Natasha Henstridge versus the Coordinated Cockblock Quintet: SPECIES (1995)

If you're human, chances are you have sexual fantasies about the wrong people. Danger, plain and simple, is hot. But if true danger comes your way then watch as as an array of problems--cockblocking friends, early arriving parents, lack of a condom, no erection, sudden eruptions of crying, or your own latent good sense-- conspire to save you, in a sense, from yourself. Would knowing the truth about Sil, the half-alien sex machine played by Natasha Henstridge in the 1995 classic SPECIES, make any difference if she threw herself into my arms? Your arms, I mean. God, what is wrong with me?

Sil's allure is there for a particular set of reasons: a Venus Flytrap genetic con job CATFISH type, i.e. her hot model profile is a front for an ugly Bride of Frankenstein haired silver CGI mess of a mutant. CATFISH gets high praise, but SPECIES (1995) gets a bad rap just because it's got huge flaws and an overly sexy plot, but I never want to see CATFISH ever again... Once onscreen and six or seven times in my own life was enough.

The dialogue is laughable in spots, but it's good to laugh, sometimes, as those Catfish dates can really leave their scars. THE ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER, I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE, PLAN NINE --they are laughable too, and look at the love they get! From me! A film's unique badness DNA can sometimes touch on aspects of the human experience more mainstream 'better' films--chained up in groupthink second-guessing--cannot. A certain breed of science fiction and horror film can sneakily go where no one else can. They get deep into the reasons we, or at least I, love movies that seem like they're being told by an excited eight year-old.

She's drowning a man as we speak

Looking to breed with any man not encumbered by faulty genes, Sil is every straight teenage boy fantasy come to life, or rather death, the death drive desire made flesh, the kind of fantasy only boys who've never had a hot girl come violently onto them at a coke party would dare nurture. As the scientist who tried to gas her with cyanide before she bolted, Fitch (Ben Kingsley) would say, "She's... that fast."

 You would think such a dire threat would warrant a call out to the National Guard, or at least inspire proper tailoring, but Fitch moseys around Sil's bloody trail in an oversize suit jacket and black T-shirt combo already quite passé by 1995, with a 'hand-picked team' of four civilian consultants: sociologist Stephen (Alfred Molina); sweaty telepath, Dan (Forest Whitaker, mouthing profundities like "her eyes are in front... her eyes in front so she can judge the distance to her prey"); MILF-ish Dr. Laura (Marg Helgenberger); and tough guy Preston (Michael Madsen). He and Dr. Laura forge the only non-dysfunctional relationship in the film, or indeed in any other. They let you know it is possible.

For the unattractive nerd trio of Dan, Stephen, and Fitch, Sil's chosen killing floor, Los Angeles, is a hostile, uncaring place and, as they are all Oscar-nominated actors (two of them winners), that alienation and nerdy reticence is felt very keenly as they negotiate the big budget lowbrow byways of this 'sci fi' film. When Preston asks a club owner if anyone left with any hot blondes before they got there, he notes: "only prime players, no assholes." Suddenly the whole depressing shill is felt in their and our bones. The night seems to descend on them all; the inner lonesome here at this crowded club is stifling. By assholes, of course, Preston could easily mean himself, and particularly this nerd quintet he's with, a gaggle of merciless cockblockers with the power to call down air strikes on her car or trace her stolen credit cards before her current victim can even get, as they say, the tip in.

With its 'mobile population' and sun-baked facade of cheery affluence and anonymous isolation, Los Angeles bends and shifts to accommodate Sil's killing/sex spree, welcoming her based solely on her looks, which is all L.A. pretends to be about. The team of humans scrambling after her mimic the way the mainstream follows hipster artists into gentrified neighborhoods, eager to live in thriving artistic center, and in so doing turning said 'hood into just another overpriced chain store strip mall, then the strips close down except for a vacuum cleaner repair shop and a dollar store, forcing the young artists to be on the road again, ever searching for a sanctuary from the tedium of the country's cockblocking Fitches. Los Angeles not only hides Sil, it is Sil.

And damning the empty shell of L.A. is just one bomb dropped in SPECIES: subtextually it explores aspects of media saturation no high budget movie would dare to. Models smile blandly on every available screen and page, and unless we work in Soho or have friends who are rich with sound nasal passages and who still invite us to parties, we seldom see them in the flesh. This is only natural; our fantasies are never meant to come true, by definition. It's best to look that gift horse in the mouth and search for retractible fangs, but we never do since an actual horse is hard to find, let alone for free. In an age of digital surface only L.A. has depth, since it's where the beauty goes to be pixelated. It's the jumping in point, so naturally there's a big cavern below the streets where Sil eventually retreats. The zombie Angelinos Sil encounters never dare register themselves as more than easily dispatched cliches lest their humanity unnerve the system. In her aching beauty Henstridge's Sil embodies all the potential they lack. She breathes something into the emptiness. It's death, but at least it's something. With Sil you're seduced by the surface and then gutted by the ugly CGI banshee within, BUT you get a five minute window to mate with 3-D perfection before you're suffocated by that digital Giger tongue.

