History Film / Species

* MoreDeadlyThanTheMale: Played straight throughout most of the series in that the alien-human hybrids are female, but averted in ''Species II'' with the Patrick Ross alien being bigger, meaner, more capable of quickly creating a large number of alien offspring, [[spoiler: and fatally [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping Eve]] at the climax]].

*** It turns out that showing a vaginal birth would have been an immediate X-rating for the movie, and they had to change it to a chest orifice against Creator/HRGiger's protests (he, quite rightly, thought that was just ripping off Alien.

* HybridsAreACrapshoot: Sil is the product of genetic combination of human and alien DNA. She is a Half-Human Hybrid Shapeshifter whose base form is Body Horror. She is compelled to mate with human males (and then kill them) in order to reproduce.

* MoreDeadlyThanTheMale: Played straight throughout most of the series in that the alien-human hybrids are female, but averted in ''Species II'' with the Patrick Ross alien being bigger, meaner, more capable of quickly creating a large number of alien offspring, [[spoiler: and fatally [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping Sil 2]] at the climax]].

* HybrdsAreACrapshoot: Sil is the product of genetic combination of human and alien DNA. She is a Half-Human Hybrid Shapeshifter whose base form is Body Horror. She is compelled to mate with human males (and then kill them) in order to reproduce.

** Stephen Arden is supposedly an uber-smart person, yet after a horny, attractive female alien in human form [[spoiler: 'dies' in questionable circumstances, he doesn't think twice about sleeping with a horny attractive woman that suddenly appears before him. To be fair he probably didn't know she had the ability to regrow her thumb, and [[SomethingElseAlsoRises perhaps some blood left his head and went elsewhere]].]]

* WouldHurtAChild: In the first film. When child Sil is ordered to be terminated via deadly gas fumes filling her containment cell. Through the doctor administering the termination can't help but shed a single tear and mouth to Sil that he's sorry as he watches her die. Then she escapes.

It was followed by three sequels: ''Film/SpeciesII'' (1998), the only one theatrically released, bringing back Henstridge, Madsen and Helgenberger; ''Species III'' (2004), released direct-to-DVD and featuring a cameo by Henstridge; and ''Species - The Awakening'' (2007), which actually debuted on the [[Creator/SyFy Sci-Fi Channel]] one more before its home video release.

* 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 StarfishAliens. She's a genetic freak tormented by dreams of a world and 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 goals of having children and propagating 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.

* CuteMonsterGirl: While the human forms of the hybrids are overall pretty hot, but even their alien forms are fairly appealing, with recognizable secondary sexual characteristics that are designed to appeal to potential human mates. The designers specifically wanted Sil to be beautiful even as an alien.

** There's a ''Species'' sourcebook for West End Games's Masterbook system.

* StatuesqueStunner: Part of why Natasha Henstridge was cast involved her 5' 9½" (1,77 m) frame making her more alien-esque. Sunny Mabrey and Creator/HelenaMattsson, both 5' 8" (1,73 m), also fit

* KickTheDog: Sil cutting off the fingers of her captive. The victim would have very likely tried to explain that she couldn't regenerate as Sil could, and after the first finger, that would have been evident. Didn't deter Sil from continuing, though.
** Sil killing a man who showed her kindness by paying for her medical bill and spending time with her.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Sil kills a train operator with a strangling arm out of her cocoon, a woman in a club by ripping her spine, and her first prospect by making her prehensile tongue go through his head (though the latter only happens when she changes her mind about him but he won't take no for an answer).

* ContinuitySnarl: Abbott explains the infected astronaut's half-human children had defective immune systems due to being hybrids, and they are also implied to be sterile (the female one certainly seemed to be). This means the premise of the original movie, that Sil's offspring would end up replacing humanity, was never possible in the first place. Although, then again, the way the scientists in the lab-produced their embryos and the natural conception by Ross may be the devil in the details here. It may also be relevant that Sil provided the egg in her breeding, whereas the half-breeds in Species II & III all came from alien sperm. In crossbreeding species, eggs tend to have a greater influence over which traits the offspring will inherit, meaning Sil's half-breed children would've been naturally more inclined to possess the aliens' strength than Patrick's half-breeds. Patrick was also far less 'picky' than Sil, who explicitly required a suitable mate rather than anyone she came across.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer / BuildingOfAdventure: Inexplicably linked are a ritzy hotel, an elaborate scaffolded sewer network, and some kind of... oil well catacomb.

* DistractedByTheSexy: An near-fatal example [[spoiler: in which a male bicyclist sees Sil walking down the street and whistles at her, not seeing in his direction that a car is coming right at him and is nearly hit. Sil, however, gets struck by the hit-and-run driver and then rushed to the hospital by the horrified pedestrians watching.]]

* EveryCarIsAPinto: Invoked by Sil when she fakes her own death.

