Species

Species (1995)

Episode 453, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Craig, it feels like for the last month or two, all we’ve done is tribute episodes. 

Craig: Well, and my goodness, we could do more. I mean, so many people have passed away in the last month or two. It’s insane. The last four 

Todd: or five days, 

Craig: I know just the other day I was in the.

Dentist chair, and Alan texted me that Hulk Hogan died. And I cried in the dentist chair that Hulk Hogan died. What? Why am I 

Todd: crying? You cried about Hulk Hogan. That’s hilarious. 

Craig: Well, I think I’m just a little emotionally raw. You know, I recently lost my dog. I’m serious. I recently lost my dog. And then I know you and I recently lost a mutual personal friend, you know, just this week.

And yes, Ozzy, uh, Theo, I mean, oh God. 

Todd: Gosh, it’s been a rough month. It has been insane. Yeah. At the time that we’re recording this, this has all just happened within the last few days. Michael Madson, who, uh, we are attributing in this episode, he passed away, uh, last month in July, just a day before July 4th, and just a few days before the 30th anniversary of this movie that we’re doing now called Species.

Craig: Isn’t that a wild coincidence? I read that too. 

Todd: It is a weird coincidence in this case because species seems to be one of his. Michael Madsen, by the way, has over 300 credits on IMDB. A lot of them are in movies that he says, literally, he says, look, a lot of people say are critical of the movies that I’ve been doing later in my career, but he is like, I got mouths to feed.

Yep. And my family of six kids expected a certain lifestyle around the time of species and Mulholland Drive and a couple of these other big movies that he was in. He said, there’s a lot of DVDs on the shelf that I’m in. 10 minutes of. But they bought my name to put on the DVD packaging for, and it feeds my family, and that’s what we do.

Right. I would do the same if I were him. Of course. Absolutely. Smart man. It doesn’t change the fact that this guy has had a really nice career. He has been in some big films. He was a favorite of Quentin Tarantino’s. He was in Quentin Tarantino’s debut. Debut movie. Mm-hmm. Reservoir Dog and, and he was an evil.

Evil guy in that one. 

Craig: Yeah. It’s one of his most iconic roles. I’ve shockingly, I’ve never 

Todd: seen that movie. You haven’t? Mm-hmm. It’s good. It’s a really good movie. It’s classic Tarantino. I mean, of course it’s his first one, but like he is a brutal, brutal guy who just gets off on torturing and killing people.

Right. That movie kind of was one of the earlier ones that really put Michael Madson on the map, I would say. And Species is another one that I think brought him right in front of our faces as well. These were highlights in his career for sure. He’s from Chicago. Did you know that? 

Clip: No. 

Todd: His mom was a filmmaker and author and at the urging of Roger Ebert, one of my favorite guys, he said, you know, you should, you should pursue your, your art.

She did. I think that was an inspiration to her son, Michael, who after he graduated from school in Chicago, started working at the Steppenwolf Theater Company there, and he was even an apprentice under John Malkovich. Hmm. And his first. Role in, in movies was a very small role in war games with, uh, was Matthew Broderick was in that right?

Craig: I think so, yeah. Uhhuh. So yeah, 

Todd: he kind of k kicked things off pretty strong, I would say. What, what? He was in Donny Brasco, he turned down the role of Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. That’s the one that Tom John Travolta eventually got. Right. But you could totally see him in that role too. 

Craig: I 

Todd: totally could.

Craig: He said that was the biggest mistake of his career. Like he actually, uh, he turned down for various reasons, availability, whatever, several pretty iconic roles, and, and that was the biggest one. But everyone that he turned down, I was like, yeah, I could see him in that. Right. Yeah. He was a, a really cool actor, you know, tall, dark, handsome, brooding.

He played a type most of the time. He, well, he said. I, I was looking at quotes from him and he said some, something along the lines of, I’m a leading man trapped in a bad guy’s body, and I get it. He does kind of, and it’s interesting that you say that he’s from Chicago, because now that I know that, I’m like, that tracks like right.

He’s got kind of that Chicago tough guy. Air about him, and he is kind of a tough guy, you know? He mm-hmm. He was, I was really surprised. I just learned today that acting wasn’t his only art. He was also a, uh, a published and award-winning poet. I had no idea. So he had a softer side too, and he talks about how, you know, he encouraged.

In his sons to, he encouraged them to try to connect to their softer sides and their artistic sides. But he also said that he wanted them to grow up to be people who didn’t take shit from anybody. So he also taught them. Boxing and stuff like that, which it, it, it, it just, it makes so much sense. It just sounds so much like exactly the guy that I see on the screen.

It does, but it, it also, I mean, I just said I was surprised and I was surprised, but in considering it, I’m really not surprised to see. That he had that softer side, the poet side, because he does also have kind of a quiet elegance to him. Hmm. I remember him from a million things. I’m sure you know who we’re talking about if you’re listening to this, but if you don’t Google him and you’ll recognize him immediately.

He’s been in a million things. He was in free Willie. He was in Belman Louise. 

Todd: Yeah, he was the dad. That’s the 

Craig: one. 

Todd: He was the dad in. Free Willy, wasn’t he? I forgot that. 

Craig: And I liked that movie when I was a kid. I was a cute, but you, you mentioned Thelman Louise. I remember him from that. My sister and I watched that movie a lot when we were far too young to be watching that movie.

He got offered the role of the horrible rapist and didn’t take it, I guess, you know, as tough of a guy as he was. He was really kind of averse to violence. Mm. He wanted the role of. Susan Sarandon’s boyfriend, which was a small role, but I remember him from that. He was a tough guy, but there were so many bad men in that movie.

Right? And, and he was a good guy and he really stood out to me in that it just seemed to be a very well-rounded. Well respected guy. Remained friends with the people he worked with. He was a pallbearer at Chris Penn’s funeral. Just seemed like an all around cool guy. And the reason that I, I suggested we do this was because it’s probably, you know, one of his biggest horror things, but also because, you know, at some point in his career he said that this was one of his favorite movies that he had done because he was actually given an opportunity to play a good guy.

Yeah, I mean, it’s. You know, nineties B movie. Yeah. So it’s, no, it’s, it’s no masterpiece. But, but he’s good in it and it’s a fun ride. 

Todd: And this movie was big. Oh yeah. I mean, for a b movie, this, this movie was huge when it came out. This is smack dab in the middle of high school. My friends and I rented it as soon as it came out on video.

What I remember about it was, this is the movie with the boobs. Mm-hmm. Natasha Henstridge naked through most of the movie, and that’s about all I remember. Oh, and she’s playing an alien who’s trying to mate with people. That’s all I remembered about the movie Uhhuh. That’s all that teenage Todd cared about.

