Species (1995)

Directed by Roger Donaldson

Starring Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forrest Whitaker, Natasha Henstridge

Rated R

USA

"Should I leave a message?"

"Yeah. Tell him he's about to copulate with a creature from outer space."

In Species' dramatic opening, the improbably named Dr Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) poisons Michelle Williams - who's inside some glass bubble - with cyanide, hoping to kill her. But instead she busts out and escapes. She hauls ass out of the (presumably) secret medical facility she's in and manages to hop a freight train. And then she kills a hobo.  One of those rare mid 90's hobos. She switches over to a commuter rail train, robs a few people, eats a banana wrong, dreams about a train with teeth, and then starts turning into a tentacled monster.

What sort of madness is this?

Let's go back to the lab to find out! Four people are assembled for reasons unknown and asked to wait for further instructions. This motley crew includes two scientists, Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger) and Dr Steve Arden (Alfred Molina); a psychic, Dan Smithson (Forrest Whitaker) and...well, it's never really clear what Preston Lennox (Michael Madsen) does, but he's clearly some sort of bad-ass.

And then Ben Kingsley explains what's up. Aliens! Turns out the aliens sent a DNA sequence to mix aliens with humans.  They used it once, and it grew into Michelle Williams - code name "Sil" -  and now it's running amuck. He called Preston and the gang together to hunt her down, using their unique abilities. And so it begins.

Sil quickly evolves from button-nosed Michelle Williams to gorgeous Natasha Henstridge. Hubba hubba! Lennox and crew inspect the train she went bananas in and find the bloody results of her transformation.

The gang figure she's in LA, so they head out there.  Shouldn't be too hard to find her, since she's wearing a lace Xanadu dress and a fanny pack.

The crew tries to make a new alien without the human DNA and it turns into a scary monster. They have to burn it before it kills them all!

Meanwhile, Natasha Henstridge checks into a motel and then heads out to a nightclub to find a man for mating purposes. She hits on some dude but gets vadge-blocked by another chick. So she kills her. Then she takes her shirt off and picks up another dude.

He takes her home and she shows him her boobs, but then he gets grabby, and things turn out badly for him.

And then she takes a blood shower!

Sil gets hit by a car and gets all smashed up, so some dude in a convertible takes her to the hospital. She manages to heal herself pretty quick though, and saunters out of the hospital on her own. She leaves with the dude and has some cheese and he takes a few Polaroids of her. Seems valid. And then she gets naked again for a hot tub romp with the guy. Hooray!

Madsen figures out what's up, and tries to warn the guy.

He doesn't answer the phone, which proves to be his undoing, because she turns into a monster and tongue-fucks him to death.

Then she runs around naked until she finds somebody to carjack while Ben Kingley fumbles around with his crew.

Then she cuts off her own thumb, as well as one of her kidnap victim's thumbs. Sil's quickly grows back. The other lady, not so much. She gets a bunch of gasoline and puts in her car and then leads Kingsley and co on a car chase through the Hollywood hills, complete with helicopters and a fiery explosion. And that's it. Game over.

Or is it? Of course, it is not. Sil just blew up the kidnapped chick to make it look like it was her. Then she dyed her hair brunette to throw people off. Then she heads back to the hotel and seduces the nerdy scientist. More awesome Henstridge nudity!

So Madsen busts in, but it's too late! She killed him and got out! They have to get her before she gives birth to super monster babies!

So then they all chase Sil (now a Giger-designed mecha-bio slime beastie around in the sewer. She also gives birth to more monsters who look like regular babies, except they eat live rats with prehensile tongues. It's pretty nuts.

And then they go a little berserk with the CGI monsters. You know how these things go. 

While it takes virtually all of its cues from 80's sci-fi flicks - most notably Aliens, The Hidden, and Lifeforce - Species nonetheless possesses a singular charm, one borne from A-list actors twitching, gesticulating, and vamping through their scenes like a delusional high school drama club, and from the perfectly adolescent thrill of seeing a truly breathtaking beauty get naked every ten or so minutes. Throw in a ridiculous looking monster, gobs of slime and gore, eye-rolling dialogue, gratuitous fanny packs, and a snot-covered toddler catching rats with a prehensile tongue, and you've got a minor cult-classic on your hands, one that stands up to repeated watching, as each viewing reveals new layers of nonsense and overacting.

 

Although Henstridge only returned for one, Species is survived by at least 3 sequels. I haven't seen any of them, but I'm assuming, based on the original, that they are all fuckin' awesome.