** Xavier Fitch is the top dog, yet his only skill seems to be being a {{Jerkass}}.

* MurderTheHypotenuse: Sil does this to any female competitor whom she sees as sexual competition to any male suitors she desires to reproduce with.

* PlotDrivenBreakdown: When they try to breed the second embryo, the camera at the lab breaks down. The repair leads to an action scene.

* ReadingLips: In the scene where Fitch says "Tomorrow Night We'll go back to the Club", Sil is in a car down the street lip-reading him. She'd [[ChekhovsSkill learned to do that]] in her GlassyPrison at his lab.

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

!!This film series provides examples of following tropes:

** Despite apparently conceiving their children in their pubic region (Sil gets [[spoiler:Arden]] to ''feel'' their child growing, in her belly, [[spoiler:just before she kills him]]), the aliens birth their children through a concealed orifice on their chest cavity. No doubt a callback to Creator/HRGiger's previous [[Franchise/{{Alien}} iconic creation]].

** Once the professor "harvests" Sara's egg cells, she is rendered infertile. Which means that just like human women, her stockpile of reproductive cells is created exclusively in gestation (as opposed to men, who generate new supplies of sperm every time they get lucky). This is unusual, considering the aliens can "grow back" most other body parts as needed (like fingers), which we can't. [[note]]Which was the widely held belief at the time; we now know that human women can regenerate egg cells, albeit at a very slow rate that peters out over time.[[/note]]

** There's a ''Species'' sourcebook for West End Games' Masterbook system.

* MoreDeadlyThanTheMale: Played straight throughout most of the series in that the alien-human hybrids are female, but averted in ''Species II'' with the Patrick Ross alien being bigger, meaner, more capable of quickly creating a large number of alien offspring, [[spoiler:and fatally [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping Sil 2]] at the climax]].

* UnevenHybrid: Sil and her ilk are the result of mixing the DNA of a non-terrestrial lifeform with human, making them {{Half Human Hybrid}}s. They are driven to procreate with humans in an attempt to outbreed them, but this actually creates quarter-alien offspring who are sterile.

* XenoNucleicAcid: Since the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message Arecibo message]] contained info on DNA, the aliens responde with their genetic basis and how it could combined with the human one. The result are those sexy yet lethal hybrids.

* 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 StarfishAliens. She's a genetic freak tormented by dreams of a world and 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 propagating 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.

* CardboardPrison: The containment facility holding Sil has a security level that barely beats a pinfold, as it seems that everything she has to do in order to escape is running her way through a fragile glass pod, a guardless building, some unwary soldiers and a fence.

* CuriosityKilledTheCast: The female train conductors who approaches the odd looking alien life-forms with not a trace of fear on her face.

* FlexibilityEqualsSexAbility: Fervently wanting to conceive a child, Sil manages to seduce Doctor Arden while the team hunting her are meeting in a hotel. She gets him undressed and erect in a flash, them pumps the spunk out of him in about a minute. Ten seconds later, she can feel her baby quickening due to her BizarreAlienBiology. Sil then kills Arden because [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness he has outlived his usefulness]] to her.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: The motel manager mentions to Sil that she doesn't want her credit card (which she took, along with the clothes, from the train conductor) to fall into wrong hands. Next scene has Fitch telling on the phone that they found her via tracing her credit card.

* HumanoidAbomination: Sil's son. Despite being theoretically only 1/4 alien, his alien form is significantly more monstruous than Sil's, featuring hinged legs, a crown-like head, an exposed abdomen, an asymmetric pair of arms and a noticeably malformed mouth.

** Preston Lennox is supposedly a talented and sought-after mercenary, yet for most of the film he just stands around looking tough or wielding a gun.
** Dan's empathic powers are limited by the needs of the script. At one point his sensing of Sil is foiled by a wooden fence behind which Sil hides. Also he fails to sense those two bums behind the dumpster who give him a CatScare.

* KickTheDog: Sil cutting off the fingers of her captive. The victim would have very likely tried to explain that she couldn't regenerate like Sil could, and after the first finger, that would have been evident. Didn't deter Sil from continuing, though.

* LectureAsExposition: Fitch gives a lengthily exposition of the SETI project and the failed DNA experiment to the summoned group in his boardroom.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Stephen Arden's look on his face and what he's thinking when he realized he have just been used as an UnwittingPawn for Sil to get her impregnated.]]

* {{Novelization}}: Yvonne Navarro co-wrote a novelization based on the original screenplay with Dennis Feldman. The book gives several in-depth details about the characters not seen in the film, such as Sil's ability to visualize odors and determine harmful substances from edible items by the color. Gas appears black, food appears pink, and an unhealthy potential mate appears to give off green fumes. Other character details include Preston's background in tracking down AWOL soldiers as well as the process of decoding the alien signal. Although no clues are given as to its origin, it is mentioned that the message was somehow routed through several black holes to mask its point of origin.