Henstridge has gone onto some dreadful things (see: She Spies, I Get Sad, one of my very first posts on this site) and has had children, which has removed some of her aching aloof draw, sloping out her gorgeous shape and removing her angular youth, but giving her other things instead--like a wry self-deprecation and maternal resonance. All that is clear, in fact, in the other classic Henstridge film, John Carpenter's GHOSTS OF MARS (2001), wherein Henstridge shines as the druggie cop who teams with Ice Cube to battle Goth zombie mutants. It's an underrated comedy masterpiece, GHOSTS OF MARS (2001) is, and one of my favorite sci fi-action-horror-comedy films. Check out my piece from Acidemic #1, Death-Driving Ms. Henstridge. As for SPECIES, if you've lived it, as I have, and lived to tell the tale, bully for you. Now keep quiet, in the shadows, as your grim past plays in endless loops, and slow death by age and disintegration reduces you to nothing but eyes and a mouth, you know, for the popcorn, and whiskey, and bong, and snoring.... you're already dead, but the tape can be rewound. SPECIES is built for it. My record is tewelve times in a row over a weekend bender. I never survived until the ending, just woke up from a nice black-out to find the tape rewound, I'd make another drink and press play, so grateful for this one stray ray of light in my NYC hell, I'd follow it anywhere but off the couch. Sil never asks for more. Not once.

And that's how you play get the guests: SCORE (1974)

The title above is a line from WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966), delivered by Richard Burton after he demolishes the entire foundation of another couple's marriage (my review here). One thing that's nigh un-demolishable is the WOOLF itself, a great film based on a great Edward Albee play, which proved a reliable blueprint for Jerry Douglas's all-nude 1970s stage play version. Score AKA No One's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, (no doubt jumping into the foamy after-ripples from the splash of Oh, Calcutta!) answered Albee's titular question, at least for the pre-AIDS era. Douglas' play must have been a success too, however relatively minor, because, like Albee's original, it had a film adaptation. Via artsy provocauteur Radley Metzger, SCORE takes the same 'all night musical beds' pair of married couples structure and reimagines it for the age of swinging. This is what would happen if George and Martha were druggy ex-pat bisexuals instead of bitchy drunks, and Liz Taylor went after Sandy Dennis and Burton punked out George Segal and they all got high and did poppers and Valium and god knows what else...

SCORE, like most of Metzger's works, transcends the problems that so often result in tediously boring 1970s softcore erotica. In the age of hardcore we've become used to 'using' sexual imagery for a quick release, then forgetting about it. As a result, unless we have 'matters' in hand, sex is seldom sexy once its 'present' onscreen. It can be a forbidden thrill to think about, but without special skill behind the camera and maybe half a roofie chased with a quart of whiskey you may either fall asleep or find yourself having an anything-but-sexual fantasy while waiting for the soft focus and slow gropes to die away and an actual movie to appear. The 'wallpaper' camp factor lasts around ten minutes, and unless the music is good, like sitars and bongos trippy level good, it can grate on your nerves. Radley Metzger, though, is that rare diamond in the horny rose bush. He's classy but visceral, witty but earthy, human and warm but not sappy or daft, smart enough to know you can put Shakespeare into smut just as easy as you can put smut into Shakespeare.

As a result of Metzger's care (and the tenor of the trippy times), SCORE is a genuinely subversive high water mark above the usual lowbrow hetero-male-centric sexual rubric. It's a gay seduction film for straight men, or a bi-curious film that satisfies curiosity how other quarters halve. Like a cat killer that raises cats from the dead, this is the movie that should have gone on while Elliot Gould was brushing his teeth at the end of BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE (1969). He'd have run screaming from the screen!

A look at the stars begins with the ladies: the head hedonist Martha-type, Claire Wilbur is strangely reserved (she played her role originally onstage) and kind of manly, but that suits the role. As the hotter younger gamin, Lynn Lowry is cat-eyed (she was 'Ruthie' in the 1982 CAT PEOPLE remake!) and convincing. She seems to be really having fun and rolling along with the story wherever it may go. Her squeamish new "straight" husband (Calvin Culver -- I'm sure it's his real name) is kind of too gay from the get-go to convincingly resistant to cross-pollination, but he looks good without a shirt and has a sweet smile (sadly, he died of AIDS in 1987). Gerald Grant is the worldly, knowing Jack (the Georgie-Boy). He was in only a handful of other films: both his haircut and acting are unnervingly uneven, but Metzger's tart dialogue carries him through and he seduces Calvin like he's played 'get the guests' all his life. In this case, that means he and Claire each have until midnight to seduce their same-gendered 'newbie' opposite.

