One of my most requested posts, it's time to cover a carrier anyone who's flown in the US is probably very familiar with. After all, Southwest has for decades been the largest low-cost carrier in the world by both revenue and fleet size (though IndiGo is coming for that title).
Southwest's history is longer and more substantial than many may think, a central figure in the genesis of what we now know as the low-cost carrier. But one thing I think a lot of people know is their livery.
A common theme on this blog is trends in airline liveries - in particular, the modern trend towards the minimalist, sterile, underdesigned, and above all generic. As an anecdotal example, someone who lives near Boston's Logan Airport, the 16th-busiest airport in the US and 30th-busiest in the world, served by every major US airline and every major international carrier from countries within 787 range, were they to watch the takeoffs and landings, would be treated to the following...menagerie.
Can you believe these planes fly for different and indeed unrelated airlines?
Safe to say from 5,000 feet below it's a challenge to tell these planes apart. Even taxiing past them you'd need to pay attention. If I forced someone to squint I'm not sure they could identify them properly. How about Southwest?
Bam.
Southwest Airlines was founded in an era that borders on incomprehensible to those of my age bracket. The United States is a nation united in grumbling about Spirit Airlines, and most of Europe is constantly cursing Ryanair under their breath, but it wasn't always like that. The fact of a united enemy at all is new in the US. Back before the 1978 Deregulation Act, it was so prohibitively expensive to operate interstate flights that most airlines just didn't. Interstate flights were left to giant full-service airlines like Delta and Eastern, while international flights were the domain of an even more elite few - Pan Am, TWA, Braniff, and National (no, not that National, the other one) while the scrappier little companies flew short hops for commuters.
One airline which emerged in this pre-deregulation era was Pacific Southwest Airlines, commonly abbreviated to PSA, an initially tiny airline operating in California. You may recognize them from my icon! PSA is one of the single most important airlines in history because it all but invented the idea of the low-cost carrier. Beyond that, they were a Fun Airline. And while they were flying their grinningbirds all over California something else brewed in the background.
image: SouthwestArchive
I have never before in my life seen such a profound pairing of undereye bags with the slicked-back hair and piercing blue eyes of a YA dystopia novel film adaptation villain, darting around to lock onto any sources of potential wealth ripe for acquisition.
In 1971 Southwest Airlines began operating flights. The company was actually incorporated in 1967 (as Air Southwest), the brainchild of then-lawyer Herb Kelleher (and two other people who nobody ever talks about because they're boring). They saw what PSA was doing and saw potential for the massive profits that could be gained from avoiding fees from operating interstate while charging dramatically less than the larger carriers. Unfortunately for them the larger carriers also realized this, and they were trapped for three years in lawsuit purgatory, with Braniff, Continental, and Trans-Texas Airways taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, who apparently declined to review it, recognizing that 'they have come up with an idea that will make them make more money and us make less money' is not a particularly powerful legal argument.
And with that little hurdle over Southwest was open for business! They weren't quite starting out as a single rented DC-3, but Kelleher very closely modeled the airline after PSA, who seemed to be okay enough with it if them helping to train mechanics at the nascent airline was any indication. After all, at this point they were both intrastate airlines fundamentally unable to compete with each other - Southwest was staying put in Texas with no reason to think this would change anytime soon. They brought a bit of PSA to the state, like the low fares and the stewardesses in hot pants and go-go boots.
So what was their answer to the grinningbird?
The rare and deeply cursed Southwest 727.
The mustard rocket. It was called "desert gold" but I think we all know that this is mustard. At this point in history brightly colored airplanes weren't even unusual either, so it would have just been regular ugly instead of ostentatious. (I mean...I like this shade of mustard yellow, honest, but I recognize that most people think this is hideous.)
Southwest kept on Southwesting from there. These days, they're massive, and the most common response on my questionnaire for best airline experiences. No comment, as I've never flown with them. Highlights of their journey there include getting a federal amendment passed because they didn't want to relocate their hub from Love Field to Dallas-Fort Worth, getting sued for only hiring female flight attendants, having the first Black chief pilot of any major airline in the US, technically legal tax evasion measures, having to invent elaborate work-arounds for the restrictions placed on them which could have been avoided by just relocating to Fort Worth, absorbing a bunch of other airlines, being the launch customer for both the -300 and MAX 8 models of the Boeing 737, and making approximately a zillion dollars. In 1990 they absorbed Morris Air, a vacation charter airline which developed innovative cost-cutting measures like e-ticketing. The acquisition involved quite a lot of money and positions high up at Southwest for Morris Air's founders...
image: conde nast traveller
Strange millionaires lurking in woods distributing model airplanes is no basis for an airline industry! ...scratch that, it does appear to be working.