And it delivered, it delivered on those fronts. Yeah. I honestly couldn’t have. Recounted the plot to you before I watched it again, except for the fact that I know that I remember it being just this very basic film. It was almost typical. Mm-hmm. Really nineties sci-fi thriller type thing where it’s ultimately just kind of a chase movie where this gal is one step ahead of the people who are trying to track her down, and in the meantime she’s leaving a trail of bodies.

Uh, in her way. 

Craig: Right. There’s even a part where Michael Matson’s character, whose name is Press, I think maybe Preston, but they call him press for short after we are introduced to the whole alien thing, which we’ll get back to. There’s a meeting of what I ended up calling the team because they’re just kind of like this ragtag team of like a psychologist and an empath and a, a tough guy, and Ben Kingsley, who is the scientist.

Who is in charge of this thing explains what happened, and he explains that sometime in the recent past, they received communication from an intelligent alien species. 

Clip: There were two distinct communications. The first message turned out to be a superior catalyst for methane. We now have the potential to produce an infinite amount of energy from this clean burning fuel.

This convinced us that we were dealing with a friendly intelligence. The second message turned out to be a new sequence of DNA with a rather friendly instructions on how to combine it with ours. Here’s some technical data on the whole operation. You can get feedback on it from Dr. Baker. Basically, the new combined DNA sequence was injected into 100 human over.

Craig: He says it so seriously, like it’s just so matter of fact. But like I’m thinking, oh, that sounds like a great idea. Like Right. Even, I mean they, they send us the methane, so they must be friendly, right? So they, um, yeah. So they immediately do and they create this creature, which appears human. Ages at 

Todd: an incredibly advanced rate until the movie gets going, and then she freezes in time to a hot 20 something year old gal.

Pretty much she ages. It all only takes place over two days, right? But still, my impression was it was like three days max that she had gone from an embryo into this girl who ends up escaping. Am I wrong? And, 

Craig: uh, I don’t remember. I, I think it was days. Yeah. And, and, and then they were gonna try to destroy her, but she escaped and, and he’s, Kingsley is telling this whole story and then either he or somebody else kind of patronizingly asks Michael Matson the question 

Clip: as the, um.

Well, the non-scientist amongst us are, you would talk clear about what’s going on here. Well, I think so. You created a monster with some kind of formula you got from outer space. The damn thing got away and now you want us to hunt it down and kill it. Is that pretty close? 

Craig: And they’re like. Yeah, I, I guess that’s the gist of it.

Todd: That’s, that’s the movie in a nutshell. Just, yeah. And that’s, 

Craig: that’s it. And then it becomes a chase scene 

Todd: in case we are stupid. The nineties movies did this to a crazy degree where there would just be this point in the movie where somebody would lay out the movie premise for you. Just in case you hadn’t caught it by then.

I do feel like movies of this era, and this is a perfect example of them, we’re very much just like, we just think you’re all basic and we’re gonna give you everything upfront and we’re gonna spell it out for you. And anytime there might be anything that we’ve hinted at in the past, we will make sure there is a point where we spell it out for you later.

In case you didn’t catch it earlier. You know what I mean? I do know what you mean, and I say that because I’ve watching this movie, it just took me back to that era. I’m like, yeah, this is like the rock. This is like every nineties action movie. Out there really, except it just involves an alien. Or it could be a, you could call it a slasher.

Yeah, you could. It’s, it’s very familiar and I have no complaints about it. I really don’t. No, I mean, if, if you’re into this kind of thing, you’re into it. If, if you don’t wanna see it, then that’s fine. But I was, I was curious about the premise though. I, I thought the premise is really clever. We’ve seen a lot of movies that kick off.

You know, we recently did Predator, all these movies that kick off with a shot of earth. And you see this tiny little something, whether it’s a comet, whether it’s a spaceship, whether it’s a pod or something, fly into the atmosphere and you’re clued into, okay, aliens have landed. And that’s what the movie’s gonna be about.

This isn’t about an alien landing. An alien doesn’t visit the planet. The screenwriter picked up on an on, on an idea by Arthur C. Clark, a very famous, a sci-fi novelist. And just in case you guys don’t know, and one thing that he said was like, when you consider everything involved, the, the improbability of faster than light travel, the size of the universe, uh, and all these things, the idea that an advanced civilization would find us and visit us is almost.

Infinitesimally small. This takes the notion that, well, of course, so, so that doesn’t happen. But other aliens could be sending out signals like we’re sending out signals with Seti. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. 

Todd: And they used this way to plant themselves onto our planet. And I’d forgotten that aspect of this movie. And I thought, oh God, that’s really smart.

The screenwriter, by the way, 10 years before this, his very first produced screenplay was. Just one of the guide. 

Craig: That’s funny. I like that movie. 

Todd: How? How many times have you and I referenced that movie on this show? That’s a great movie. We loved it. Caught it on cable all the time in the nineties. Yeah, it was such a good one.

He didn’t do much. He did this, he, he did just one of the guys. He did The Golden Child, which was the Eddie Murphy movie. 

Craig: I like that movie too. It is good. And that kind of tracks that movie is a lot like this one in many ways with like creatures and like, you know, kind of a quest, kind of uhhuh. Narrative.

It makes a lot of sense. Very similar. That makes sense to me. 

Todd: Yeah, so he just picked up on those ideas from Arthur C. Clark. He had written a movie between the Golden Child and this one called Real Men that involved aliens and stuff, and, and he kind of wanted to do another one. And I think the script went through a lot of changes and revisions, both before it was accepted and during production as well.

Got a lot of, a lot of people had their hands in the pie. Frank Mancuso Jr. Who is the longtime producer of the Friday, the 13th franchise. Ended up picking it up and then pulled HR Geiger. Mm-hmm. To do a creature design. And I mean, you can tell ’cause it’s totally his style. Oh yeah. But it’s interesting to see how much he really tried to vary this from Alien.

So much so that apparently he was heavily involved in giving script notes, requesting changes to the movie and all kinds of stuff because he just did not want this to feel like another rehash of Alien. Because in many ways it really just does feel like that already. 

Craig: Well, and there are parts of it, particularly towards the end, that feel very, the, the final sequence feels very much like it.

Oh, yeah. You 

Todd: could list it out exactly. And I think he did, I think he wrote notes. He said the, these are the like six ways that this movie totally references alien. Can we have the creature die slightly different way in the end. So it’s not by flamethrower, which was what originally was in it, you know, stuff like that.

