Why Species Is the Most Underrated Sci-Fi Film of the ’90s

The actor Michael Madsen, best known for his work in the gangster classic Reservoir Dogs and Quentin Tarantino’s later films like Kill Bill and the violent tale of prison life in Brando, was recently the subject of tributes after his death earlier this month in Hollywood. Michael Madsen is also known for numerous other roles in favorite movies like Donnie Brasco and Blood Simple. But among cinephiles, there hasn’t been as much discussion on one of Madsen’s more strange roles in the past year: as a black ops mercenary who must hunt down a half-human, half-alien hybrid in 1995’s sci-fi action thriller Species. The film is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2023, and given how loaded with monster movies and general paranoia about aliens the ’90s were, it’s worth taking another look.

Species, directed by Roger Donaldson (No Way Out, The Bounty), presented a weird mix of horror, action, and pulp sci-fi. When the U.S. government receives two transmissions from space, one containing information on a new source of fuel and the other with a precise method for splicing alien DNA with human DNA, they unsurprisingly take the bait. Under the supervision of government agent Dr. Xavier Fitch (played by Ben Kingsley), the resulting hybrid is created: Sil, played in her early stages of life by Michelle Williams. But the plan to create a docile, manageable organism quickly goes wrong. Sil ages and develops much more quickly than anticipated, with human-like traits emerging after only three months. But her development is marred by violent nightmares and other clues that she might not be as “manageable” as the U.S. government hoped she would be. When Fitch decides to end the project by injecting cyanide into Sil’s containment cell, Sil breaches the lab and escapes. The team of experts—made up of Madsen’s Preston Lennox, a rugged mercenary; Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger), a molecular biologist; Dr. Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina), an anthropologist; and Dan Smithson (Forest Whitaker), a moody empath who can “sense” what Sil is thinking or feeling—must take down what was initially designed to be an artificially created, human-alien hybrid that could be a carbon-neutral power source for the U.S. government and turned into a biological weapon. The team quickly becomes a veritable all-points bulletin that takes them all over the country and eventually into a run-in with Sil in Los Angeles. There, as Natasha Henstridge’s Sil is now grown and driven by the dual goals of reproducing and mating, the team must finally stop Sil. Intelligent, resourceful, and capable of using the tools around her to survive, Sil is soon on the prowl—and with each step, she also kills more people.

Baiting the Viewer with a Killer Beast of a Woman

Species’ appeal and strengths were in its creature design and horror elements. Surrealist artist H.R. Giger, best known for his design work on the original Alien and the film’s iconic xenomorph, also helped design the adult Sil. Giger had “conceived of Sil as an aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly.” That aesthetic is what caught viewers’ eyes and remains a part of the movie’s visual legacy: Sil, in her final form, has translucent skin, described by Giger as “a glass body but with carbon inside.” Giger had planned more stages of alien evolution for Sil—beginning with a human infant and eventually culminating in an adult that could fly and shoot DNA strands from her fingertips. But production constraints meant Giger ultimately had to settle for just a cocoon transformation scene (see the trailer) and the final, climactic maternal alien body.

Giger was not happy with how Species ended up. He thought it was too similar to his work on Alien: Its “punching tongue” was too similar, he said, as well as the way that Sil was hunted down by flames in the end. Giger was also dismayed by how much Sil’s final body shape in the cocoon looked like the chestburster baby alien from Alien. Giger was so unhappy during filming that he had to physically stop one scene in the middle so he could make it so Sil dies by a bullet to the head, rather than by the flame throwers that he claimed were used in Alien 3 and Terminator 2.

Species was never a critical darling, with generally tepid reviews and unfocused characters. Kingsley’s Fitch is a little hard to buy as the amoral government bigwig, and Whitaker’s empathy-sensing character is mostly a prop who states the obvious in ominous tones. The film’s themes—bioethics, alien interaction, and maternal instincts—are only glimpsed at and don’t ever come to satisfying conclusions. But there’s an interesting, almost erotic horror to the film that can’t help but hook viewers. Screenwriter Feldman, who did work on the property after it was acquired by the production company Metromedia, had read a story from Arthur C. Clarke talking about how extraterrestrial life may never make it to Earth due to the improbability of travel faster than the speed of light. But what if, Feldman thought, aliens instead attempted to contact Earth and left them with the blueprints to create something organic? Something invasive and sentient, made from Earth DNA? Species could be a cautionary tale or a creature feature. But between Henstridge’s otherworldly chemistry, Michael Madsen’s grizzled masculinity, and Giger’s unforgettable body design, the film has held its own as a ’90s sci-fi artifact that has enough enduring curiosities to recommend it.