...oh, for heaven's sake, there he is again. Yes, David Neeleman's cost-cutting acumen was indeed put to use at Southwest, meaning that between this and founding jetBlue he basically created low-cost carriers. I reluctantly tip my hat to the man. I would not be able to afford airline tickets without him. But he's just everywhere.
Here is my handwritten faMintly tree. Southwest is jetBlue's cousin once removed, do with that what you will. Anyway, let's hope I never have to add to this. (Not least because I already binned the piece of paper I wrote this out on.)
The turn of the century brought new things for Southwest! In 2000 they had their first major accident (a nonfatal runway overrun resulting in loss of the aircraft). Unrelatedly, in 2001 they released a new color scheme for their fleet, now several hundred strong and entirely composed of assorted models of Boeing 737.
The era of Canyon Blue had begun.
I mean, it's a statement. At this point in history a plane painted to look like a poisonous frog was in fact a pretty major statement. They were setting out to be an eyesore and I'm sure people were upset about this one, but to the modern eye it looks muted and unfinished. Still bluer than anything David Neeleman had made at that point, but not quite what we know today.
Okay. Yes. There we go.
This livery is meant to be the heart from their logo, the same one worn where the plane's heart might be if planes had hearts instead of air-conditioning systems, the colors unwrapped and deconstructed. And boy, is it almost violently colorful! It goes so far that it takes a minute to notice only three colors, plus white, are used in the entire livery. It's almost eyestraining, and I did have to turn the contrast down on my monitor while writing this because I'm fairly photosensitive. It's...less painful when pixels aren't involved.
So this is definitely one-of-a-kind. Well, it was. jetBlue has made choices recently. But this livery is definitely not one that gets lost in the crowd.
There's very little white or even silver on this airframe, in sharp contrast with...basically every airline. The rest of the livery is vivid and searing yellow and red, unusual shades in airlines, which tend to stick to slightly more muted schemes. And if you couldn't tell who they were by that, the big white billboard wordmark would let you know real quick. I think the white is a bit less legible than I'd like, but I'm not sure how to improve that without making it genuinely eyestrainy. At least it's large and visible, which is crucial for a low-cost carrier, instead of subtle and out of the way on the tail. That might work for an airline with a prestigious air, but that's not Southwest. Southwest is blue and yellow and red.
The main differences between the modern livery and Canyon Blue are in the placement of the logo and the colors used. Each shade is brightened significantly, which is why the once-garish Canyon Blue now looks pretty dusty in comparison. They entirely removed the blue from the tail, making it the airframe feel a little less like it's blue with accents and a little more like it's a circus tent. I do wish the yellow and red covered a bit more of the belly, but still...wow.
Some uses of Southwest Sans demonstrated.
The success of this design isn't by accident. Apparently, Southwest consulted no fewer than five design firms, and the font used for the livery and all their material (which I think looks totally fine) was actually commissioned from iconic foundry Monotype. A lot of airline liveries are designed in-house, and that can turn out fine, but Southwest clearly pulled out all the stops and it shows.
Southwest is a low-cost carrier, and this does affect the standards by which I judge their livery. They aren't here to be guided by legacy or decorum the way a flag carrier is - they're here to sell you a cheap ticket on an airline with funny cabin announcements. Circus tent with big lettering in a sea of Eurowhite? Nice, clean execution - I'd call that a job well done.
Welcome to the Cult Film Tent Revival my freaky fanatics, prepare yourselves to take the sacrament from across the stars, as we engage in the miraculous works of one of our most beloved Cult Saints, Saint Kurt. Coming to us from the golden age of Sci-fi Adventures, when Hollywood would dump the big bucks into a film so out of this world, we are partaking this evening of 1994's Stargate!
The Message
Every child has an Egypt phase. I remember fondly flipping through my DK Eyewitness guide to ancient Egypt with my Anubis warrior action figure from the movie stargate propped up on my desk. This wasn't even school work, Egypt inspired this young freak to learn outside of the classroom, and Stargate inspired me to look to Egypt in the first place. My father was a military man, as mentioned before, and this film irked him to some degree. He hated that the film was slightly critical of firearms, but mostly he hated that it depicted the high security military installation where he worked unrealistically. You know the high security military installation in the side of Cheyenne Mountain. yeah, that one. I don't know why my father expected a bunch of nerds from Hollywood with not security clearance to have any idea what it looked like in that hyper-secure location, but he did. I suspect after they lost him on the guns he was looking for any reason to hate Stargate, and so, impressionable as I was, I thought for years that this movie was really stupid.