So, um, it’s cool to see a movie where everybody’s, you know, contributing and everybody’s allowed to contribute. That’s probably how this thing came together and became so successful. It’s just kind of a wild, fun ride. 

Craig: Mm-hmm. I 

Todd: don’t think it’s gonna win big awards. No. I think reviews on it are even kind of mixed, but mostly it’s just do you like this kind of movie or not?

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: If you’re not, then just watch something else. That’s kind of how, ultimately, maybe I’m skipping to the end here, but that’s ultimately my take on this movie. It’s a fun ride for what it is. Yeah, 

Craig: for what it is exactly. And I mean, that’s what most of the fan reviews say. Like if you look at IMDB, it’s got, I dunno, like a six or a seven or something like that.

Not, not. Super high ratings, but most people are like, it’s a pretty good B movie. You know, like, yeah, what do you expect from this type of movie? It is what it is. And you know, it’s, it hits lots of marks for a lot of people. You’ve got a sexy lady who shows her boobs quite a bit. You’ve got, you know, some.

Pretty big action sequences. You’ve got a cool designed alien. It moves pretty quickly. It stars a lot of people that you’re gonna recognize. Big names, Oscar winners and nominees and stars of stage screen and television. It’s got a lot going for it. I’m, I’m sure it had a big budget. 35 million. That’s, that’s pretty big.

Yeah, it’s pretty big for a B movie. Yeah. The only thing, and I’m not gonna say I’m gonna complain about it, but. In critiquing it from a 2025 perspective, the digital effects are, are pretty lacking. Yeah. The design looks great. I love the design, but it looks like a video game from 2000. You know what, 

Todd: it kind of reminded me a little bit of when we did the relic.

Yeah. Where the shots where you could tell it was practical. Because they did have some practical puppets and things like that in here, just like in the Relic. That was pretty good. But then it was immediately apparent when it would switch to CGI because it was, yeah, not complimentary at all. By today’s perspective.

By today’s perspective, and still, well, still fun. Not Leprechaun four bad, you know? No, 

Craig: no. I mean, it was still fun. Yeah. It just, it’s very clearly CGI. It’s not. Fooling anybody and that’s fine. That’s where we were in 1995. Mm-hmm. So whatever, everything else about it, I pretty much liked. I mean, I, I also think that it’s kind of a cool thing that the movie.

This, this alien human hybrid, I suppose is the antagonist of the movie, but to call her it the villain isn’t really fair. Uh, that’s right. This individual being didn’t ask to be created, didn’t, you know, whatever of her race of beings, whatever they are, you know, they intended this to happen. She’s still an individual and didn’t ask for it, and they.

Create her in a test tube, an incubator and everything, but it goes super, super fast. And I think they show her, I don’t know, they show a, a very small girl who looks like she’s maybe six or something and say, this is just three days. Three weeks. I don’t remember what they said, but it’s super, super fast.

And then she becomes a very young Michelle Williams. I didn’t look into this, but. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was one of the first things that Michelle Williams ever did. It must be, it’s definitely before Dawson’s Creek, which is where her career really took off. She’s very young in this, but very cute.

And what I was trying to get at was I like that. I think that the filmmakers are making an effort to endear us to this character. Before she starts killing people. So then ultimately, when she starts killing people, it’s exciting and I know that they have to catch her and she’s ultimately a very big threat because what she wants to do is reproduce, which is all just based on instinct again.

Yeah, it’s not malicious. Yeah. She’s, I, I don’t know the. Technical definition of an anti-hero, but she’s, she’s at, at very least a sympathetic villain. 

Todd: She is. And, and that strikes you from the very beginning. It’s clear they’re trying to do this, even as you know, she’s being gassed in that chamber because they decide, why do they decide they need to gas her?

Because what was it, he explains it later. I don’t remember. I don’t remember if it was just that she was growing too fast, that she was growing too fast, and they decided they needed to, to take their time with this and, and not, not maybe they had made a mistake. Or 

Craig: something. I guess she’s having weird 

Todd: dreams, but it’s not like they can tap into those, 

Craig: right.

I don’t know. And I don’t know if they know that she’s super strong. I don’t know. I think it, I think it’s just a matter of it’s, it’s happening too fast and it’s unpredictable and we don’t, we need to take a step back and do it more slowly. I think that’s all that it was. Yeah. But I mean, Ben Kingsley. I’m gonna probably just keep calling him that, but his name is Fitch.

In the movie, if I, if I call him that, he’s kind of the head scientist in charge and honestly I would think of him more as the villain, but he’s difficult to think of as the villain too, because he’s just strictly science. 

Todd: He is, and he is really not wrong. I mean, everything that he’s doing is actually kind of smart.

You know, there’s that classic scene where. There’s two of the team in a room and with the, with the experiment, uh, I may be jumping the gun here a little bit, but they decide for other reasons that they, they wanna go back and make her without the human part, right. 

Craig: So that they can better understand her nature.

And, and I thought that was actually a really clever idea. And it’s not even, I don’t remember Mark Helgenberger, what is her care, Laura? Yeah. Yeah. She is a molecular biologist. She’s on the team also. Like I told you, there’s this ragtag team or whatever, and she has the idea. Once the thing’s name is sill, it stands for something, but I don’t know what.

Once she escapes and they’re trying to find her, but they’re having difficulty finding her, mark Helgen Berger’s character says, why don’t we just create it without the human thing? So then we have more of an idea of what its nature is. And yeah, I’m thinking nobody thought of that before this, right? Like I might have thought, I don’t know, I’m no scientist, but I might have thought if an alien sends us its DNA and says, Hey, put it together with some human DNA, I might have thought, well, let’s see what its DNA is.

First, right before we start mixing it with things, since it’s clearly possible. I know, but, but science, I don’t know. In, in the wrong hands. Potentially. Even in the right hands can be reckless. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, we’re seeing that now. Well, and I, but we’ve always seen it, I mean, even, you know, with like atomic power and stuff.

True. Like sometimes risks have to be taken for progress. And so again, that’s why Ben Kingsley’s character. I am rooting against him. ’cause he seems mean, you know, he, it just, it feels to me as the viewer, very inhumane that he would gas this precious little girl who has no idea what’s going on. Who, who asked for none of this.

Who they’ve been keeping in complete isolation, like hooked up to wires and stuff from the time that she was born. You know, the empath of the group, Forrest Whitaker, Dan, when he’s being told this and he’s being shown videos, he’s saying she didn’t like that she didn’t like. Being confined. She didn’t like being alone.