* ReadingLips: In the scene where Fitch says "Tomorrow Night We'll go back to the Club", Sil is in a car down the street lip reading him. She'd [[ChekhovsSkill learned to do that]] in her GlassyPrison at his lab.

* ScreamingBirth: At the end Sil screams giving birth to her son (it's almost a ChestBurster, though coming out of the stomach). Apparently, even alien anatomy is not suited for painless child birth.

* ThreeMonthOldNewborn: Justified. Just seconds after [[spoiler:having sex with Dr. Arden, Sil is pregnant and give birth by the time she escapes to the caves]]. Due to his sped-up growth rate, Sil's son is already past baby age shortly after emerging from her womb.
* TragicMonster: Sil. For the most part she doesn't seem to be acting out of deliberate malice, rather self-preservation and natural instinct. That said, her natural instincts lead her to brutally murder a "rival" female.

* TrappedInContainment: They're tooling around with the alien DNA when a camera breaks down in the sealed experiment chamber. Dr. Laura Baker and Preston volunteer to go in and try to replace the camera. Of course an accident happens and they are on their own to fight off the fast growing alien while the other team members are forced to watch from behind safety glass.

* VillainProtagonist: Everything that occurs is because of Fitch's messing around with alien DNA, to say nothing of his incredibly jerkass attitude, which [[spoiler: almost gets Preston and Laura killed.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The world is finally free from the hybrid menace and Sara has a partner to live with in the wild. As he's sterile, they will be the last of their species. However, Dean states they will eventually find out, implying they might return to kill him in revenge.]] Not to mention that, [[spoiler:in keeping with the species' habit of exceeding their creators' expectations, it is not unlikely that Sara will somehow be able to naturally heal her own sterility.]]
* CainAndAbel: The malevolent halfbreeds are all Sara's half-siblings.

* ContinuitySnarl: Abbott explains the infected astronaut's half-human children had defective immune systems due to being hybrids, and they are also implied to be sterile (the female one certainly seemed to be). This means the premise of the original movie, that Sil's offspring would end up replacing humanity, was never possible in the first place. Although, then again, the way the scientists in the lab produced their embryos and the natural conception by Ross may be the devil in the details here. It may also be relevant that Sil provided the egg in her breeding, whereas the halfbreeds in Species II & III all came from alien sperm. In crossbreeding species, eggs tend to have a greater influence over which traits the offspring will inherit, meaning Sil's halfbreed children would've been naturally more inclined to possess the aliens' strength then Patrick's halfbreeds. Patrick was also far less 'picky' than Sil, who explicitly required a suitable mate rather than anyone she came across.
* CrazyPrepared: Abbott as a lab equipped with hydrochloric gas, just in case he has to trap and kill a dangerous alien.

* DefrostingIceQueen: Sara through the film, though very subtly, and ultimately by [[spoiler:saving Dean from Amelia.]]

* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Sara is initially ignorant about the human considerations towards nudity, which leads her to show herself naked in front of Dr. Turner, which in turns leads to the old bastard's death.

* PsychicPowers: Both Sara and Amelia, something that had only been hinted at previous installments.

* TokenGoodTeammate: Sara is a 'purer' hybrid than the previous hybrids, and thus her reproductive drive simply doesn't view pure humans, or even her 'flawed' hybrid siblings, as worth being interested in. As such, she generally harmless as not only does she have no desire to mate with humans, but lacks her predecessors' habit of violently killing 'unworthy' potential mates. She's also the only benevolent hybrid in the film. [[spoiler:She even comes to genuinely like Dean and saves him.]]

* TrainEscape: Young Sil escape her pursuers by jumping on a passing train.

* StatuesqueStunner: Part of why Natasha Henstridge was cast involved her 5' 9½" (1,77 m) frame making her more alien-esque. Sunny Mabrey and Helena Mattsson, both 5' 8" (1,73 m), also fit

* ArtMajorBiology: The hybrids are a major example, particularly in the sequels (also see the below entry). The first film could handwave it as ignorance of the aliens' nature.

%% * BloodyMurder

* ContinuitySnarl: Abbott explains the infected astronaut's half-human children had defective immune systems due to being hybrids, and they are also implied to be sterile (the female one certainly seemed to be). This means the premise of the original movie, that Sil's offspring would end up replacing humanity, was never possible in the first place. Although, then again, the way the scientists in the lab produced their embryos and the natural conception by Ross may be the devil in the details here. It may also be relevant that Sil provided the egg in her breeding, whereas the halfbreeds in Species II & III all came from alien sperm. In crossbreeding species, eggs tend to have a greater influence over which traits the offspring will inherit, meaning Sil's halfbreed children would've been naturally more inclined to possess the aliens' strength then Patrick's halfbreeds.

** A grown-up Sil falling out of her cocoon all bloodied after a murder.