Thank the Gods of Cult that I had the inspiration to give this film a second chance. I have to say, it's a little stupid, but it's not REALLY stupid. Also, Disney's Atlantis is totally just animated Stargate, and that's pretty fucked up.
Stargate is the story of how a big old nerd, whos name is NOT Milo, played by James Spader was enlisted by a bunch of military bad guy types to use his crackpot pseudoscience egyptology crap to decipher a bunch of writings that every other scientist or academic was wrong about. When he does this he succesfully creates a Stargate, a bridge between our world and another.
Our other hero is Sergeant Kurt Russell. Russell is sitting around trying to take two and not call his doctor in the morning, just generally being sad about guns because his son accidentally shot himself. Like father like son I guess. Sorry if that sounds cruel, it's just so desperately reaching for pathos and drama that it kind of enters into the realm of parody parody. I may have been raised by gun nuts, but I am very pro depicting guns as dangerous. Stargate is about as subtle as a pie in the face, or a bullet in the face. Ok, I'm done. Anyway, the military has one more mission for Kurt and he decides for some reason that means that guns are good again for killing bad guys, except for later when he decides that guns are bad again.
So Disney's Atlantis and Guile from Street Fighter enter the Stargate and discover a world where illiterate humans are kept in subjugation by a ruling class of aliens who use them to mine precious minerals and demand to be worshipped as Gods. The leader of these aliens is an immortal alien being who has possessed the body of a teen boy pop sensation and goes by the name of Ra.
James Spader is gifted a wife by the locals because it's so quirky that women are property, i guess, but it's okay because they happen to be in love, and with her help he is able to learn the truth behind this worlds condition. Ra had built the Stargate to travel between worlds and was worshipped in Ancient Egypt, however the people got wise to his BS and he had to escape. He took many humans hostage and crossed the stargate and then banned reading and writing as an attempt to quell any kind of uprising, and it's worked for a long time.
Ra is pissed at the earth boys though because he knows a nuclear weapon when he sees one. Turns out Kurt Russell brought a big ol bomb with him across the stargate as a contingency plan for any aggro aliens they may have found. Hey, they found them so I guess it wasn't too bad of an idea. Ra punishes his worshippers by having them mercilessly bombed and Spader and Russell team up with the locals to revolt. They eventually gain the upper hand and Ra attempts to flee with his Pyramid space ship but our heroes teleport the nuke onto his ship and save the day. Thus launching several Sci-Fi television series that I have never watched.
The Benediction
Best Scene: Ra Footage
The Throne Room Scene where we are first introduced to Ra and his godlike warriors is pretty excellent. It's so menacing how he surrounds himself with a force field of children, and the combination of futuristic technology with an ancient Egyptian aesthetic that this film sells itself on is on it's ultimate display in this scene. I really like the villains in this movie and I savor whenever they get to be shown off.
Best effect: Mastadge Ride
The CG on Stargate is better than in Species which sought to be it's competitor a year later, but it is still dated. It's utilized in cool enough ways and sparingly enough that even though it looks cartoony at moments it is very easy to forgive. Being Easy to forgive however, would be a pretty lackluster qualification for best effect and I'm going to have to turn this honor to the practical creature effects for the Mastadge. When we are first introduced to our alien world one the first things we see is the fuzzy maw of one of these creatures, before it takes James Spader for a very harrowing trip across the desert. These alien beasts of burden do sometimes reveal that they are mounted upon horses, but in close ups they just look so good. I love them and I want one.
Worst Scene: It's just sad OK!
Kurt Russell becomes very popular with the young men from the village of Ra's worshippers. They come to see him as some kind of hero and seek to emulate him. However, these people are very peaceful and not in any way battle hardened. A group of the young men stand up to the leaders and seek to aid the Earthlings in their revolution. They are brave but in many ways out classed by Ra's elite guards. Through the sheer force of numbers they do succeed in casting off the shackles of their oppressors but not before one of the young men we've come to care about is tragically blasted all to shit in slow mo. That scene made me cry a ton when I was a kid, and I dreaded waiting for it as an adult. It is worth noting that if you aren't 5 years old a lot of the drama in Stargate is pretty hamfisted and corny. It's a pretty excellent action movie, and a pretty goofy drama.