- Ken McIntyre

Run Like Hell (1995)

Directed by Robert Rundle

Starring Elizabeth Lamont, Liz Davies, Colleen Corrigan, Robert Z'Dar

Unrated 

USA

"We'll have to fuck 'em for guns."

"Oh, we'll fuck them all right. Just not the way they're expecting."

Mutant-jawed Robert Z'Dar toplines this sexed-up, no-budget, post-apoc mess as the scuzzball warden of a women's prison. The plotline is delightfully senseless, but it goes something like this: in the near-future (now the past - it takes place in 2008!), single women are rounded up and incarcerated in brutal work camps because they're deemed too dangerous for society. Why? Who knows. Boner problems, maybe. A ragtag group of plucky prisoners break out of Z'Dar's prison and go on the lam. He hires ridiculous bounty hunters to chase them down. Hijinks ensue. 

In the opening scene, Z'Dar - looking as fucking crazy as ever - watches on his futuristic 2008 video monitors as a couple prisoners shower. Two things stick out - first, it's clear from the beginning that the producers nabbed the Maniac Cop star for one day - maybe even half a day - and shot all of his scenes in one take. Secondly, while it's a good sign to see boobs within three minutes of the movie's starting time, who takes showers in their thongs? 

After getting thoroughly chubbed up by the sensual two-girl shower, Warden (that's the warden's name - Warden!) orders the girls in to his office for the expressed purpose of raping them both. 

However, he is soon overpowered by the scrappy duo, who bash his skull with a truncheon and bail. They meet up with two other prisoners, and the four of 'em skulk around the office-building-masquerading-as-a-prison, picking off guards and snatching their guns. Did I mention that they're all topless, barefoot, and be-thonged? 

They make it outside - luckily, the door was unlocked - and cross some railroad tracks. In their bare feet! Ouch. That gravel had to hurt. Eventually, they stumble onto a guard shack/tent. Using their feminine wiles, they seduce and manhandle the two goofy idiot guards, taking their guns (didn't they already have enough?) and, inexplicably, finding a bunch of clothes that fit them all perfectly. 

So then they get dressed. Bummer. And then they shoot the guards, for about ten minutes.

This wears them out, so they build a campfire and go to sleep. Before their well-deserved snooze, however, they all decide that they're going to head for Paradise City where, we can only presume, the grass is green and the girls are pretty. 

They wake up to find a cowboy fighting a ninja. Why not? The ninja wins and suggests he tag along with them, because the mutants come out at night, and they'll need his protection. Sounds viable. By the way, Ninja wears his Ninja mask all the time, so all his lines are muffled.

Meanwhile, Warden sends a bounty hunter and a goony "droid" to chase after the girls. The bounty hunter dresses like the terminator. The droid has some sort of apparatus strapped to his head. Or maybe its' the other way around, hard to say. At any rate, that's going on, as well. 

Not all of the girls survive their first few days in the wastelands. It's pretty tough out there. Ninja decides they need kung fu training before they go any further. So that's what they do. 

There's also a couple subplots going on. One involves another bounty hunter wandering around with a girl in 80's rock video jeans. Nothing much happens there. I think they just crowbarred that bit in because the girl has awesome pants. 

Another one has something to do with a prison guard who's dresses like a gay porn stud. He's got a brothel in the prison bathroom. He likes to make the girls dance topless while he fiddles with his nightstick. That sounds like a euphemism, but that's actually what he does. 

Also, did I mention the topless fight club in the basement? 

And the chainsaw-wielding "Arena of Death" match in the desert? 

Of course, with all this madness going on, you are surely wondering whether our heroines ever make it to Paradise City. Well, let me ask you this: do any of us ever make it to Paradise City? Life's a journey, man. Not a destination. 

While it always looks more like outsider art than an actual film made by sane individuals, and the budget could not have topped a week's paycheck, I can't really fault director Rundle for anything. He had a vision, and a camcorder, and he went for it. Likewise the cast gives it their all, whether bashing each other in the face, or rolling around in a swamp, or tromping around under a hot sun wearing nothing but dollar-store thongs, this is one seriously committed acting troupe. For their sakes, I suggest you watch this nutty little 80 minute time-waster. Don't let their considerable efforts go in vain. While Run Like Hell is neither the greatest film ever made or the worst, there are moments throughout when it is both. 

Plus, there's boobs galore. Galore! 

