Species
Short description
A government scientific team receives a transmission from deep space containing instructions for combining alien and human genetic material. The resulting child, a girl called Sil, grows at an extraordinary rate and soon escapes the laboratory, able to shift between human form and a lethal armoured creature. The scientist in charge of the project assembles a small team to track her through Los Angeles before her biological drive to reproduce can endanger the human race.
The film is directed by Roger Donaldson, the seventh of his fifteen features in chronological order, following The Getaway and preceding Dante's Peak. Dennis Feldman wrote the screenplay and produced alongside Frank Mancuso Jr. Natasha Henstridge plays Sil in her first major role, with Ben Kingsley as Xavier Fitch, Michael Madsen as Preston Lennox, Marg Helgenberger as Dr. Laura Baker, Alfred Molina as Dr. Stephen Arden and Forest Whitaker as Dan Smithson.
Released in July 1995, Species is an action, horror and science fiction film made in the United States by United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and FGM Entertainment. It cost about 35 million dollars and earned roughly 113 million worldwide, a clear commercial success. On IMDb it holds 5.9 out of 10 from around 91,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 6 out of 10 from a much smaller base of about 1,900 votes. A critics' rating of 5.3 out of 10 from 73 reviews places it slightly below the audience score on IMDb.
What's left behind the scenes
- H.R. Giger invested $100,000 of his own money into the scene with the nightmarish train due to MGM's refusal to film it, and the episode was eventually shot.
- For the scene in which Natasha Henstridge's character is born from the cocoon, the set was built upside down. Natasha Henstridge, naked and covered in lubricant, was pushed through the cocoon, and then the shot was flipped.
- Frank Walker, who provided the sound effects for the alien creature, said that his vocal cords were strained by the sheer number of different sounds he had to make, but he still found it “cool and mind-blowing.”
- Alfred Molina later recalled that on the day they filmed the sexual scene with Natasha Henstridge, she was noticeably nervous, as she had never participated in such scenes before. To make her feel more comfortable, Molina told his partner that it was his first time as well, as his only previous similar scene was with a man in Stephen Frears' drama 'Prick Up Your Ears' (1987).
- For the scene in which a creature is born from a cocoon, the set was built upside down. Natasha Henstridge was pushed through the cocoon, and then the shot was flipped.
- Alfred Molina recalled that on the day they filmed the intimate scene with Natasha Henstridge, she was noticeably nervous as she had never participated in such scenes before. To make her feel more comfortable, Molina told her that it was his first time too, but that he had previously had a similar scene with a man in the drama "Listen."
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