Coolest looking Villain: Animals as Leaders
I used to think that Ra was really stupid looking, but I was a kid and was biased towards cool warriors with animal heads, but I really have a much better appreciation for the effects and costume design of all of the godly villain crew than I used to. That said, The Anubis guy in particular still holds up. It's the dope Jackal head, the teal of the armor. It's what I picture when I picture Stargate. The Horus guys are also worth a mention with their awesome hawk jets. I couldn't pick a "Best" villain, so I went with the Coolest Looking.
Worst Aspect: Lacking Character
When I have fond thoughts of Stargate, they almost never revolve around the characters, or if they do it's in a juvenile manner. Who had cool armor, who had cool weapons, or who did the coolest thing? I have a hard time caring about these meandering people. They are inconsistent. They have no flaws that they work on or grow from. They are special because the script insists that it's so, and I don't really care if they succeed or fail at any point in the film. It's a shame because we have a good set up, and good lore. If at any point any body acted like a real person I think Stargate would be better remembered as a film than as the weird older sibling of a long running television series.
Summary
I'd like to say that Stargate succeeds at everything it's trying to do, but it doesn't. Stargate fails in the tragedy and pathos it attempts to create within it's characters; but it does succeed in almost every other way. Stargate is an engaging and exciting action movie. Stargate delivers on it's science fiction concept, and provides some fun fantasy lore to round out it's world building. Stargate is also a great looking (at most times) special effects spectacle. For all of those reasons, It is not a great film, but it is pretty darn good film.
apologies for my mediocre photography but i saw this gal earlier today, thoughts? personally i do not like their eyes. they are seeing things they shouldn’t.
Well, aside from the fact that this painting appears to be both sentient and afraid, I actually do think it's pretty nicely laid out and composed for a full-airframe mural. Let me elaborate.
A lot of these sorts of designs which collaborate with fictional properties just slap a bunch of characters on the plane (the Sanrio plane), some go conceptual and try to do something you'd call a 'design' (the Star Wars planes, let me know if you'd be interested in seeing those reviewed), and this is sort of a happy medium which I think makes sense when your primary audience is children. You get this big exciting colorful picture where you can easily see your best friends Woody and Buzz and Jessie but it's got a clear design and direction, and even though it largely cuts off halfway through it maintains the light blue color and little cloud details throughout to avoid it looking jarring. They even paint on the registration in white so it doesn't interrupt the mural. A lot of these sorts of planes are utterly hideous but this one is fairly coherent.
And I like the little clown nose.
I guess I'm doing little non-numbered impromptu ask reviews as a matter of habit now, so I'm giving this livery a final grade of B. For a logojet I would say this is really solid, even though I'm not jazzed about how easily it blends into the sky. Alaska Airlines does a lot of special liveries of wildly varying qualities, and this isn't really a stunner but it's definitely on the better-designed side.
Thanks so much for sending this in!
Please...please stop looking at me like that. There's nothing I or anyone else can do to help you.
Greetings my dear followers, and welcome to today's service at the Cult Tent Revival! Today we have on offering a movie who's reputation precedes it. Please brace yourselves for the godmother of torture porn ... Audition.
The Message
When salary man Aoyoma loses his wife he is heart broken. As the years pass his son matures and begins to feel bad for his lonely father. Aoyomas son urges his father to move on and to find love. Spurred by this endorsement Aoyoma shares his lady troubles with close friends, one of whom comes up with a master plan. They will hold a film audition, under the presupposition that there is a major role in an upcoming move to play a wife, many eligible women will come forward and Aoyoma will have his pick of the candidates. When the time comes they will announce that the film lost it's financial backers and Aoyoma will be left with a long list of bachelorettes.
Against his better judgment a lonely Aoyoma agrees to the charade. Many quirky and interesting young ladies from the area show up for interviews and auditions, but the wistful and brooding Asami is the one who catches Aoyomas eye. Though hesitant to act on his deceit Aoyoma eventually caves and begins to see Asami. It is revealed that she is the survivor of quite a bit of loss and abuse, and a former ballerina. Aoyoma seems not to put a whole lot of thought into this and seduces Asami. The stricken Asami asks Aoyoma to promise her that he will love no one else but her. He agrees not making any caveats for his family or deceased relative.
After the relationship is consummated Asami disappears and thus Aoyoma begins a desperate hunt to find his new girlfriend. However, many of the leads Aoyoma trails down using the information he gathered from the audition lead nowhere and the few that do turn up are quite disturbing. Eventually upon returning home Aoyoma sits down and enjoys a nice glass of bourbon, only to find Asami had beat him home and drugged his glass.
