Subject: Review: Species II (1998)

From: Justin Felix <[email-masked]>
Date: 8 May 1998 05:29:43 GMT

SPECIES II (1998)
A "Turkey of the Week" film review by Justin Felix.  
Copyright 1998 Justin Felix.  

Rating: **** (out of five)  

Written by Chris Brancato.  
Directed by Peter Medak.  
Starring Michael Madsen, Natasha Henstridge, Marg Helgenberger.  
Rated R (contains nudity, violence, and profanity)  92 mins.  

Synopsis:  A popular astronaut journeys to Mars on a corporate-sponsored
space flight, picks up alien DNA, returns to Earth to have his picture
printed on "Space Flakes" cereal boxes, and mutates into a horny alien
predator.  Meanwhile, Eve, a genetic clone of Sil from the first SPECIES,
gains a psychic connection to the astronaut and fights her "urge to merge"
with him.  Press Lennox and Laura Baker (survivors of SPECIES), along with
a machete-wielding astronaut and a one-eyed colonel, try to stop the
growing alien menace.  

Comments:  Sometimes I really enjoy "Wednesday Dollar Nights" at the local
theater down the street from where I live.  This theater shows second-run
movies, and the cheap admission price is their way of increasing ticket
sales during the sluggish middle of the week.  Every now and then, a
thoroughly awful turkey will play there, and the audience gladly ridicules
it as if they were part of a massive "Mystery Science Theater 3000"
episode.  In recent years, Kent audiences, including myself, have paid a
buck each to bash WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE and ANACONDA.  These
experiences, however, did not prepare me for the laugh riot SPECIES II
engendered last Wednesday as one of the evening's dollar features.  

As a side note, allow me to be one of the few brave enough to admit that
he's seen SPECIES II more than once.  I saw it for the first time on the
Friday it came out (April 10, 1998).  The original SPECIES still stands as
one of the best sci-fi misfires of the decade, and the sequel promised to
be just as awful.  Critics came down fairly hard on SPECIES II, with good
reason.  The movie is terrible; it's a poorly-acted, exploitative film with
a heavy-handed, ludicrous plot full of continuity holes.  SPECIES II,
however, makes no claim to be good.  The movie poster prominently displays
star Natasha Henstridge in a silly uniform in front of a sillier backdrop
of stars with the slogan "Mating Season Begins" underneath.  People who
spent more than a dollar for this film should have known what they were in
for and expected the worse.  This Friday showing I saw with my brother had
a small audience who seemed to genuinely appreciate, and laugh at, the
cheese projected on the screen.  

I did not write this review, by the way, as a critic who expects an
Academy-Award-winning tour de force from a film like this.  Instead, the
four stars I award this turkey are deserved on the merits of having a fun
time with a bad sci-fi / horror film.  (I did deduct a star for an
inexcusable scene I'll discuss later.)  SPECIES II, like its predecessor,
reminds me of the 1940s-1950s Universal and AIP monster movies that were a
staple of my Saturday afternoons growing up.  Very few films these days
capture the magic of that by-gone era of Bug-Eyed Monsters, army generals,
and scientists' daughters like the two SPECIES films do.  

Returning now to the Kent Cinema last Wednesday, which would have been
April 29, 1998 (obviously, it didn't take long for SPECIES II to leave
first-run theaters), I convinced a couple friends to go see it with me.
Knowing them fairly well, I expected they would find the film a humorous
romp too.  The packed audience, however, surprised me with their continuous
berating of the movie.  I haven't been part of a movie crowd who had this
much fun at a bad movie in quite some time (although I did hear one guy
behind me ask his neighbor "is this supposed to be funny?" early on in the
film).  It was like a spontaneous, impromptu showing of THE ROCKY HORROR
PICTURE SHOW without fans dressed up in costume.  They laughed with good
reason too.  The opening scene involves a slow-moving space shuttle with
corporate logos painted on the end of it like tacky bumper stickers,
bringing allusions to Mel Brooks's SPACEBALLS' opening sequence from the
crowd.  People got a real hoot out of the "Space Flakes" cereal boxes
predominant in a supermarket scene, and an over-the-top colonel with one
eye drew pirate-like "Arrrrr"s in every scene he appeared in.  