She’s, she’s scared. Now, to be frank, I think that his character is really stupid. Oh God, yes. And a really stupid, stupid plot device. Yes. That’s the old i’ll, I mean, it’s a silly movie overall, but that is a, writing that character in is silly because he identifies as an empath. But the truth of the matter is he’s just psychic.

Yeah, I mean, he just knows everything. Like he’s just a human barometer of everything. Like he knows every move that everybody’s gonna make. He knows everything that everybody, including this alien being, he can sense 

Todd: when someone’s outside, you know, he could look at a photograph and be like, she was in pain and she felt this and this and this.

Like, come on. He’s just a way to move them. And almost every time too, which is also what’s annoying about this movie, is he is their way to move them from place to place, Uhhuh. Oh. And now I sense that she’s over here and that’s where they go, you know, in almost every circumstance he has a sense. That maybe she’s somewhere else.

And so that’s where they ended up going. And of course she was just there. 

Craig: Well, and in the final pursuit, he’s like a blood house. 

Todd: I thought of him. I thought of him as the meter and alien. That’s beeping, you know? Yeah.

Craig: Okay, fine, whatever. But early on in the movie, he tells us, oh, she’s scared, she’s unhappy, she doesn’t like this. So we feel empathy for her and we feel bad that this mean scientist, you know, tried to gas her. And, 

Todd: but even, even in that moment, I think they actually pull a little bit of a hat trick on you here.

Where he’s standing up tall, he’s lit from below. He, he’s got a very stern look on his face. He nods to order the gas to come in, and you can see that this little girl’s being gassed and she’s crying and she’s pleading and she’s pounding on the doors, looking up at him, and he just stands there staring down at her, but then a tear comes down his face.

And he says, I’m so sorry, which she sees him mouth and you, and you’re like, oh, wait a minute. Alright. He doesn’t wanna be doing this, but he’s making the decision that has to be made. Right. And I feel like that was his character and I think that’s what you’re getting at. That was his character throughout the whole thing.

Yeah. He’s not the stereotypical, he’s not the Paul riser of Alien, you know, who’s willing to kind of sacrifice everything for the, for the whatever, for science, correct? No, he actually. He has a lot of sympathy too, and I feel like most, most of the movie, he’s actually making all the right calls, even when, like I said, in that one moment where they go into the lab and they decide to create her without the human part of the DNA, and they have that classic scene, you know, it’s like the beginning of the rock with Nick Ca in there.

Now the scientists are trapped in the room with the bad thing happening and the people outside. Are unwilling to open the doors because if they do that, bad thing’s gonna get out and destroy everybody else and possibly the world. Right. You can’t really knock him 

Craig: for that, you know, in theory. Yeah. I, I, and I totally get it in theory, and, and it, it is the practical decision.

It makes more sense. Well, 

Todd: it’s the responsible decision. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Right. You, you, you know, you risk. It becoming uncontained and, and getting out. And it’s weird because the sill alien, you know, she, she appears human, but she eventually transforms. I’m, I’m not really sure if she can transform it will, or if this is just a continuation of her transformation.

I think it’s just a continuation of her transformation. But she ultimately looks humanoid, but very alien. And very hr, very HR Geiger. It’s very in keeping with his style. Yeah. Yeah. He, he does, uh, include a lot of sexuality and she’s voluptuous and like she can shoot tentacles out of her nipples that can, like strangle people and stuff.

I like that. It’s weird. 

Todd: Have you ever flipped through a Geiger, uh, his, any of his book, like Books of Art or anything like that? 

Craig: I know that I have, but it’s been a while. I, I basically, what I can remember is that, you know, his style is pretty consistent. Yeah. And it’s, it’s pretty consistent with the design of the Xenomorph and with the stuff that you see in this movie.

Yep. And, and you, there’s definitely, I mean, the XR. They had to get him to tone down the phallic nature of it. Yeah. It was initially, and it, and it’s still, it’s head is still pretty phallic. 

Todd: Oh yeah. His art is all just vaginas and phalluses and things going into mouths and stuff like that. I mean, uhhuh, every single bit of it, it’s super consistent.

So, uh, no, no big surprises there. No, it’s actually kind of a shock that it ever got that his heart ever got tapped for film. I know. I mean, you, it’s good art, but like, you know, again, you gotta tame it down considerably. For film and even then even the Zemo morph is just dripping with this stuff, you know, 

Craig: Uhhuh, literally, 

Todd: it’s 

Craig: funny.

But yeah, I mean, so Michelle Williams escapes and, and she’s young and she hops a train. It’s interesting, this alien adapts pretty quickly. She picks up basic language. She is observant and you know, can pick up on human behaviors in that if you trade this green paper. For things you can, you know, get stuff like, so she, she somehow acquires money.

I don’t even remember how, but she, and she starts, you know, giving people money for products and services and stuff. But on this train, she’s eating ravenously. We find out later it’s because she was like preparing for a metamorphosis and then she builds like, builds isn’t the right word, but forms this.

Cocoon in the train car that she’s in. And though again, she really never seems malicious. In fact, she can interact pretty well with people. She interacts with this train attendant, this, this lady who’s very nice to her and they have kind of a nice interaction. Yeah. But we’re always reminded that she is an evolving creature and that part of her evolution is to feed and to.

Kill in defense of herself or, or whatever. And though she does have a kindly interaction with this train lady, when the train lady comes back to check on her and finds this giant cocoon, a big tentacle, shoots out of it and, and kills her, and she leaves a trail of bodies throughout this movie, we, you don’t, we don’t even see, we see her kill multiple people.

Yeah. But we don’t even see every kill. Like the team just kind of follows this trail of bodies. 

Todd: They just, they’re always just like, just a little bit late to the party. 

Craig: Oh my God. There are like five seconds late every time. Which 

Todd: is also silly. It’s also silly how quickly they discover where she might be going next.

I mean, it’s the kind of movie you, you don’t want to. Think too much about, I think Roger Ebert said that in his mo in his review, he was like, you, you don’t, if you really stop to think about what’s going on, it all kind of falls apart because what leads them from one place to another place to another place.

The clues and things that they get, they’re so dumb. And again, most of it involve, revolves around this empath sensing things. So, uh, 

Craig: well, I mean, she does leave. I mean, even just what I’ve already said, the, the, the fact that. And somebody makes a joke at some point, they’re like, of course, Los Angeles is perfect for her.

It’s a city of the future. 

Clip: Anything goes totally mobile population. Everyone’s a stranger. Very little in this town, is taboo or 

Craig: unacceptable. Whatever she does, no one’s going to notice. Which to some extent I think is absolutely true, but it, you do have to kind of take a leap of blind faith to believe that she could acclimate so quickly.

