The Need to Breed

It’s a question of whether Natasha Henstridge was smart only briefly appearing in this third Species film or not. On the one hm, these movies are trash, and while she was booked to do three films for the franchise, after Species II crashed and burned at the Box Office (because, honestly, it’s not that great but then neither was Species), she likely wanted to get as far away from this franchise as she could with whatever was left of her dignity intact. This third film went straight to video and the Syfy channel. Why on Earth would she want to do this one (or even a fourth film, although we’re getting ahead of ourselves there).

With that said, the Species films are also among her most famous works. Sure, she’s been steadily going since these movies, appearing in smaller roles in films like Sliding Doors, Badge of Honor, Summer in the City, but the films where she actually got to play the lead were rare, and they certainly weren’t all that successful. She followed up Species with the little-loved Jean-Claude Van Damme actioner Maximum Risk. Her big role after Species II was in John Carpenter’s Box Office Bomb Ghosts of Mars. She then mostly starred in direct-to-video fare and television shows as recurring characters. Sure, no one likely wanted to continue doing the Species films (her co-stars from the previous films didn’t even come back for this movie), but when this is the biggest thing you have going, should you really ditch it?

She did though, bailing out on playing Eve (or another other alien, for that matter) with a quick death scene early in the film just to ensure she never had to come back. I guess that’s one way to handle it, sure, but considering she was actually kind of good at playing Eve, and she added some fun charisma and allure to the character, having her around would have been better for the series than handing the reins off to Sunny Mabry, who is introduced here to play newly grown human-alien hybrid Sara.

The fact is that Species III, despite being a direct-to-television pump-out film to capitalize on whatever good will was left for the franchise, isn’t actually that bad of a film. I recognize I’m rating that based on all the terrible schlock I’ve watched for this site over the years, but considering the depths of awfulness that I’ve seen, this third Species movie actually has a number of things going for it. The acting, outside of Mabry, isn’t bad, with one or two actors that might even be considered “good”. The film tries to do different things with the Species formula, and actually works to ensure that the overall storyline for the franchise continues on. It’s not just a retread and, despite it’s low-budget, it does what it can to try and be fun and entertaining. Mostly it does that through gratuitous nudity which…

Okay, I think we’ve hit upon just why it is that Henstridge left and why the replacement actress isn’t that great in the role. Only so many people are going to be willing to wander around nude for most of a film. Yeah, that does make sense…

The film immediately picks up right after the events of Species II. Eve’s corpse rests in the back of a military truck, alongside one of Patrick’s sons. The two drivers head out from the old farmhouse where the aliens were being grown, but one of the two of them isn’t really a military driver at all. He’s Dr. Bruce Abbot (the actually pretty solid Robert Knepper) and he wants to use Eve’s body to create a new, female alien hybrid, one that has less humanity, and less weaknesses. The goal is to use her DNA to create some kind of super-immunity that he can bring to humanity, ending all disease. All he has to do is somehow tame the creature he makes and use her for his own ends.

Unfortunately he can’t do it alone as the work is too difficult, especially when other alien-hybrids from Patrick’s line start showing up, dying in front of him in inconvenient locations (like his office at the university he works at). So he hits up down-on-his-luck grad student Dean (Robin Dunne) with promises of power and fame and the funding to finish his degree. Dean signs on, especially once he meets a suddenly teenage Sara (Mabry), who has a penchant for wandering around in the buff. Together the two scientists might just be able to use Sara and make the cure-all they want… assuming no other alien-hybrids show up to steal her away.

There are elements of Species III that I legitimately do like. Setting aside the reason most people likely watched this film back in the day (the gratuitous nudity), the film does actually try to tell a new story in this half-baked alien universe. We had one alien queen in the first film, and then a new alien king looking to breed with her in the second. This third film explores further, positing that the aliens from Patrick’s line aren’t strong enough to fight off the viruses, bacteria, and allergens in Earth’s atmosphere (because Patrick was human when he became an alien hybrid and not something that was grown on its own) and that they need a fresher, stronger queen to mate with for her superior DNA. That lines up well with the previous movies and shows that the writer here, Ben Ripley, actually did try to think about how this franchise could grow and adapt.

The film also has some solid moments of body horror. While everyone remembers all the naked breasts and asses in these films, it’s sometimes forgotten that these were meant to be alien horror films as well. The nudity got you in and was juxtaposed by all the horrible killings the aliens would do. This film takes that even further, having many of the aliens get sick and deteriorate in really gross, painful ways. One guy dies in front of Dr. Abbot, and the way he dissolves and liquifies while tentacles come out of his body is up there on my list for awful body horror kills. The film goes there and, all things considered, it didn’t need to. I respect that.

And yes, there’s a lot of nudity in the film. Multiple actresses get naked because the script calls for it, and only one of them is a decent enough actress. Mabry is flat, wooden, and bad, which really describes most of her filmography. After this she did a lot of television, while her biggest films were xXx: State of the Union, Snakes on a Plane, and Hillbilly Elegy. We’re not talking about a rousing career here. She’s certainly much worse in her role than Amelia Cooke, who plays the evil female alien-hybrid from Patrick’s line. Amelia is actually pretty good in her role, underwritten as it is, and I kind of wish she’s been given the Sara role while Mabry had been shoved into the evil alien role so that we could have had someone with even a moderate amount of charisma leading this film.

Well, okay, there is Robert Knepper, who is great as the mad scientist doctor trying to use aliens for his own end. Knepper brings a range of emotions to his performance as Abbot, showing both ruthless scientific drive for his experiments while, at the same time, offering compassion to Sara as she grows and changes. He’s almost the protagonist of the film in a way, even if the movie wants us to focus on the much less interesting Dean, and when he dies part way into the movie (spoilers for a film, let’s be honest, you were never going to watch) the film does feel the lack of his presence afterwards.

Still, we all know the reason you’d watch this movie, if you were going to: all that gratuitous alien nudity. It’s fine to admit it as that’s what these films were for. If you need to know how over the top it is, the rating for this film listed, very specifically, “gratuitous nudity”, and not just normal old “nudity”, as one of its flags. It’s a lot, and it’s pretty constant at times. If that’s your thing, where you want to see naked ladies that often become evil, alien, rage monsters, then this film has it all for you.

I actually liked it as a film that tried. It’s not a great movie, but I think I’d actually rank it higher than the first two films in the series despite its flaws. Species III is an imperfect film, but when it comes to this series, imperfect can still be better than the dreck we got before.