The convoluted storyline, briefly outlined in my synopsis above, is
laughable from start to finish.  Filled with technobabble and
inconsistencies, SPECIES II almost seems to challenge its viewers to
identify all of its errors.  Eve (who, in the first place, thought it'd be
a great idea to clone Sil from the first SPECIES, after all the death and
destruction she caused?) remains in a chamber isolated from men (in order
to keep her docile) -- even though she's allowed to watch baseball and "The
Dukes of Hazzard," and men constantly walk around outside the chamber.  Eve
has a device implanted in her head that's supposed to kill her if she
leaves her cell -- when she does escape, she has no problem, apparently,
with this device.  The list could go on and on.  

If the plot is considered bad, then the dialogue's worse.  A discussion of
SPECIES II's dialogue, though, could not be complete without combining it
with a discussion of its actors.  Natasha Henstridge, as in the first
SPECIES, does not have many lines here.  An attractive supermodel, she's
basically around to strut around in various states of undress.  Also
returning for a second go-round are Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger.
Madsen, as government agent Press Lennox, really makes these SPECIES movies
work.  He constantly looks dissipated and elicits laughter from the
audience in nearly every scene he's in (he's really that bad in this role).
 Madsen is quickly becoming the John Agar of the 1990s.  His best line, the
one which people laughed at the hardest during both showings I attended,
was a poorly-delivered warning about the alien menace: "they'll f--k
humanity out of existence!"  Poor Marg Helgenberger, returning as scientist
Laura Baker (Lennox's unlikely love interest) does not fare much better.
When Eve becomes a disgusting, nine-foot, alien creature (designed by
ALIEN's H.R. Giger) in a ridiculously over-the-top, slimy, gooey, bloody
scene, Helgenberger states "don't forget she's still half-human."  

The original SPECIES had first-rate, top-notch actors (most notably Ben
Kingsley and Forest Whitaker) embarrass themselves completely with their
appearances in the film, providing some of its amusement.  SPECIES II
continues this trend.  FORREST GUMP's Mykelti Williamson plays an astronaut
helping super-dud-agent Lennox and super-stupid-scientist Baker track down
the two aliens before they f--k us out of existence.  At one point, he
brandishes a sword instead of a much more sensible weapon, like a machine
gun, and claims "I'm goin' back to Africa on his ass!"  BABE and STAR TREK:
FIRST CONTACT's James Cromwell must also be regretting his choice of roles,
as he portrays a dumb-hick of a senator who is father to the astronaut
infected with the libidinous alien DNA.  

Justin Lazard has the role of the ill-fated astronaut who causes all the
chaos this time around.  He does a suitable job playing his character;
however, the character itself is the biggest flaw of the film.  In the
first SPECIES, Natasha Henstridge's Sil seduced men before she killed them.
 "Seduced" is the operating word here.  Much like the vampire myth, people
(men in this case) became victims because they gave in to their passion
under the spell of a seducer, whether that seducer was a vampire or, in
SPECIES, an alien / human hybrid.  (Sil, granted, also killed when she felt
threatened -- the train attendant being a prime example.)  In SPECIES II,
the same is true for the most part.  Lazard's character, Patrick Ross,
seduces the women around him, or he hires out prostitutes.  In either case,
these victims pay for their sins (or so it could be read as such).  In one
scene, a rather prolonged scene, however, Ross abducts a woman from a
supermarket and shoves her into a van to force himself upon her.  This
violation, even though the deed is interrupted before completion, is
inexcusable for a film that is quite obviously trying for a comic effect,
and it disrupts the otherwise cheesy, darkly humorous tone of the movie.  

Some critics took offense at what they deemed excessive gore in SPECIES II.
 In an obvious parody of the ALIEN series, for example, 8-year-old children
burst out of the stomachs of women Ross had sex with mere moments before.
In another scene, Ross tries to commit suicide by shooting himself in the
head.  Having blown it away with a shotgun, his head slowly rebuilds itself
as the camera pans around his body.  I'm not a big fan of gore in films;
the sight of blood makes me uneasy.  These scenes, however, graphic as they
may sound, are so unrealistic, fake, and over-the-top that they seem
absurdly funny rather than morbidly terrifying.  Scenes like these brought
laughter from both audiences I was a part of.  

SPECIES II is most certainly not for everyone.  It deserves its R-rating
and is completely inappropriate for children.  For those adults, however,
who still get a big kick out of watching and ridiculing bad monster flicks,
this turkey's definately up your alley.  (And, hey, what other film would
cast comic Richard Belzer as President of the U.S. while throwing Peter
Boyle in an insane asylum?)