All in all, regardless of your current marital status, not only is SCORE an important movie for anyone anxious to learn the ABC's of seduction, it's also a feel good movie for the gay matchmaker in us all. Many's the night I've helped counter the odds as a lesbian wingman back in the 00's. Between my hot AA lesbian sponsee and me in my peak condition, all the exits were covered. Still, that didn't mean we always caught our quarry, especially if she sniffed out our Dangerous Liason-style game like a frightened deer. Sometimes you can turn 'em, most times you can't, but it's a great team-building exercise. Before all that, whilst still drinking, I lived in Hoboken with a hot bisexual swinger, and I'd feel a vested interest in her seduction stratagem as well. I'd work to keep her prey entertained but when said prey ran hurriedly off with mixed signals and tedious straightness intact to catch the midnight Path train back to Manhattan, we'd drown our collective sorrows.

Watching SCORE reminded me a lot of that, except, well, the title says it all! Path trains not an option.

So while on the one hand you are rooting for this pair to seduce this younger couple, on the other hand, 'gulp' if you are a straight male you are kind of put in the position of having to imagine all sorts of 'new sensations' which straight males are not often forced to reckon with while being too high to object and too vulnerable to being ceaselessly flattered by some hot hairy... shirtless... male. If you're not gay, maybe this movie will prove you wrong. And at least do your hosts the credit of inhaling some freakin' poppers before you make up your mind.

What are poppers like? I've never done one!

Could part of 'straight' middle America's rabid hate/fear of gay marriage and openly gay soldiers be similar to the reticence and denial of the younger couple in this film? Is it a metaphor? Or is it that our reign on our straight imaginations is so tenuous we can't help imagining acts that then freak us out and repel us yet we can't stop obsessing about them, like a poison ivy itch of the mind? We don't like to imagine our parents doing 'it' either, for example, and generally they respect that by not talking about their sex life in our presence. Can we put two and two together and realize fear of homosexuality is fear of our own imagination, of the way we can't let mental images go, the way we become obsessed by threats that don't exist, all tied into our own conception of our verboten primal scene? Thus, by subconscious illogic, if f we don't repress our cultural gayness (in accordance with our subconscious' bundled anxiety portfolio), we may have to watch our parents have sex, and that would be horrific. Better to not be born, better to inhale our own amyl nitrate birth and exhale into a whole new self, one more open... and more opened.

As for the SCORE score, an obnoxiously off-key Yardbirds impression song "Where is the Girl" repeats way too much in the beginning but the big climax scene that's the last 20 minutes or so rocks with a funky bongo and distorted electric cello score that gets the blood racing. Similarly, the actors are also a bit stilted in the beginning but come into their own pretty quick once that cello starts, especially cat-eyed Lowry, who taps into a kind of sensational wickedness as she begins to take some control and play along; a natural born swinger just now blossoming as the pot, pills and poppers help her shucker loose from her old limited shell.

And of course that slow coming into her own also parallels WOOLF, wherein Burton's character starts out all old and tired and set in his set fusty history prof ways and as the night heats up and the drinks fly down, he catches fire and comes alive with wit-fueled malice. SCORE though, is in the end much nicer. Because no one is bemoaning lack of children, or being mean to one another. The games of 'get the guests' here have no malice, just a kind of refreshingly even-keeled bravado, by which husband and wife stand as well-matched opponents in a friendly game of 'turn the newbie on and out'. Nothing warms my heart more than seeing someone 'open up' into new realms of being... while doing weird drugs.

And SCORE's big finale climax is methodical and ingeniously edited so that when the seductors agree, each in their separate killing chambers, that midnight will be the 'game's' deadline, everything begins to heat up in crazy crosscuts, to the point of no-return right at the stroke of twelve, cooking like no one's business, until the separate seductions bleed together and the will-they-or-won't-they becomes a tied-up, twirling funhouse mirror blur of identity that rockets SCORE out of the WOOLF-ish woods and right into the rarefied air of menage-a-troisteur Donald Cammell's PERFORMANCE! 

I also love that the film follows only one 24-hour period in these people's lives, starting during one hung-over morning/afternoon picking up ashtrays, spent popper tubes and flung underwear from the orgy the night before,and ending during the morning clean-up of the next one. I love those kind of parties! People sing about goin' on and on to the "breaka dawn," but don't often show it in movies. With his attention to the real-time rhythms of seduction and horizon-widening and the pink lips of early dawn along the black skin sky, Metzger shows his love not only of WOOLF but of Eric Rohmer in-the-moment lyricism, and druggy orgies. Like the best of Rohmer's sun-dappled moral tales, the chase and the near-misses become so hot with SCORE that even after hooking up (scoring) the passion still undulates. And like all the best drug movies, the contact high is potent.

Incidentally, the stunning new DVD being released this week from Cult Epics is fully restored and uncut, which means... oh I shan't spoil the surprise. Let's just say, if you see just one 1970s uncut sex movie this semester, make it SCORE. And since this is a time for new things, my friend, just relax... relax... and when that first popper comes rushing through your brain, keep repeating "it's only a movie, it's only a movie.." being projected.. onto my tight sailor pants.

Look closer...at far right.. for the Metzger termite touch.