You do. She, she learns how to drive. She uses a credit card. She goes shopping and buys a wedding dress and wears it around for a while. 

Todd: That was 

Craig: hilarious, but. She could have, Natasha Hinrich could have gotten away with walking around in anything she wanted to in 1995. Oh 

Todd: yeah. 

Craig: She was stunningly beautiful.

She looked like a fashion model. She was, no, I don’t think anybody would’ve batted an eye at her wearing that dress. No, not at all. I, 

Todd: I, she would’ve been the, one of the least weird people walking down the street, I think. 

Craig: But aside from figuring out that she was in la, which I don’t really remember, they, they get close because one guy she kills, she has his money, she uses it to check into a motel as an alien would do, I suppose.

Where, where she, uh, watches porn. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, everything she sees on the. TV ends up the TV, feeds her a lot of information, including the very specific bit of usefulness that will come to her later, which is you can dye your hair. Oh yeah. How many 

Craig: times. That’s right. 

Todd: Did we see the hair dyeing ad before that became relevant and then That’s right.

That’s funny. The stupid thing later is that one of the members of our team, and actually I think it’s Forrest Whitaker, sees the same ad on television in the motel, and that gives them the idea. Wait a minute. Maybe she changed her appearance. Come on. This entire team of supposed experts in all this, it didn’t cross their mind once that this would, that this would be a thing.

He had to see the same ad on television to get that idea. 

Craig: It’s, I mean, it’s silly. Whatever. It works. The only thing she does to change her appearance is dye her hair. She’s, she’s blonde naturally, and she dyes her hair brunette now, to be fair, they’ve never gotten a real good look at her. No, that’s true.

They’ve seen some kind of grainy footage of her from the motel where she used. A credit card. The guy at the, the desk was like, we have to have your credit card on file. So she gave the credit card. That’s how they initially got close to her. Right. And then from then on they were just kind of always just one step behind for one reason or another.

And again, it’s jumping ahead. We can jump back, but by the time. She dyes her hair. It’s not just a matter of them not recognize her because she like did the Clark Kent glasses type thing. They also think she’s dead. Yeah. And also, to be fair, they were skeptical of that and felt that they had been reassured.

So they were fairly reassured that she was dead. Natasha Henstridge is so striking. The, there’s no way I would be shocked. I would be shocked that even from just the grainy imagery that they’d seen of her, that they wouldn’t at least give her a second glance. Yeah. Because she’s just so, so striking. But whatever they don’t, it’s fine.

A lot of it, a lot of what we skipped. Is just them constantly on her tail and once she sees porn, that really gets her biological clock ticking. And then she’s on the prowl for men, so, so she asks the motel clerk. Who I was shocked didn’t just say like, well, I’m a man, 

Todd: right? I thought that would be the first thing.

He didn’t seem like the most up and up guy anyway. 

Craig: Right. Maybe she wasn’t his type. I don’t know. But he was far less skeevy than I would’ve expected from him, for sure. But he sends her to a club and she goes to a club and she kind of observe. People flirting and she sees this, well, a guy approaches her and she’s talking to him, and then another woman breaks in and drops some cheesy line and kind of steals the guy that SIL was flirting with.

So she follows this lady into the bathroom and kills her through the wall. Yeah, like the girl’s in the bathroom stall. And I’m, I’m not really exactly sure how this, how did that happen? And I 

Todd: don’t know, it looked like a Beetlejuice move, like just this weird hand kind of shot out of the wall from behind this girl.

Craig: From behind her, but it doesn’t even make any sense how she behind the wall. Yeah. How? Because she, she’s in the bathroom with this lady and they have a brief interaction and then the lady goes in the stall and Natasha Ridge leaves the room. So I guess she went what? Into the men’s restroom, into the utility closet on the other side of the wall.

And, and I don’t know. I don’t know, but she shoots like a tentacle through and it kills the lady. Yeah, it’s weird and it’s, it’s bloody and gross. And there’s, you know, these practical effects when she’s killing people, they, they’re gory and Oh 

Todd: yeah. The aftermath of that’s really pretty good too. 

Craig: And and they, it really doesn’t pull any punches.

I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty violent and gory and so if you’re into that kind of stuff and practical effects it, the movie’s probably worth it just for that alone. But she also takes off her top a lot. She sure does. If you’re into that, she takes a, I don’t know, I was gonna say a skeevy guy, but whatever.

She just hits on this guy and she gets in to take. Her home and it looks like she’s down to go. You know, like he says he’s gonna go take a shower and she follows him in there and you know, is kind of leering at his body and he comes out and tells her to take her clothes off and she does. And they start getting closer to one another when all of a sudden she’s just not into it anymore.

What was that all about? Did she sense something? Okay. Yes. I mean, it’s explained to us later, but in the moment it was so confusing because like she was so into it and we already know that she’s motivated to mate the Mark Helden Berger character has already told us that she’s developing, you know, she’s following her natural instincts.

Her natural life cycle, and at this point, you know her, her body would be telling her that it is time to procreate. And so we know that already. But then she has this guy in her grasp and he’s totally into it and she rejects him and then he gets rapey and she kills him. Yeah. Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, she kisses him and kind of, you know, XR tongue shots through his, the back of his head.

Also like Alien? Yes. Very much. When the team arrives, three seconds later, they put all this together and they’re like, well, she had a guy right here. Why wouldn’t she be with him? And I think it’s Mark Helgenberger. It’s like, well, maybe. She could sense that there was something wrong with him. I think that she cites some other species that can do that.

Like they can, you know, sense desirable versus undesirable mates and they’re like, well, maybe there was something wrong with him, and they look around for two seconds and find that he has syringes and insulin. So he was diabetic, so he was a less than perfect specimen for her to mate with. She, she 

knows 

Todd: so much about biology at this point.

Do you remember how they got here, by the way, now that I remembered it? No. They ask like the club owner, 

Clip: blue eyed blonde, black leggings, pink sweater, five foot 10 inches tall. Who’d she leave with? 

Todd: Blue eyed blonde leaves with a guy, sadly. News 

Clip: around here, just named the top attractions. The regulars, no losers.

You should assume he’s socially aep. You’ll be hopping around. She’s in, we’re looking for a friendly guy, not a total asshole. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Robbie left with a blonde that’s 

Todd: this owner, like keeps tabs of all of the people in this gigantic club that is just packed to the gills with bodies and is like, oh, yeah, yeah, there’s like six really nice ones.

And oh yeah, I happen to notice that he left with a blonde. How many people were leaving with blondes that night? Come on. Right. 

