“Welcome to the maternity ward from hell!”

Justin’s rating: Why couldn’t the entire movie take place on the spaceship? Such a missed opportunity.

Justin’s review: Species remains one of the more guilty pleasures of the ’90s, mixing together scifi, horror, and HR Giger’s mesmerizing alien designs into a film that I think every warm-blooded male saw about a bazillion times for no particular reason. While not the best B-movie from that era, it was fun for what it was. Yet for all the times I watched it in college, I never knew that they actually made a theatrical sequel a few years later.

Despite bringing Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, and Natasha Henstridge back for a direct follow-up to the original sleeper hit, Species II proceeded to tank hard, making only $30M off a $35M budget. Maybe we were already over the novelty of CGI and 50-foot blonde supermodels, I don’t know, but it was barely a thing.

Well, I’m going to make it a thing by watching it, reviewing it, and burying my face in my hands and once again moaning, “What am I doing with my life?”

While the first movie took place entirely on earth, Species II impresses right out of the gate with a maiden voyage to Mars. It’s here that the astronauts get infected by soil juice, turning them into the same kind of hybrid alien that’s out to spread DNA through aggressive sex. Now this is a little confusing, since the hybrid instructions came to earth from very far away via SETI in the first film, but now all of Mars is covered with this DNA soup?

This time around we get a gender swap: Astronaut Patrick Ross (Justin Lazard) is the evil alien on the hunt for willing females to impregnate. The result are the Alien movie chestbursters on fast-forward. To help track him down and counter him, the remnants of the original film’s team gets a few more recruits together as well as Eve (Henstridge), a more docile clone of Sil who has some sort of psychic connection to Ross.

Ross begins making creepy alien babies all over the place, and that spells trouble for our planet. The first movie was all about trying to figure out this bizarre alien race while tracking it, but this one more squarely fits as a slasher flick with a gloss of scifi. Babies or no, Ross is a tentacle monster that kills without remorse while the practical effects team has a field day with the goopy parts.

But what might happen when Guy Alien hooks up with Girl Alien? Not good things, let me tell you.

I am always interested in any B-movie sequels that continue the story, get some of the cast back, and actually came out in theaters (you can only say the first part of that for the next two Species flicks). It’s just a shame when the creators don’t put in the effort and instead coast. Species II is coasting all the way with lame dialogue, unoriginal ideas, and cheap nudity.

Heck, this film literally keeps Natasha Henstridge in a clear box in a lab for most of the film. She never was much of an actress, but at least in the first movie she was on the move and doing something more than sitting in a chair 75% of the time.

And it’s not as if her costars are picking up the slack. Michael Madsen in particular is clearly bored (and famously trashed this flick afterward), and his astronaut parter is only there to be an eye-rolling comic relief. This film even threw James Cromwell at us, but it was all for naught.

The kindest thing I can say about Species II is that the special effects and alien makeup is decent, and there’s actually less of that cringe-inducing CGI this time around. Oddly enough, for a movie where critters are routinely exploding out of women’s uteruses, it’s surprisingly light on blood.

At times Species II pours on the alien terror in effective ways, but it’s too bad it can’t summon the will to be entertaining with its characters and writing while doing it. It’s so poorly made that I can’t believe this actually came out in theaters — but I can believe that nobody showed up to watch it.

Intermission!

• That is one kitbashed spaceship
• I like the sponsorship on the spaceship tanks: Sprint, Pepsi, Bud Lite, Reebok
• How do they have gravity in a non-rotating spaceship?
• “I told them not to go! I told them not to go!”
• Law & Order’s Richard Belzer taking a quick paycheck as the US President
• That was a way-too-quick visit to Mars
• “Take a look at those beautiful welts!”
• NASA’s very concerned you don’t have sex for 10 days after coming back to earth
• $1 million tax-free is the going rate for alien hunting
• Could that general be any fatter?
• Michael Madsen, tentacle shooter
• The autopsy scene actually made me jump
• Alien DNA can rebuild your head from a shotgun blast… somehow
• He’s got a full set of kids, that guy
• “Aisle 1! Fruits and vegetables!”
• You know you’re cool when your face is on a generic cereal box
• Witness the slowest chase scene ever
• How many people are having sex in a supermarket parking lot on an average day?
• This was back when people thought holding guns sideways was the epitome of cool
• “Estrogen levels peaking!”
• None of these security people have any weapons
• The split tongue was freaky
• “I’m about to go back to Africa on somebody’s ass” what
• Well that glass was easily breakable, wasn’t it? And a good thing that NONE OF YOUR SECURITY GUARDS HAVE WEAPONS.
• She learned to drive from watching Dukes of Hazzard
• “Nipple tentacles” is not a phrase I ever thought I’d have to write
• The back spikes are wicked cool
• Thanks for stabbing my leg with a rusty pitchfork, really appreciate that