Science Fiction Alien Movie Facts and Trivia: “Species” (1995) II

The 1995 science fiction “Species” became a cult classic, catapulting Natasha Henstridge’s career. In this article, you will learn more facts and trivia regarding the movie, including resume tidbits concerning the director and a revealing change added to an earlier script.

“Species” was released on July 7th, 1995.

If H.R. Giger didn’t put up $100,000 of his own money to finance the sequence, viewers would not have had the pleasure of experiencing the “nightmare train” sequence. During production, MGM thought it best to cut out this part of the film in an attempt to keep costs down. For Giger, this was unacceptable.

Ronald Donaldson directed “Species,” is also responsible for “Dante’s Peak” and “Thirteen Days.”
Many times, certain circumstances can force early drafts of a script to morph. At first, the young Sil was slated to kill a friendly cab driver, but higher-ups wanted to encourage the audience to show a little bit of sympathy for her character, so it was decided to have her take the life of a tramp that tries to attack her , making her kill as a means to protect herself.

A train set was constructed upside down in order to prepare for the scene where Sil is ‘born’ from her cocoon. Covered in KY Jelly lubricant and without any clothes on, Natasha Henstridge was pushed through the cocoon and then turned over upside down as a way to show that she had fallen out of her cocoon.

During the sex scene that involved Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger, they were given the OK to improvise.

Filming locations for the movie included sites in Utah, California, and Puerto Rico, where cast and crew set up shop at the Arecibo Observatory located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Other filming locations include the Biltmore Hotel on 506 S. Grand Avenue (Los Angeles, California); Brigham City, Utah; Raleigh Studios on 5300 Melrose Avenue (Hollywood, Los Angeles, California); Santa Monica Pier (Santa Monica, California); Union Station on 800 N. Alameda Street (Los Angeles, California); and University of Southern California (Los Angeles, California).

The character of Sil was created to mimic every predatory species known, which shows the female as more aggressive to their male counterparts.

Dennis Feldman, who wrote “Species,” also wrote the science fiction movies, “Virus.”

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) is responsible for putting out the film.

In the movie, Xavier Fitch (played by Ben Kingsley) states that the alien signal received by the Arecibo radio telescope came in exactly nineteen years after an outbound message was transmitted. This implied that the alien solar system is approximately nine light-years from Earth since transmissions are known to travel at the speed of light. Two stars fit this description , Sirius and Luyten 726-8A.