Species is a 1995 American science fiction horror film directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dennis Feldman. The film is the first installment of the Species franchise. It stars Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger and Natasha Henstridge in her film debut role. The film's plot concerns a motley crew of scientists and government agents who try to track down Sil (Henstridge), a seductive extraterrestrial-human hybrid, before she successfully mates with a human male.
The film was conceived by Feldman in 1987, and was originally pitched as a film treatment in the style of a police procedural, entitled The Message. When The Message failed to attract the studios, Feldman re-wrote it as a spec script, which ultimately led to the making of the film. The extraterrestrial aspect of Sil's character was created by H. R. Giger, who was also responsible for the beings from the Alien franchise. The effects combined practical models designed by Giger collaborator Steve Johnson and XFX, with computer-generated imagery done by Richard Edlund's Boss Film Studios. Giger felt that the film and the character were too similar to Alien, so he pushed for script changes.
Most of the principal photography was done in Los Angeles, California, where the film is set. Several scenes were filmed in Utah and at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Species was released by MGM/UA Distribution Co. on July 7, 1995 and was met with mixed reviews from critics, who felt that the film's execution did not match the ambition of its premise, but nevertheless was a box office success, partly due to the hype surrounding Henstridge's nude scenes in various tabloid newspapers and lad mags of the time, grossing US$113.3 million ($ million in dollars). It spawned a franchise, which includes one theatrical sequel (Species II), as well as two made-for-television sequels (Species III and Species – The Awakening). Species was adapted into a novel by Yvonne Navarro and two comic book series by Dark Horse Comics, one of which was written by Feldman.
Plot During the SETI program, Earth's scientists send out transmissions, such as the Arecibo message, with information about Earth and its inhabitants in the hopes of finding life beyond Earth. After receiving transmissions from an alien source on how to create limitless fuel and an alien DNA sample with instructions on how to splice it with that of humans, the scientists assume the aliens are friendly. Inspired by the second transmission, a government team led by Xavier Fitch commissions a genetic experiment meant to create a female alien/human hybrid organism under the belief that she would have "more docile and controllable" traits. They eventually produce a girl codenamed "Sil", who initially resembles a normal human and develops into a 12-year-old in three months.
Due to Sil's violent outbursts while she is sleeping, the scientists deem her dangerous and prepare to kill her using cyanide gas, but she breaks out of her containment cell and escapes. Fearing she will mate with human males and produce offspring that will eventually exterminate the human race, the government assembles a team consisting of anthropologist Dr. Stephen Arden, molecular biologist Dr. Laura Baker, "empath" Dan Smithson and black ops mercenary Preston "Press" Lennox to track and kill Sil. Using her superhuman strength, intelligence and regenerative capability to evade capture, Sil matures rapidly into her early twenties and travels to Los Angeles, where she kills several people to prevent them from alerting authorities and disguises herself.
Press and Baker find Sil after she fails to mate with and kills Robbie Llywelyn, a diabetic young man, and John Carey, a man she met following a car crash. She assumes her alien form and flees into a nearby forest, where she kidnaps Marlo Keegan to assume her identity. Secretly returning to Carey's home to spy on Fitch, Sil reads his lips and determines he and his team plan to stake out a nightclub to find her. After being spotted by Smithson, Sil lures her pursuers into a car chase wherein she leaves Marlo to die while crashing the car into a high-voltage transformer and jumping out at the last second. She later cuts and dyes her hair before developing an attraction towards Press, whom she dreamed of the previous night. Meanwhile, the government team celebrates Sil's apparent death at a hotel, where Sil stealthily stalks them; killing a maid to take the room keys. Arden, upset about being alone, goes to his room to find Sil waiting for him. They soon have sex, resulting in her instantly becoming pregnant before she kills him once he realizes who she is. Sensing her presence, Smithson alerts the remaining team members. Sil transforms once more and escapes into the sewers. The team pursues, but Sil kills Fitch before giving birth. Her offspring subsequently attacks Smithson, who incinerates it with a flamethrower while Press kills Sil with a grenade launcher. As the survivors leave, they fail to notice a rat gnawing on one of Sil's severed tentacles before mutating and killing another rat.
Cast
Influence and themes Since Sil (Natasha Henstridge) grows rapidly and kills humans with ease, at a certain point film character Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger) speculates that Sil is a biological weapon sent by a species who regard humans as an intergalactic weed. Writer Dennis Feldman declared that he wanted to explore this theme further in the script, as it questions mankind's place in the universe and how other civilizations might perceive and relate to humanity: "maybe [humans are] not a potential threat, maybe a competitor, maybe a resource". He also declared that more could be said about Sil's existential doubts, as she does not know her origin or purpose; she only follows her instinct to mate and perpetuate her species.