Fact and Fiction blur as we are treated to a smorgasbord of graphic horror. Asami beheading her old dancing instructor, feeding vomit to a tortured soul she has been keeping in an old sack, and of course the brutal and horrific torture of Aoyomi himself. Asami is eventually discovered in the midst of brutalizing Aoyomi by his son and suffers a fall. She breaks her neck but not before she repeats her vows to the mutilated Aoyomi and our film ends.
Let's get to the Benediction
Best Aspect: Dead Meat Cute
if you were to remove some of the brutal imagery from the second half of the film, and were to ignore the downright misogyny of a plan that includes a faux audition to lure women into a relationship you would wind up with the formula for a pretty basic rom com. In fact, without the eery score it could be said that a large part of Audition actually plays like a by the numbers love story. It is this morbid inverstion of these roles that actually serves the horror of this movie far more than it's torture porn and graphic imagery. Many people have shyed away from this movie due to it's reputation for fear that it is nothing more than graphic and shocking violence, but this is far from the case. Audition is a good movie, and it's hero and villain are quite sympathetic.
Worst Aspect: It Was All a Dream
There is much debate online regarding what was "real" in this film. Things begin happening where logic is thrown out of the window. I was personally tempted to fall back on the traditional Japanese ghost story themes of wronged women, of which Asami is one, and accept that something supernatural was going on. This was unfortunately negated by the films own director confirming that everything we are seeing on screen is real, just in a jumbled way due to the protagonist's drug induced state. That still doesn't explain some things and it really feels like Takashi Miikie is channeling his inner David Lynch here. The debate rages on even after Miike's revelation, because if you are trying to give this film a logical timeline we are confronted with many logical errors that a drug trip just can't explain away. The Best you can do is just sit back and accept what you are seeing. Enjoy the ride, but don't try to create a timeline or you will have a bad time.
Best and Worst Character: Predators and Prey
Asami and Aoyomi share the first and last place for best and worst character. Asami is a victim, she is taking power back, and she is clearly an intriquing black widow of sorts. Once she dons her torture gear the film is all in on her. We want to see this poor child take the power back into her hands, but she is also misdirected and though Aoyomi is not innocent she is definitely going to irredeemable levels of mistreatment to make her point. She's very unsympathetic and it really downplays Aoyomis wrong doings to the point that many will disagree with me that he deserved any of this.
Aoyomi is often interpreted as this innocent widower. His loss does make him sympathetic. He was genuinely looking for a connection and not just for sex, though if my interpretation of the "dream sequence" is correct, he did cave and have sex with a few of the auditioners besides Asami. That is however left up to your personal interpretation. He was still in the wrong however for his lies. He and his friend intentionally crafted a scenario that was inteded to trap young women so that he could choose from them. In a non horror movie this may have been a quirky object for a meet cute, but in both Audition and real life, it's fucking creepy and wrong. Asami saw this, and so should the audience. Of course I don't think that Aoyomi was evil, just misquided. He did however place himself in a position to do harm and Asami is an avenging Demon to punish the wicked.
What makes this film work however is this ambiguity. This is not a story of Good vs Evil, it's a story of Good and Evil. They both exist within and without one another and Audition is an important reminder of how easily our experiences and our loss can blind us to the moral implications of our actions.
Best Kill: Piano Wire
Within the dream sequence Asami is shown to approach her old dance instructor while he is playing on the Piano. She produces her weapon of choice, a piano wire, and the dance instructor gladly accepts his fate. We are greeted with flashes of several poignant images as she saws back and forth into the flesh of his neck before fully decapitating him, and his severed head lands with a satisfying and bloody thud onto the ground.
Most WTF Moment: In The Dog House
We are treated to an incredibly visceral scenario at one point in the film where Asami feeds her own vomit to a victim. Earlier on in the movie there is a writhing sack in Asami's home that we are left to ponder the contents of. Of course, we presume it is something living. In the dream sequence in the third act the bag is unbound and a man with several missing extremities slithers out. We can hear Asami of camera retching. She makes her way into focus and she produces a silver dog dish full of ... well, you guessed it. She places it before her pet, and the mutilated man gladly accepts his dinner.