Craig: Like she was the only blonde in the club. Right. So stupid. I know. And it’s all like that. I mean, it’s all just very silly clues. Like she, so she steals the guy that she just killed, she steals his car and she, you know, she watched him drive once, so she knows how to drive now.

And she just drives it around and eventually it runs outta gas. Somewhere in la she almost gets hit. She does get hit. She gets to, she gets nailed by, like, she gets out of the car and she’s on the street and she gets nailed by this car and thrown through one of those glass bus stops. Like, yeah, a a, an actual human.

Most likely would’ve been killed. It would’ve been shocking for somebody to survive that. Oh yeah. And she is unconscious and some handsome guy in a red convertible pulls up and like tends to her and I guess somehow gets her to the hospital, whether he called the ambulance or whatever. We don’t see that.

What we do see is him standing at the nurses’ station saying, I don’t know her name. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. And the nurse is like, well. She has no ID on her and she has no insurance, and the guy’s like, oh, that’s fine. Just put it on my credit card. Like what? Nicest guy. This stranger in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she, she’s hot. There’s no question there. I get it. She’s certainly hot, but the only interaction that he’s had with her is her laying in a crumpled unconscious mess. Rubble. Sure. And getting her to the hospital, like I, I see checking in on her, but like putting her medical bills on your credit card, those would be some serious bills too.

And that’s fine, but it’s stupid. It’s just so that when she miraculously heals herself in front of a befuddled doctor, right. Who then just gets whisked away by his nurses and he’s like, wait a second. Did you see that? Yeah. Then so she comes out, she sees nice guy standing there and she’s like, can you get me outta here?

And he’s like, did the doctor say it was okay for you to leave? And she’s like, yeah, it’s cool. So they leave. So the whole reason for him putting his credit card there was so that the team could then follow that trail? Yeah. To Rich guy’s house. Where once again, like she’s, she’s seducing this guy and this guy apparently is fine.

Todd: He’s a nice dude too. He’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Too fast, you know? 

Craig: Yeah. And she gets him in the hot tub and she’s really, you know, she’s trying to make stuff happen really fast. And like the team, at least Michael Madson and, and Mark Helgenberger show up while this is still happening. Yes. Like, like they are like knocking on the door and like, like snooping around while this is happening.

So because she’s interrupted, she pushes nice guy under the water and he’s drowning. But then this is when she transforms. And again, I, it’s unclear to me, I don’t know if it’s because she feels threatened. Because she does go back to human form after this. Yes. So I do think it must be kind of an at will kind of thing.

Yeah. But she turns into this alien type thing. She shoots tentacles out of her nipples, strangles the guy. But by the time the team, you know, get out there, he’s already dead. Like they’re just seconds too late. Like if you had just been a little faster, that guy could have been Okay. 

Todd: Well they’re so on the tail end of this that she is watching them.

As they’re investigating that, she has gone, she’s gotten a car, she’s driven it around somewhere. She’s gotten outta the car. She’s come back and she’s looking through the bushes and watching them as they’re examining the hot tub. 

Craig: And reading Ben’s Ben Kingsley’s lips, so she knows what their plans are.

Their plans are to scout the club, the same club they were at this night because he thinks she’ll go back there for some reason. That I don’t understand, but maybe he just thinks that 

Todd: she’s going to the club repeatedly to, to find another man. I don’t know. I mean, you’re right, it is. It is the most. Like, if I were on this team, I’d be like, nah, I don’t think she’s going back there.

Uh, 

Craig: well, he’s underestimating her. She’s clearly, she right. She’s clearly very resourceful and, and smart. Like it would be foolish of her to go back to the same place. Yeah. I don’t think she would have, I don’t know. Ben Kingsley is also acting very shady at this point. I don’t know. I don’t even really know what he’s trying to do, but anyway, she knows now for me, I can pretty much get down with everything that’s happened up until this point.

At this point, it really starts to get ridiculous. Yes, because she puts together a fucking James Bond spy diversion that surely would’ve taken years to plan and would’ve been nearly impossible. Ball to execute perfectly, and yet she executes it perfectly. She stages her own death in the most extravagant 

Todd: of ways.

It didn’t need to be this extravagant, but yeah, and also this is the point at which she starts to do very indefensible things as far as when we were talking about her just acting on instinct. I mean, of course, you know the whole thing is instinct, but she leaps naked again. She’s naked. Into a car with a woman who’s at a gas station and basically the says I’m in trouble.

Trouble, I guess, and drives off. The next thing we know, she’s got this woman tied up. Bound and gag her bed. She has this weird conversation with her. Like, do you ever have nightmares? I think this was supposed to be kind of, I don’t wanna say darkly humorous, where she’s asking this woman who’s bound and gagged next to her, do you ever have nightmares?

’cause she’s being plagued by these nightmares, uh, of, of herself or her nature or something like that. Mm-hmm. And this woman’s like, no, just let me go, let me go. And she’s like, huh, I, well, you know, I have these nightmares and they’re terrible. Anyway, she cuts her thumb off in front of this woman, which regenerates.

Puts it in her bag, then goes over to the woman, cuts her thumb off. 

Craig: Yeah, and I didn’t know what was going on. It was very strange. The, the thing about the, I, I felt like this was the writer’s attempt at kind of an existential moment. Like, ah, right. When she’s asking about those nightmares, she’s like, I have these nightmares.

And those, they’re so terrible. They’re so frightening because they show me who I really am. Ah, and again, that’s a little deep for this type of movie, but I think that it’s, it’s kind of her coming to terms with what she really is. It’s. Frightening. But it may also give her the ability to do these, like, like you said, these increasingly indefensible things.

This, this woman that she’s taken hostage, not only is she innocent, but she offered still help. Yeah. You 

Todd: know? Right. At the same sense. You’re still kind of rooting for her because like you just said, oh yeah, this scene just lays bare that she’s really not that bad. She’s just acting. It’s like any one of the animal attack movies, you know, that we’ve done like alligators.

Yeah, 

Craig: right. Are you gonna be mad at Jaws, right? Yeah. They just 

Todd: are what they are. It’s just doing what it does like, so you’re still kind of rooting for it. And I think in that way that’s how it’s a little different from Alien and, and a lot of these other films where you’re rooting for the good guys, you’re kind of rooting for her ’cause she’s not really a crazy bad person either.

You’re just interested to see where this goes, but it just gets increasingly ridiculous. Like you said, they’re at the club and Dan is still their secret weapon and he just feels something. Right. He goes outside, he touches the ground. I was like, what? What? I thought he was an empath. How is he like sensing things through the ground?

