two women (horny sisters, naturally), whose abdomens erupt with bloody alien children.
The government enlists Press Lennox (a returning Tom Sizemore, who spent his earnings on liquor and prostitutes) to track down this new alien menace. For a while, Sizemore and Helgenberger pair up to investigate the murders. They interview a “crazy” scientist played by Peter Boyle (who spent his salary on a big TV and home theater system). The scientist tells them that in his investigations of the Antarctic Mars rock (a timely reference in 1998) he discovered alien DNA. He warned them not to go to Mars. He warned them!
Margie walks into a murder scene, “It’s horrible…horrible,” she emotes, possibly referring to the script. Sizemore calls her while she’s dissecting stuff. It’s a lot like The X-Files until a general reassures us that “This is not the fucking X-Files!” After that, reminder, the script looks for something else to rip off and as luck would have it, Lennox teams up (for no apparent reason) with a jive-talking black sidekick (Mykelti Williamson, who spent his earnings on a new car for his mom). They drive around and wear sunglasses. It’s a lot like Men in Black only it sucks more. At this point, Patrick is abducting women left and right and raping them to produce hybrids. Since we are dealing with a male alien and the same basic premise as the first movie, the story takes on an uncomfortable edge. Unless movies about alien rape monsters are your thing.
Anyhoo, Eve utilizes her jumping through glass abilities to escape and track down the Malien. She steals a car, having learned to drive from watching The Dukes of Hazard(!?!) on TV. She and Patrick hook up in a barnhouse that is filled with cocooned hybrids. When we see Patrick in his full alien form, it is unclear whether he is from the same species as Eve or from a different species that is somehow sexually compatible with her. Sexual dimorphism aside, he looks a lot bigger and has a quadrapedal structure. Anyway, the humans bust the alien freak fest and save the world. Yay.
On the bright side, the movie is unintentionally hilarious. It is perfect fodder for a MST3K style lampooning. It really is stunningly bad on so many different levels: It’s illogical, stereotype ridden, poorly acted, offensive, derivative, unimaginative, all at the same time.
THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS
Eve’s alien form is seemingly identical to Sil in the previous movie.
Patrick’s alien form looks like a mandibled Predator Alien Rastafarian bear skeleton. Interestingly, he tries to impregnate Eve through her mouth. The movie features a kind of kinky shot with an action that is clearly meant to represent oral sex. Kudos to the filmmakers for sneaking it in. There: That’s one thing I liked about the movie.
Someone really needs to learn how to relax her jaw...DVD AVAILABILITY
Widely available. And the director had the brass balls to record a commentary track.
MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT
Uh…
SEQUELS
Species III and Species: The Awakening
MINORITY REPORT
Species 2 features one of the most irritatingly stereotypical black characters in recent memory. Despite the fact that his character is a U.S. astronaut chosen for a historic mission, he acts like a reject from a UPN sitcom. He says stuff like “Damn! A brotha can’t get no booty?” and while wielding a machete, “Im’a go back to Africa on his ass!” And after Eve shows no interest in him, “Man, I can’t even get any play from a alien!” If that’s not bad enough, the aliens are ultimately defeated using his sickle-cell anemia carrying blood.
Oh! And there's a deleted scene in which Patrick picks up a chick to impregnate only once he get her back the the room he finds out the she is actually a he! Hilarity ensues.
SEE ALSO
Showgirls 1996
PROMO
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