History Film / Species

** TheLancer: Preston Lennox
** TheSmartGuy: Dan Smithson
** TheBigGuy: Stephen Arden

* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: There's practically no resistance to Sel's escape. She runs straight out an exit door and right off the premises. Grand total the only things between her and freedom were the glass of her containment cell and a chain-link fence.

For thirty years, SETI has been scanning outer space, looking for signs of alien intelligence. In 1974, scientists sent out a message containing human DNA and the location of our planet. In return, they received two messages: one contains a catalyst for methane, and the other contains a sample of alien DNA and instructions for how to combine it with human DNA. It is not long at all before scientists follow the instructions, creating the female human/alien hybrid Sil. She matures quickly, resembling an 11-year-old-girl after only a few weeks. She is intelligent, strong and agile - but the head of the research team thinks she might be dangerous to humanity and tries to terminate the experiment. Big mistake. Sil breaks out of her little habitat and escapes into Los Angeles, where she matures fully with two things in mind: survival at any cost, and reproduction with a human male.

'''''{{Species}}''''' is a 1995 science fiction thriller directed by Roger Donaldson, and starring NatashaHenstridge, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forrest Whitaker, Alfred Molina and Marg Helgenberger.

* ChildrenAreInnocent: Why the train conductor cuts Sil a break. She doesn't even ask her name or where she's going to.

* MaleToFemaleUniversalAdaptor: The alien beings are {{half human hybrid|s}} shapeshifters. We don't know what their "equipment" [[OneWingedAngel really]] looks like. [[NaughtyTentacles They do seem to have a prominent tentacle motif going]]...

** Sil. For the most part she doesn't seem to be acting out of deliverate malice rather self-peservation and natural instinct. That said her natural instincts lead her to brutally murder a "rival" female.

This film has much to recommend it: A fine ensemble cast perfomance, a terrifying yet sadly sympathetic villain, thoughtful social commentary, very tight direction, designs by the legendary HRGiger, special effects that set a new standard for the depiction of alien creatures, and boobs. [[EverybodyRemembersTheStripper The last one is what most people remember]].

** Also, despite apparently conceiving their children in their pubic region (Sil tells [[spoiler:Arden]] to ''feel'' their child growing, in her belly, [[spoiler:just before she kills him]]), the aliens birth their children through their chest cavity. No doubt a callback to [[{{HRGiger}} H.R. Giger's]] previous [[{{Alien}} iconic creation]].

* ExpandedUniverse: DarkHorseComics had a four-issue comic miniseries entitled ''Species: Human Race'' while AvatarPress had a the one-shot ''Species Special''.

* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: The aliens have plenty of prehensile parts to impale their victims.

** ''Species II'' has the infected astronaut Patrick Ross. It's unclear where his human and alien self truly begin and end but he does show genuine distress over the things he's doing, eventually opting to kill himself. However despite blowing most of his head clean off, it regenerates and it's strongly implied from that point on the alien side is firmly in control.

* AntiVillain: Sil is a surprisingly sympathetic antagonist. She clearly has human-like emotions, including to some extent a desire to be loved ("she liked him"), and if you look at things from her perspective she's basically a young child completely alone on a world full of hostile {{Starfish Aliens}}. She's a genetic freak tormented by dreams of a world and a people she doesn't know, and over the course of the film seems to realise that she will never fit in anywhere. Yes she's a killer, but she seems to be acting more out of instinct than conscious malice, from her point of view she's just defending herself or preserving her {{Masquerade}} which she absolutely has to maintain among [[HumansAreCthulhu the hostile Starfish aliens that surround her]]. And her goal of having children and propogating her own species are hardly in and of themselves evil. Plus if she had anything like the feelings toward her offspring that a human mother would you can't help cringing a little imagining her [[spoiler: witnessing the heroes incinerating her infant son with a flamethrower]] at the end. You can see how she's a threat to people that needs to be contained or neutralized, but at the same time you can sympathize with her.
** It's debatable whether Sil can really be considered a villain at all. Fitch, on the other hand, is undeniably a VillainProtagonist. Keep in mind that everything that occurs is because of his messing around with alien DNA, to say nothing of his incredibly jerkass attitude, which [[spoiler: almost gets Preston and Laura killed.]]

* {{Fingore}}: The scene where Sil cuts her own thumb off (it regenerates) [[GoryDiscretionShot before moving onto to her female captive's hand]].

* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: There's practically no resistance to Sel's escape. She runs straight out an exit door and right off the premises. Grand total the only things between her and freedom were the glass of her containment cell and a chain-link fence.
* HotScientist: Marg Helgenberger, from this film and the second.

** Ahem, well she didn't have much social contact in the first place.

* PreAssKickingOneLiner: Preston at the end: "Let go, you motherfucker." Cue an [[spoiler: [[BoomHeadshot M203-launched grenade into Sil's face.]]]]

* ASharedSuffering: In ''Species II'', the male and female hybrids (one each) sense each other and try to hook up. Eve (a clone of Sil) even goes into psychic heat when she senses him, despite the fact that she was raised in [[LadyLand a female-only environment]].
* CardboardPrison: The cell Eve is kept in can be broken out of by her running into it. (It's made out of glass, like what contained Sil in the first film.) The rest of the doors aren't strong enough to stop her either. The guards outside her cell are apparently expected to stop a superstrong creature that can survive decapitation with fists and trutcheons. Nor are the any of the rest of the guards armed with weapons actually capable of killing or seriously harming her. Despite the fact they've been testing the effectiveness of weapons on her for some time and you'd think standard assault rifles are one of the first things they'd test on her, and we know from the first movie that [[KillItWithFire flamethrowers work well against them]]. Oh yes, there's supposed to be a poison capsule in her neck that kills her if she ever leaves the lab/prison ... which apparently either fails to go off, was completely ineffective, or she removed it offscreen. And when the infected astronaut was captured earlier he was able to get out of control and escape with ridiculous ease. The whole thing was a gigantic {{Idiot Ball}}.
** She destroyed the console that activated the poison capsule on her way out, before it manages to go off.
** Making that FailsafeFailure as it should, reasonably, not require someone to push a button for it to go off.