- Ken McIntyre

Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975)

Directed by William A Levey
Starring Dyanne Thorne, Jay Rasumny, Samual Mann
Rated R/XXX
USA

"Remember: only screw with suckers."

The mysterious William A Levey (RIP?), frequent co-conspirator of sexploitation pioneer Harry Novak, has one of the most incredible directing resumes ever. He is responsible for blaxploitation/horror mash-up Blackenstein (1973), a retro-teen sex comedy starring Debra Winger's boobs (Slumber Party '57, 1976), a roller-boogie epic (Skatetown USA, 1979), a seriously low-rent Black Stallion rip-off (Lightning, the White Stallion, 1986), and a biker flick/slasher hybrid starring Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter (Hellgate, 1988). How can one man be responsible for so many bizarre visions? To quote scream queen Tara Cardinal, who was talking about a far lesser light than Mr. Levey, "He's either a genius, or he's not."

I guess that one's up to the ages, but I'm betting on the former.

Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman is probably Levey's looniest concoction, and that's saying something.

Sexy sci-fi flicks weren't a new idea by 1975 - witness Flesh Gordon, Space Thing, 2069 A Space Odyssey, Zeta One, Barbarella, Nude on the Moon, etc. - but nobody thought to add that one extra ingredient to the boobs n' spaceboots mix: non-stop, unrelenting vulgarity. Also, the palpable sense that the people making the film you are watching are bug-fuck insane. Oh, and rape. That was new, as well. Throw all that in the mix, add lots of tits and a couple of aliens in silver hotpants, and you've got the enigmatic madness that is Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman.

Private Asshole (Jay Rasumny) and Private Jackoff (Sam Mann) are two foul-mouthed cadets from Planet Urine (Listen, the humor's not going to get any more high-brow, so if you want to bail now, I understand) sent to Earth to impregnate as many females as possible, since Urine is due to get sucked into the sun in 500 years. They figure they'd better start early on their invasion. So, off they go, in a spaceship that looks like a potato chip bowl with a Star of David on the top from the outside, and a garden shed wrapped in tinfoil on the inside.

They touch down in Hollywood, and immediately hit the streets, looking for action. They wear glam-rock outfits and have over-sized monster heads, but it's Hollywood at the height of the glam/disco era, so nobody pays them much mind. Well, one guy shakes his fist and yells "Fuckin' drag queens!", but they are mostly left alone.

They spot a place that looks promising: Wild Mary's brothel. They head inside - invisibility cloaks on - and spy on folks as they pay for sex.

There's a wide variety of tasty morsels on deck, including Janice Karman (instantly recognizable from her role as Bunny in Switchblade Sisters, and currently the voice of Theodore in the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies!) and, somewhat alarmingly, Ilsa She Wolf of the SS herself, Dyanne Thorne. Thorne had a long history as a singer/dancer/comedy performer, but most of the world knows her exclusively as the cruel and icy-cold Ilsa, so it's a real brain-twister to see her here, as the befuddled hooker chosen to bust Private Jerkoff's human-female cherry.

Turns out aliens have winking eyeballs where their penises are supposed to be. So that's weird. Also, instead of penises, they have tongues that pop out of their noses. She deals with it. A buck's a buck.

Meanwhile, at a local make-out spot, Billie Jo (Anne Gaybis, Fairy Tales) romances a sailor that she is either going steady with or is mistaking for some other guy. Hard to say which, since she calls him by half a dozen different names.

The aliens spy on her amorous backseat adventure and decide that she'd make good breeding stock, so they zap her up to the ship mid-coitus to finish her off.

Having sufficiently balled their first Earth women, the aliens take a nap. When they wake up, their commander, Colonel Putz, tells them to get back to work, but to watch out for "faggots", because they're no good for breeding purposes. Putz has problems.

And then there's Marvin. Essayed by the awesomely named Pepi La Rue - who, sadly, never acted again - Marvin is a red-headed, molester-mustachioed bag o' bones who gets lucky, for once in his miserable life, when his frumpy bride suddenly turns into a glamorous, sex-charged vixen over breakfast. Marv and wifey get it on, but then Private Asshole accidentally zaps a naked Marvin onto the ship instead of his missus.

They work it out, though. After they have sex with Marvin's wife, they go to the movies. Jerkoff thinks they might get to ball some Hollywood starlets. Asshole is doubtful.
"All we'll see is a bunch of gays," he says. And that's exactly what happens.