Two guys pop out of a dumpster. What were they doing in there? I was curious about that. Then there’s a car and uh, she’s there and she hops in the car and she takes off. Then there’s a big car and helicopter chase. And 

Craig: it’s all intentional. This is all a ruse. She, she exposes herself and she wants them to chase her because like you said, we got a whole big sequence where she was filling up these big drums of gasoline and we, she’s got this woman that she’s taken hostage, she’s got her tied up in the passenger seat.

And it was, at this point I was like, oh, this is stupid. But the reason she cut off their thumbs is because she is going to fake her own death. Oh, 

Todd: this is so stupid. 

Craig: And use this woman. Okay, so. She has them chase her in a car and, and like, I don’t know if it’s Mulholland, but it’s one of those, you know, highways right on the mountain.

Looks like she’s up by the 

Todd: Hollywood sign or something, you know, it’s just way up in the mountain. You’re 

Craig: right. So, so she, she intentionally drives off a cliff and then as the car’s going down the cliff, she jumps out of the car at the same time pulling the other woman into the driver’s seat, and the car hits something and explodes.

A huge explosion, massive, because of all the gas in there. Helicopters come in and like missile shoot the 

Todd: whole area, shoot missiles into this car. This car has already had a mushroom cloud explosion. Then two helicopters come and just for good measure, shoot two missiles at it, to which it explodes even more.

Craig: But she easily gets away. But the whole thumb thing where she’s like, oh, they’ll find the thumb, which they do, and then they do 

Todd: this, this, this cop comes running up to get Ben Kinsley and it’s like, oh, by the way, this is like. Maybe three minutes after the explosion. Yeah, he runs up to Ben Kinsley. It’s like we found this thumb in the door.

It’s probably like, you know, as she was trying to escape or something. Do you mean to tell me that there is anything left? This little chunk of severed thumb that she put in the door, they’re actually gonna find, 

Craig: and it’s, and it’s dumb, but you know, she was right to suspect that they would be suspicious, but they checked the DNA of the thumb and they’re like, oh, yep, that’s her.

She must be dead. So. They go to hang out at a hotel, she goes to dye her hair and then comes to the same hotel that they’re at. I don’t get this either. I think that we are intended to believe that she’s lusting after Michael Madson and maybe kind of Yes, intentionally following him around. There was 

Todd: a scene earlier Yeah.

Where she kind of saw him get into an elevator and got all hot and bothered. 

Craig: Okay. All right. So now she, they’re all there. She’s there. She’s brunette. She interacts with several of them and them recognize her. That’s funny. There’s also, they’re, you know, they’re setting up this romantic tension between Michael Matson and Mark Helgenberger and will they, won’t they?

Who cares? 

Todd: It’s kind of thrown in there. 

Craig: Yeah. They end up going upstairs to Laura’s room. Mark Helgenberger and Sil follows Michael Madson up there, but he goes in and then she just stands outside the door. Getting really horny, listening to them. Bang. Yeah. And then a maid comes around the corner, so she has to, she can’t just be, you know, hanging out in the hall, like rubbing her nub listening to these guys.

So, so she steals the maid’s keys and goes into the room next door, which turns out to be. Alfred Molina’s door. I don’t think that we’ve even mentioned him. No, but he’s on the team 

Todd: too. He’s here as well. He’s one of the most useless people on this team. But yeah, 

Craig: I think he’s supposed to be comic relief, but he’s not really there enough to really be all that funny.

He looks great. He’s very young and he’s handsome. Yeah, he’s fun. He just, we haven’t said much about ’em ’cause there’s not a lot to say. He goes in his door and she’s there and he’s like, what are you doing here? And she’s like, I saw you downstairs, but you were talking to other people. So I decided just to come up and wait for you.

And she starts taking off her clothes and he’s like, things like this never happened to me. And he jumps on the bed and takes off all his clothes and they start banging. Now he was, you know, he had been drinking and he was, you know, trying to meet a lady downstairs. This is a strange woman that. He’s never seen before.

Todd: Right? An odd resemblance that you probably wouldn’t have to think too hard. You know, it’s not a huge leap from those grainy motel, you know, videos. The other thing I think is a little unconvincing about this movie is how it’s a very solid point when Bing Kinsley is like, okay, she’s dead. Everything’s good, and almost everybody else in the team is like, eh, I’m not sure.

I don’t buy it. This is fishy. And then their secret weapon, Dan, is like, no. No, man, I don’t, I I, something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Like the guy they’ve been listening to this whole time, and it’s been right every single time. They’re like, no, man, she’s dead. Don’t worry about it. Look, just drink some Long Island iced teas and forget about it.

Yeah. Come on in. In a better movie, this would’ve been a plot point where they would’ve all continued with their skepticism and that would’ve led them to discover that she is in fact still alive. But now all their guards are just down. It’s like a couple drinks and they don’t care anymore. 

Craig: Well, except for Dan, who can sense that she’s near and that she’s having sex.

So he goes, uh, to the room that SIL and that other guy Alfred Molina are in, and he listens in for a second, and then he goes right next door and knocks on. Michael Madson and, and Mark Berger’s door. And it’s like she’s alive and she’s in there and they’re banging. And Michael Madden’s like, no, she’s not.

And he’s like, yes she is. And he’s like, okay, I believe you. 

Todd: That’s literally how it goes down. 

Craig: So he takes as much time as he needs to get dressed and then they go. Over there. I 

Todd: love this bit by the way, 

Craig: before they get there, Alfred Molina comes and within 10 seconds she’s pregnant. Sil is like, I can feel it.

And he’s like, what are you talking about? And she’s like. New life. And he’s like, ha, that’s funny. And she’s like, no, seriously feel it. And she puts his hand on her stomach and he feels something moving around in there. And of course freaks out, realizes what’s going on. Too late she kills him and now the chase is on.

So it’s just the three of them now. It’s Ben Kingsley. No, not Ben Kingsley. No. Michael Madson. Mark Helgenberger. And. Forrest Whitaker. It’s just the three of them. How they know where she’s going. I don’t know. You know, they kind of see her and she leaves destruction, like she’s really strongly, she’s breaking down doors and stuff.

She even breaks through a steel door. Somehow they follow her into the sewer. Yes. And this is when it gets very alien because it’s very reminiscent of all, you know, all the dark hallways and pipes and steam. Tunnels. Yeah. Rivers of liquid and all that kind of stuff. She’s above them. She’s below them. Yeah, she’s in the water.

You know, she can move quickly under the water. She can, you know, watch them. They’re walking right underneath these pipes and she’s right above them and they don’t see her, but we do all this kind of stuff. Yep. It’s very alien. They’re following her around with a flame thrower. Yes, she is fleeing further and further into wherever they are because she’s also.

