The Alien That Giger Hated: A Deep Dive into Species

Actor Michael Madsen died last month at the age of 74. A mainstay of grittier American cinema, Madsen is best known for his work in Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco. While his filmography features more than a few fan-favorite performances, few obituaries have given a nod to his rather quirky role as a black ops mercenary tasked with hunting down a half-human, half-alien hybrid in the 1995 sci-fi horror film Species. As the film turns 30 this year, now seems like the perfect time to take a look back and celebrate one of the most interesting attempts to mix monster movies and alien paranoia in the Clinton era.

Species was directed by Roger Donaldson, best known for the political thriller No Way Out and the period epic The Bounty. The movie was a sort of bizarre melting pot of horror, action, and low-key science fiction, mixing both humor and dread in equal parts. The film kicks off when the United States government receives two signals from outer space. The first contains all the details necessary to develop a clean-burning, synthetic fuel source, while the second signal contains detailed instructions on how to splice alien DNA with human DNA. The government, being the all-powerful, militarized superstructure that it is, decides to try it out, naturally.

Under the watchful eye of Dr. Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley), an all-male human-alien hybrid is created. In her early stages of development, she is played by Michelle Williams. The doc expected to create a controllable, placid organism. The results were a bit more disappointing. Sil develops faster than humanly possible. In just three months, Sil is the physical equivalent of a 12-year-old girl. But other things begin to manifest. Violent, R-rated nightmares. A series of strange and ominous clues that Sil may not be as “under control” as the docs would like. When Fitch decides to call off the experiment and asphyxiate the creature in her cell with cyanide, Sil manages to escape, and the plot is underway.

Tracking her down will be a team of various specialists, including Ben Kingsley’s Fitch, Madsen’s Preston Lennox (a no-nonsense mercenary), Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger), a molecular biologist; Dr. Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina), an anthropologist; and Dan Smithson (Forest Whitaker), a brooding empath that can feel Sil’s emotions. Tracking the creature will eventually lead them to the San Fernando Valley, and an adult Sil (Natasha Henstridge), who is very, very ready to go find a mate and multiply. She’s smart. She’s human enough to be adaptive, but she’s also more driven by primal instincts than any human should ever be. The body count includes a train tramp, a nightclub casualty, and an ill-fated lover. The team has to stop her before she can produce offspring that can reproduce just as quickly.

Species introduced one of the most famous creatures of the 1990s. It was the brainchild of surrealist horror maestro H.R. Giger, who designed the xenomorph for Ridley Scott’s classic Alien. He wanted Sil to be “a very aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly,” he explained to Starburst magazine. The look of Sil in her final form was striking. Her skin was translucent, described in production notes as “glass body, but with carbon inside.” Giger originally wanted to show three separate stages of alien development for Sil, but due to production constraints, he had to focus on the transformation cocoon and the final maternal alien form.

Despite his distaste for the final product, Species was still a commercial success and remains a cult classic. While the design was innovative, Giger was critical of what he considered to be unoriginal aspects of the film, such as the character of Sil herself and the final scene. Giger felt that Species was very similar to Alien. He cited the use of the “punching tongue,” as well as the creature itself, as a thinly veiled imitation of the “chestburster” scene from Alien, even though the genesis of Species predates Alien by several years.

Production notes show that Giger was concerned about this in the middle of production, and ordered the director to make sure Sil was killed by a bullet to the head in the end, and not a set of flame-throwers that Giger felt was an obvious callback to both Alien 3 and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. No such luck for Giger, but he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t happy. The film’s dialogue and characterization leave a lot to be desired. Kingsley is on board as the amoral head of the project, but the portrayal is a bit flat. Whitaker’s character of Dan Smithson is mostly a brooding spectator, stating the obvious before it’s been said by the characters on screen.

The themes are percolating in the background—bioethics, extraterrestrial contact, even hints of primal motherhood. But nothing about Species digs in deep enough to be truly satisfying, even as a low-budget, quick-buck attempt at modern horror and science fiction. Fieldman, the screenwriter, admitted that he was inspired by an Arthur C. Clarke article called “Blood and Iron.” Clarke mused about the possibility that aliens might never actually come to Earth in the future because the chances of developing faster-than-light travel are practically nonexistent.

Instead, what if they contacted us with detailed blueprints that could be used to create something organic? Something invasive and sentient that was built using Earth DNA? The result was a film that was equal parts cautionary, erotic horror, and straight-up creature feature. Species will likely never get put in the same conversation as Alien, or even Terminator 2, but it was one of the more successful attempts at crafting its genre-bending cult fandom. Between Henstridge’s alien performance, Madsen’s gravelly intensity, and H.R. Giger’s immortal design work, Species is a curiously enjoyable piece of 1990s sci-fi that deserves a watch.

Species is now 30 years old, an age where many films have settled into their legacy. For some, they serve as a time capsule of an era when style often trumped substance and of the odd, iconic roles that actors like Madsen defined all along the way.