* DrivenToSuicide: After [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone killing his fiancee]], Patrick realises he is monster and blows his own head off to put an end to his actions. However his head grows back and it's clear from that point on his human half is dead.

** Of course, they let her watch TV. Which is full of males. And romance. And sex, unless they put a G-rated filter on what she could watch. [[FridgeLogic Huh]]? Maybe it's something to do with pheromones, but then [[FridgeLogic you'd think it would be more convenient just to give her an airtight cage]]. Of course, this was from the second movie, which had all sorts of {{Fridge Logic}} problems, mostly because it seems to have been [[ViewersAreMorons written under the assumption that the viewer would be too distracted by all the tits, blood, and slime to pay attention to whether or not the script made any sense]].

* TooDumbToLive: Eve is kept in a {{Cardboard Prison}} because the plot calls for her to escape and the writers apparently either couldn't think of any better way to do it or didn't want to bother. The villain uses a house that his family owns as a hide-out, reasoning that the fact that it's owned in his mother's maiden name will surely stump the FBI, CIA, and whatever other agencies might have an interest in capturing a superstrong near-immortal evil alien that's going around impregnating women with lethal chestbuster rip-offs. He drags a random woman out of a supermarket to rape her in his van right in the parking lot in broad daylight. When the heroes find him instead of sending a team of trained professionals armed with [[KillItWithFire weapons that worked fine in the first movie]] they send a scientist and an astronaut (granted, along with ''one'' trained professional) and take no weaponry that would be effective against the creatures besides something that requires you to all but shove it into the target's face.

* XMeetsY: ''{{Alien}}'' meets ''AForAndromeda''

** ''Species II'' has the infected astronaut Patrick Ross. It's unclear where his human and alien self truly begin and end but he does show genuine distress over the things he's doing, eventually opting to kill himself. However despite blowing most of his head clean off, it regenerates and it's strongly implied the alien side is now firmly in control.

** ''Species II'' has the infected astronaut Patrick Ross. It's unclear where the alien side of him begins and human ends but he shows genuine guilt over the things he's doing eventually opts to kill himself. Despite blowing his most his head clean off, it regenerates and it's clear the alien is now in control.

* TragicMonster: Sil.
** ''Species II'' tried to do this with the infected astronaut. Particularly memorable is one scene where he admits to his father he's scared of turning himself in to the authorities. It's played as if it's supposed to make him sympathetic but since he's already responsible for dozens of ([[ChestBurster painful, gruesome]]) deaths it just makes him look like a self-centered [[JerkAss Jerk-Ass]].
*** Seems like he could have just been screwing with his father by appearing to be normal, considering he nonchalantly murders him when they hug a few seconds later.

* CameBackWrong: In ''Species 2'', the astronaut that was turned into the alien hybrid is distressed by the weird urges he's been having and the things he's done, so he commits suicide by eating a shotgun and blowing off most of his head. Which grows back. Afterwards, he's not so upset about the things he's done, and goes on to do them some more.

* AlienHair: In her full-alien form, Sil's hair resembles {{Predator}} dreadlocks.

* ChildrenAreInnocent: Why the train conductor cuts Sel a break. She doesn't even ask her name or where she's going to.

* PreAssKickingOneLiner: At the end "Let go of him, you motherfucker."

* ChestBurster - Why some people [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel ONLY]] watch [[NauseaFuel Species 2]] ONCE. It made [[{{Alien}} what happened to]] JohnHurt look pretty tame.

* FanService: Hot alien sex. Natasha Henstridge with no nudity taboo.

*** Or, y'know, they don't keep their brains in their heads. Doesn't cover the ShapeshifterBaggage though.
*** Actually, it's not such an absurd concept. Several of the longer varieties of dinosaur had a secondary sub-brain in their spines, because otherwise it would take them ages to sense impulses in their tail and then react to them. Expanding on that concept, and the fact that humans have doubled, redundant organs (e.g. lungs and kidneys, of which we can survive with only one), it's not so hard to believe that an alien could have two brains, one in the head, one in the body, that are seperately redundant and are able to act as backups for each other, until the other brain can be regenerated.

*** There are implications that it was SIL's growth in a lab as a test subject that made her sociopathic - or even just the inclusion of Human DNA itself. As for what resulted from a pure alien DNA sample, a nuclear reactor without the shielding is just a continuously exploding bomb.

** Also, despite apparrently concieving their children in their pubic region (Sil tells [[spoiler:Arden]] to ''feel'' their child growing, in her belly, [[spoiler:just before she kills him]]), the aliens birth their children through their chest cavity. No doubt a callback to [[{{HRGiger}} H.R. Giger's]] previous [[{{Alien}} iconic creation]].

* Enhancebutton: Averted. They get a still from a video camera and freely admit that it's the best image they can get from it.

* HotScientist: Marg Helgenberger, from this film and the second.

* FridgeBrilliance: There's a closeup of Sil in John Carey's garden where she blinks and we see that she has nictitating membranes in addition to "normal" eyelids. You thought that was just there because [[RuleOfCool it looks cool and alien]]. Nictitating membranes are a feature possessed only by semi-aquatic tetrapods, so her having them is a subtle indication that she can function underwater for prolonged periods, [[spoiler:foreshadowing the scene at the film's climax where she hides underwater to elude the heroes]].

* FetishFuel: The series is fueled in sex...