Gestated this entire pregnancy in a minute and a half. Yeah. And she ends up crawling through, you know, some big crack. They’re like, oh, this must have opened up, uh, when the earthquake happened. Yeah. And then they end up in some sort of cavern with a lake of oil in it. Yeah. What That’s weird. Are, are there lake lakes of oil under Los Angeles?

I, maybe there are, I don’t know, LaBrea tar pits type thing. I don’t know. I guess, I don’t know. So they, she’s in there, she gives birth. It seems like we only get a glimpse of it, but it seems like her birthing process is that her entire torso splits open. Yeah, and this thing comes out of it. She’s in full alien form at this point, by the way.

They get into that cavern where they think that she is the main guy. Michael Madson goes ahead and is like, watch my back or whatever. But Dan. Comes across the kid who is already like eight. Yeah. And just this naked boy covered kind of in gook, but. We quickly realized that he’s dangerous because he sees a rat and he reaches out to it, but he can’t reach it.

So he just shoots his tongue out of his mouth like a frog and eats the whole thing. That was cute. Yeah, it was funny. I thought it was funny. And then Dan finds him and Dan’s like, oh, I’ll be your friend. Everything’s gonna be okay. And he tries to shoot his frog tongue at him too. And Dan kind of falls over a ledge and is like hanging over the lake.

Doesn’t Michael Madson show up and kill the kid? 

Todd: Like immediately? Yeah. And then sills pissed. So sill runs over and then Michael Madson also kind of slips down through a cracker. Maybe she’s above him and her nipple tentacles come out and they grab him and, 

Craig: but he cuts it off. Yeah. He cuts the tentacle off and throws it aside.

Important for later? Yeah. Mark Helgenberger is there and she’s trying to help, but she’s not really doing anything. She’s stuck in the lake somehow. The entire lake of. Oil gets caught on fire. Yep. So, you know, they’re in this underground area. There’s fire everywhere. The whole lake is on fire. They end up somehow throwing sill into the fire and it seems like she’s dead.

And Michael Matson is trying to pull Dan up ’cause he’s still hanging over that ledge, over the burning lake and sill and engulfed in flames. Jumps up and grabs Dan’s leg and is trying to pull him down. But Michael Maxon pulls out like a. Bazooka. 

Todd: I don’t even know where it was, where that came from.

Craig: Anyway, it was some huge gun that he loads a huge round that looks like the size of a beer can into, and he blows her head off and she falls into the lake, presumably dead. They get Dan out and they’re all like, well, that was weird. And then they,

Todd: but. Then we get the inevitable, like Rat Co comes and grabs one of those nipple tentacles that have been severed and pulls it away and presumably eats some of it because, uh, the final scene I think that we get shown in the movie is this rat looks really, really mean and encounters another rat. And then it’s tongue like lashes out, like the kid’s tongue had lashed out and, uh, yeah, consumes that of the rat.

So, 

Craig: ha ha, 

Todd: ha. Its DNA is living on in these rats. Sure. And I haven’t seen Species two, so I don’t know if that literally carries through or if they took a different tack to continue the movie. 

Craig: I don’t remember. I think they take a different tack, but I don’t remember if the whole rat thing carries through.

I now, I could be totally misspeaking ’cause it’s been a while, but at the beginning of this summer, you know, when I had nothing to watch, species was on. Pluto, which runs, you know, stuff live. So you can just kind of channel switch. And I came to it, and when you go, you know it, it runs things live. But when you go to it, it gives you the option.

Of going back to the beginning, you can also stream it from them. So I saw that it was on, I hadn’t seen it in a long time, so I switched to it and I went ahead and, you know, sent it back to the beginning and watched the whole thing and then it just autoplayed the next one. So I just left it playing, if I remember correctly.

They make a new sill. Oh, still played by Natasa Hinrich. But it’s like Terminator two. Like she’s a good one. Oh, okay. And I think she like, helps ’em with stuff. Again, I could be misspeaking, I don’t know. And then there is a third one, and I, I wanna say in the third one, the alien hybrid is a man, but I don’t, I don’t even remember if I watched that one.

Neither of the sequels did. Well, they, you know, even Michael Madson said that he knew that the second one was crap, but it was a check. And why not? But yeah, I mean, this movie, it’s, it’s stupid. It’s dumb, but. But I like a lot of stupid 

Todd: movies. Yeah, it’s a fun one to just play, like, especially with friends, you know, just watch it.

And it’s a mindless action movie. There are a million of ’em. You know, there, there really are, and it’s, it’s one of the better ones, I would say. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. It’s very nineties. It’s got a very nineties feel to it, so if you’re nostalgic for that, 

Todd: I feel like the nudity was a big hook when this came out. Like that was a big I so big hook.

It was definitely played up. This was her first movie. She was already a successful model. She looks gorgeous. Mm-hmm. She’s topless in this a lot. As a teenage Todd loved this. T all of his friends did as well. I know that it, it was a huge box office success, even though it wasn’t a huge critical success.

And I’m, I mean, from $35 million budget, I think it made 113 million worldwide plus, you know, who knows what on DVD and all that stuff. It was, it was very successful in DVD and stuff as well, rentals. So, and, uh, Michael Madson, one of his favorite, uh, favorite movies to be in. And you can kind of see why.

Yeah. At least he could be a good guy in it. A GA, a good guy who’s a little shady, right? Like. He was the guy hired by the government to take care of things. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, he’s still the muscle. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But he’s, he’s working for the good people. He’s painted as the hero Yeah. Of the movie. And, and he is, he lasts, he kills the bad person, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, I wouldn’t say that this is a tour to force of his acting. I, I’m sure that you could, you know Sure. Watch, watch Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction or, 

Todd: oh, yeah. Reservoir Dogs, for sure. Uh, 

Craig: even, even, I mean, as, as small a role as he has, uh, I, I really loved him in Thelman. Louise, the guy is a really good actor.

I’m glad that he had fun on this movie and made money on it and had a, you know, a good time doing it and remembered it. Fondly. Probably not his best work, but who cares? It did well. It’s still fun to watch and he was proud of it. So yeah, kudos to him. We’ll miss him. 

Todd: Alright, well thank you guys so much for, uh, joining us on this episode.

If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. If you didn’t enjoy it, please share it with a. Fred. Anyway, we just love to have you spread the word a little bit. If you really like what you hear and want to support us even further, you can join our Patreon at patreon.com/chainsaw podcast. This five bucks a month gives you access to all kinds of behind the scenes stuff, the complete unedited audio of our phone calls.

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Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.