After meeting their first gay- and deciding that he was sorta cute - the two aliens strut around Hollywood Boulevard in their silver hotpants, deciding on a movie to see. Asshole wants to check out Deep Throat, but Jerkoff snaps at him: "There's no time to masturbate, we have to fornicate!"

Their stroll doesn't really get them anywhere, however, so they head back to the ship and watch the making of a porn movie on their super-futuristic surveillance device. It's actually a very long set-up for a lame gag. See, the director of the film is gay, and the girl in the boy-girl scene he's directing is a lesbian. So nobody's happy, and the scene isn't working. They break for lunch. He goes off to fuck the lighting guy, and some hot chick shows up and has sex with his starlet. After lunch, everybody's happy, and the scene is a success.

Pretty funny, right? At least it ends in some decent girl-on-girl action.

And then, Private Asshole gets VD. Colonel Putz suggests that he "suck on some pussy", but then relents and lets him come home to get some Uri-cyllin. Turns out their home planet looks exactly like the Hollywood Hills. Imagine that!

"6 days later", Private Asshole is feeling much better, so they head back to Los Angeles. Did you know that if you look at the Earth from space, it's got the names of every place printed right on it? That's got to be very convenient for space travelers.

Ready for another ironic sexual switcheroo? White-fro'd Mr. Hardy is rebuffed by his wife, Gloria. He pretends to leave in a huff, announcing that he's going to the gym to "Play with himself", but he really goes upstairs to bang his maid, Suzette (Sandy Carey, Naughty Stewardesses). Meanwhile, as soon as hubby leaves, Gloria calls for her butler, and has awkward 70's sex with him. What a crazy set-up!

Naturally, the spacemen beam the two girls up and have alien nose-sex with them. At one point, Private Asshole gets so excited that his tongue pops right out of Suzette's mouth and starts spewing what looks like dirty toothpaste. So that's pretty wild.

Later on, a high school girl in a mini-skirt and knee-high socks (Gayna Shireen) is strolling through the ghetto when she's kidnapped by a John Holmes-looking creep who takes her to an abandoned building, cuts off all her clothes with a knife, and rapes her. Midway through, the spaceman beam her up. Are they saving a damsel in distress? Nope. They rape her, too. And then they send her back down so that the guy can finish the job.

I know. That sounds horrible. Here's the gag: when she gets back to Earth, she is somehow empowered by the intergalactic rape, so she grabs the knife and forces herself on the guy. She turned the tables on him, see? Funny, right?

Holy smokes, Mr. Levey. Dunno what you were thinking with that bit.

After that debacle, Putz tells orders his men to go to the middle east and "Fuck some local cunts" for their last mission.
Cut to: tent, interior. The Shiek (Ray Miles, Satan's Black Wedding) is busy putting the moves on a fast-talking slave girl with a hillbilly accent (toothy beauty Joyce Gibson, Linda Lovelace for President). She distracts him by calling on a belly dancer (Anisa Gluzan), and while said dancer does her thing, the slave girl escapes.

Also, for some reason, Russ Meyer girl Haji is in the tent as well. She wanders off.

The shiek's left with only one girl (Valeria Nicorre), so he rolls around on the ground with her, but the spacemen beam her up for "One last piece of ass and some 'sponge gumming'."

What the fuck is sponge gumming? It sounds horrible.

Anyway, they send her back, but she doesn't end up in the shiek's tent. Oh, no. She lands someplace far more wonderful!

Boy, are you in for a treat with that scene.

And then there's a final gag. The end.

Ridiculous? Yep. But then again, so were the mid 1970's. So in that respect, it's an almost perfect distillation of the times. Remember, these were the days when hardcore was sorta mainstream, when guys wore big gold medallions and showed off their chest hair, when disco dominated, when swingers' clubs were in full swing. Everybody was really into fucking and UFOs and mustaches, and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman has them all. I was only six years old in 1975, but still, this is exactly how I remember it.

There are two versions of this film out there - hardcore and softcore. I've never seen the triple X version, but seeing as half the fake-fuck scenes here involve popular 70's exploitation actresses, it must be pretty amazing, at least on the celebrity skin level. I can't imagine you could actually masturbate to it, though. I mean, every frame of this film is completely retarded. Oh, boners will be popped - there's half a dozen gorgeous and frequently nude starlets on full display here - but this is more of a berserk performance art piece than porn. It's like a Passion Play as performed by half-naked lunatics from the local asylum.

In other words, it's fucking awesome.

Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman is available from Something Weird Video.

Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman (1975)

- Ken McIntyre