Alfred Molina Mated with an Alien in the ’90s. Remember That?

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Hollywood actor Michael Madsen passed away earlier this month, at age 74. Madsen may be best known for his numerous roles in films like Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco, where he gave some of his most memorable, tough-guy performances. But while many fans are remembering Madsen, they are sadly forgetting about his other roles that made his filmography so prolific and entertaining, like his role in the 1995 sci-fi thriller Species.

Few lists or news articles reporting Madsen’s recent passing remember or pay homage to his part in Species, the 1995 film that sees him star alongside Natasha Henstridge, Ben Kingsley, and Forest Whitaker in a story about a black ops team hunting down a half-human, half-alien hybrid. A film that this year turns 30, and is a relic of a time when both monster movies and paranoia about aliens were at their peak.

Species was a bizarre mix of horror, action, and some light science fiction, and was a typical, slick Hollywood movie from the ’90s. The film’s premise finds the U.S. government receiving two separate transmissions from outer space. One signals blueprints for a new fuel source. The other provides detailed instructions on splicing alien DNA with human DNA. The obvious red flags didn’t stop the government from proceeding. With Dr. Xavier Fitch (played by Ben Kingsley) at the helm, human-alien hybrid “Sil” was born.

Sil, in her childhood phase, is played by Michelle Williams. Fitch and his team of researchers expected the experiment to produce a benign, pliable organism, but when she first came out of her incubator, they found a monster in the making.

Sil grows at an accelerated rate; in just three months, she physically resembles a 12-year-old girl, and not just any 12-year-old. She has the height and adult physique of an adolescent, with subtle gray tinges on her skin. However, Sil is also different from other children. Her dreams are violent, and they begin to take a toll on her “controllable” demeanor. When Fitch decides to abort the mission by filling Sil’s containment chamber with cyanide, the organism escapes.

Fitch enlists a team of specialists to help him track down the killer hybrid, led by Madsen’s Preston Lennox. A stoic mercenary who does what’s necessary. There’s also Dr. Laura Baker (played by Marg Helgenberger), a molecular biologist, Dr. Stephen Arden (played by Alfred Molina), an anthropologist, and Dan Smithson (played by Forest Whitaker), a brooding empath who can sense what Sil is feeling. It’s a ragtag team that chases Sil across the country and to Los Angeles, where she starts her mission of reproduction and multiplication. Mating to create offspring so that her hybrid species can swarm and overtake humanity.

She’s sly, resourceful, and strongly instinctual. Sil kills anyone who gets in her way or becomes an obstacle, and her victims include a train tramp, a barroom acquaintance, and eventually a troubled boyfriend. And while her human half gives her certain traits, when mixed with her bloodthirsty, alien DNA, she’s an unstoppable killing machine.

Designing the Monster

For his debut feature-length film, director Roger Donaldson decided to give the role of Sil to an icon of fantasy and sci-fi: surrealist artist H.R. Giger. Giger, who is best known for his designs of the xenomorph from the Alien franchise, had no problem making Sil “an aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly.”

Giger’s Sil was at once human and alien, with translucent skin that’s been described as “looking like a glass body but with carbon inside.” In the first phase of the film, Sil is still growing and developing, and it’s not long before she’s fully grown and ready to make more hybrids. This is when Henstridge takes over for Williams, and the chase for Dr. Fitch and his team to contain Sil and keep her from making more of her kind picks up.

Giger originally intended to make several stages of Sil, with each one representing a stage in alien-human DNA development. The budget only allowed him to craft a “cocoon” for the transformation sequence and the final maternal alien body at the end.

The designer was not a fan of the finished film, feeling that Species had much in common with his Alien work. He wasn’t the only one who thought so, as Species and Aliens would share the Visual Effects Oscar the following year, to the latter’s dismay. Giger said that the so-called “punching tongue” Sil uses to kill was an obvious “chestburster” moment copy. And he had to threaten to have his name removed from the credits, to change the idea that Sil was killed by flame-throwers. Giger argued it was too close in concept to scenes from Alien 3 and Terminator 2.

A Hit with Audiences, Missed by Critics

The dialogue in Species is often stale, and some of the characters can come off as two-dimensional or even unnecessary. Marg Helgenberger’s molecular biologist is there to make thinly veiled sex jokes with Madsen; Whitaker’s empath mostly lurks in the shadows, commenting on the obvious. And Kingsley’s Dr. Fitch is just amoral. Sil, at times, is difficult to figure out. Are the themes of bioethics and alien contact played with lightly, or does her monster instinct completely overtake the story? We don’t quite get to explore the implications or concepts at all; instead, the film serves as both a cautionary tale and creature feature, with an element of erotic horror thrown in.

Screenwriter Frank Mancuso Jr. said he was influenced by an article by Arthur C. Clarke on the low possibility of ever having contact with extraterrestrial life, largely based on travel speeds exceeding the speed of light. If a way around that possibility is taken, what if aliens had instead contacted Earth with the blueprints for an organic life form? An invasive, sentient species made from Earth’s DNA?

Species was a hit with audiences, but not so much with critics. It was a decade before the much-maligned Alien 3, so Giger’s combined resentment of the two made for some sour grapes in retrospective interviews.

Species may not ever rival Alien or The Terminator, but it found its following as a lowbrow classic from the ’90s. Henstridge is fantastic in the role; Madsen is gruff and wonderful as always. And Giger’s influence can’t be ignored, or forgotten. Whether or not Species will play better in 2025 is a question for future filmgoers and viewers, but in the interim, the film is just an interesting relic of what science fiction was like 30 years ago. Style often trumping substance, and the kinds of films that actors like Michael Madsen helped bring to life with their unforgettable parts.