Writing for the Journal of Popular Film & Television, Susan George authored a paper that dealt with the portrayal of procreation in Species, Gattaca and Mimic. George compares the character of Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) to "an updated Dr. Frankenstein", and explores the development of Sil's maternal aspirations, which convert the character into an "archaic mother" figure similar to the xenomorph creature in the Alien series, both of which are, she claims, portrayed negatively. George further states that a recurring theme in science fiction films is a response to "this kind of powerful female sexuality and 'alien-ness in that "the feminine monster must die as Sil does at the end of Species". Feldman, himself, considered the film to have an underlying theme regarding "a female arriving and seeking to find a superior mate".
A five-year investigation into accounts of the chupacabra, a well-known cryptid, revealed that the original sighting report of the creature in Puerto Rico by Madeline Tolentino may have been inspired by the character Sil. This was detailed in paranormal investigator and skeptic Benjamin Radford's book Tracking the Chupacabra. According to Virginia Fugarino of Memorial University of Newfoundland writing for the Journal of Folklore Research, Radford found a link between the original eyewitness report and the design of Sil in her alien form, and hypothesized that "[Species], which [Tolentino] did see before her sighting, influenced what she believes she saw of the chupacabra".
Production
Development and writing Dennis Feldman had the idea for Species in 1987, as he worked on another film about an alien invasion, Real Men. Having read an article by Arthur C. Clarke about the insurmountable odds against an extraterrestrial craft ever locating and visiting Earth, given that stellar distances are great, and faster-than-light travel is unlikely, Feldman started to think that it was "unsophisticated for any alien culture to come here in what [he]'d describe as a big tin can". Thus in turn he considered that the possibility of extraterrestrial contact was through information."The Making of Species: The Origin", Species Definitive Edition DVD disk 2 Then he detailed that a message would contain instructions from across the void to build something that would talk to men. Instead of a mechanical device, Feldman imagined wetware. The visitor would adapt to Earth's environment through DNA belonging to Earth's organisms. Mankind has sent to space transmissions "giving out directions" such as the Arecibo message, which Feldman considered unwary, as they relay information to potential predators from outer space. He pointed out that "in nature, one species would not want a predator to know where it hides".
Therefrom emerged a film treatment called The Message. The original script had more of a police procedural approach, with the alien being created by a "bathtub geneticist" who had just had his project aborted by the government, and a biologist who had worked on the project getting together with a police officer to search for the creature. Eventually Feldman came to believe this concept had some credibility issues, and instead changed the protagonists to a government team. After coining the name "Sil", Feldman initially thought of forming an acronym, but in the end chose only the three-letter name after learning about the codons of the genetic code, which can be represented in groups of three letters. Sil would originally emerge from a DNA sequence manipulating human DNA, and constantly mutate as she used the human junk DNA to access "all the defenses of the entire animal kingdom that [humans] evolved through – including ones that had never developed, plus ones [Earth's scientists] don't know about that have become extinct". Research that Feldman did for the script included going to sessions of UCLA's Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life (CSEOL), talking to SETI scientists, and visiting the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to talk with researchers working on the Human Genome Project. The Message was offered to several studios, but was passed up.
In 1993, Feldman reworked his ideas into a spec script. This was sent to producer Frank Mancuso, Jr., who had hired Feldman to adapt Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's A Cast of Killers. The producer became attracted to the creative possibilities as the film offered "the challenge of walking that fine line between believability and pushing something as far as it can go". Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer got interested in the project, and despite some initial disagreements on the budget, after considering other studios Feldman signed with MGM. In turn, the now retitled Species attracted director Roger Donaldson, who was attracted to its blend of science fiction and thriller. The script underwent eight different drafts, written over an eight-month period, before Donaldson was content that flaws in the story's logic had been corrected. At one point another writer, Larry Gross, tried his hand with the script, but ultimately all the work was done by Feldman. Feldman would remain as a co-producer. While the initial Species script suggested a love triangle between Sil and two government team members, Preston Lennox and Laura Baker, dissatisfaction among the crew eventually led to changes to the ending, which ended up featuring Sil having a baby that would immediately prove dangerous.
When Donaldson was announced as the director in 1994, Mancuso stated that most of the $35 million budget would be spent on effects, as "it's not a movie that calls for stars. We're going to try and put as much money as we can below the line and allow the effects and the creature to be the highlights of the film". The lesser emphasis on actors included a newcomer, former model Natasha Henstridge, as the human version of the creature Sil.
Design