Review: Species II (1998) -- By Robert B. Marks
Just when we Science Fiction authors and fans thought that we were finally making headway in Hollywood with such films as the grossly underrated _The Postman_, the Hugo Award winning _Contact_ and the excellent _Dark City_, there comes a film that shows us where we stand. _Species II_ is one of those films.
Even watching it on pan-and-scan video (a rare occurrence for me, but a friend picked it out), I came out feeling insulted and dirty. You see, not only am I a Speculative Fiction writer (albeit unpublished, but that will change soon), but I also consider myself an intelligent part of the human race.
_Species II_ was simply awful. However, in a Hollywood which just doesn't understand SF (and to realize the full extent of this misunderstanding, read Harlan Ellison's 1974 article _Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas, Toto_), awful is somewhat forgivable. However, _Species II_ is more than just awful. It is awful and blatantly misogynistic.
Perhaps the best example to represent the entire film is the first scene with Natasha Hendridge. She plays Eve, a more docile version of Sil from the first movie. And, the first time the audience sees her, she is strapped naked into a chair, being lowered into a vat of corrosive gasses. This is later described by a general as "accommodations fit for a queen".
And it only gets worse. The plot, like in the first film, is virtually nonexistent. The first manned mission to Mars returns, and two of the three astronauts (one male, one female) are contaminated by a soil sample which takes over their DNA. This soil sample, by the way, contains alien DNA which comes to life after accidentally thawing, having been dead for millions of years (huh?!).
They return to Earth, and are then put into a sexual quarantine for 10 days (that's right; diseases don't bother the powers that be, but they can't let their astronauts have sex). Even before this is over, the male astronaut goes on a rampage of sex and violence befitting a bad slasher porn movie. Every time he couples, his mate immediately begins to swell and have a fully developed eight-year-old burst out of her belly. And just to make sure we haven't missed the point, the corpses are often shown in all their gory detail. Also, the female half-alien astronaut, predictably, dies in the same fashion (after all, she's a woman and she has sex; can't let her live in this movie).
Soon this trail of corpses is noticed, and Michael Madson's character joins the biologist from the first film (who, by the way, apparently has had a 180 degree change in her characteristics) in trying to hunt down this sexual predator. The audience is then subjugated to a bunch of inconsistent characterizations, stupid ideas (such as re-activating Eve's alien attributes), and generally poor plot. Not to mention idiotic science and generally unexplainable events (two examples: a researcher gets killed by a blood puddle for no apparent reason, and a soil sample thaws spontaneously itself without anybody noticing).
And, to make matters worse, the film ends in such a way that there will definitely be a sequel. So, what begins with scientific stupidity and poor plotting, ends without actually wrapping anything up.
All in all, _Species II_ was an offensive and unintelligent film. But I can say one good thing about it: it was better than _Plan 9 From Outer Space_. But not by much.
So, the final score: 0/5; absolutely nothing redeemable about this one.
--
The future has not been written, / The past is set in stone,
And I am but a lonely wanderer, / With time as my only home.
-- from _Demon's Vengeance_
Forthcoming: _Myth_ical Battlefields -- Computer Gaming World (early
1999) (working title)
Speculations: Monolithic Proportions -- The United (early
1999)
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