Summary
I have stayed away from Audition for a very long time. I remember hearing rumours, though they may be just that, around the time that The Devil's Rejects was released, that there was only one movie that Rob Zombie was too afraid to watch a second time. That movie was Audition. That was enough of a negative endorsement for me. I am a fan of horror, of dread, of fear, but I think that in the pursuit of those experiences repulsion and gore can be excellent servants. but there are many films that think that disgust and gore are enough to inspire fear and that is just not the case. I was afraid that Audition was one of those movies. It is revolting, it is upsetting, and vile. But it is also terrifying and phantasmagoric. Audition walks the line of torture porn expertly and produces something better than a lazy gross out feature. It has layers, it has pathos, and more importantly it allows us to imagine our monsters more complexly.
Greetings Cult of Cult! I am Reverend Chainsaw and this mornings offering is the sexy creature feature from 1995 and spiritual sibling to the Alien franchise, Species. I am steadfast in my belief that if the 80s were the golden age of horror and action flicks, then the 90s were the golden age of big budget Sci-Fi. I would also recommend anyone who is not already familiar checkout GoodBadFlicks on Youtube, they have a very excellent exploring video about this film.
The Message
Species tells the story of an alien creature called Sil and the team of humans assembled to hunt her down and prevent her from reproducing. This film immediately begins with what sets it apart from most other alien invasion film. In Species the extraterrestrials do not traverse the stars in vehicles, but instead insure the propagation of their kind across the universe through information. They send the ingredients for creating life out into the cosmos, and knowledge hungry life forms with attempt to sate their curiosity by fundamentally cloning the species.
This is more or less what happens when our lead scientist played by Ben Kingsley and his team of scientists create a human-alien hybrid, a little girl named Sil. She is super strong, super intelligent, and is growing up super fast. When the creature is witnessed undergoing some kind of metamorphosis in her sleep the scientists are frightened by the consequences of what they have done and determine that they should liquidate the experiment. Though she may have just been born yesterday Sil is no dummy and understands what is about to happen. She escapes.
With the utmost urgency Ben Kingsley begins to assemble his team of monster hunters. Alfred Molina, he's a scientist but unfortunately he sports no AI tentacles in this film, how cool would that be. We're just gonna call him Doc Oc from here on out. Forest Whittaker is an empath with an almost X-men level ability to feel out the teams prey, I'm gonna call him Turlington. Dr. Baker played by Marg Helgenberger is another more brilliant scientist and makes the best decisions out of the scholarly types in the film. Last but not least Mr. Blonde played by Michael Madsen rounds out the cast, he's no scientist but he is the best at what he does, and what he does is apparently not very nice. Who knew Ben Kingsley had ties to the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.
As the crew is assembled and quickly adjusts to the idea of life beyond the stars, and super science gone awry, little girl Sil is catching the train, learning to speak English, and undergoing a metamorphosis into a murder sex machine. She's basically a praying mantis in a supermodels body. She learns that she is to be feared for what she is, that she has to hide constantly, and that her primary drive for existence is to reproduce. Though through some very grisly games of eeny meeny miney mo the hunters and the audience learn that she only wants the healthiest physical specimens. She is deadly, killing competition for mates, men who are two aggressive when she turns them down after she learns that they have genetic conditions like diabetes.
The team is thwarted and out smarted at several turns, even believing they have killed Sil, when she decides to target her pursuers and through just a little bit of shmoozing gets in bed with Doc Oc. After he mansplains to the alien that she can't be pregnant (she is), she offs him and is discovered by Baker, Turlington, and Blonde. This leads to a showdown in the sewers and below, eventually resulting in the extermination of the alien invader.
The Benediction
Best Effect: Chry-Sil-Is
It seems suitable to begin with the effects in species as this film has on offer both the best and worst things you could say about effects of the time. Jurassic Park had already come out and with the right attention to detail the seamless use of both CGI and practical effects could be utilized to provide an illusion that holds up thirty years later. Species does not do that. Enough care was not given to make sure that the computer graphics were used sparingly and effectively, instead they were used to glaringly show off what could be done, with little concern that it could be done well. That said, there is an amazing effect toward the begging of the movie that combines camera tricks, practical effects and props, and camera tricks. The scene where Sil has built her cocoon on the ceiling of her train car before an older fully matured Sil sloughs out of the oopy goopy mess covered in KY jelly. It's really effective and has a lot of weight. It will be the stand out effect in my mind every time I think of this movie.
Worst Effect: Postpartum Depressing
As mentioned above there was a lot of grand standing in Species with the use of the CGI that really makes the poor quality of the effects stand out. It's almost embarrassing, because with just a little restraint, focused camera work, and a willingness to maybe spend a little more money in the 3rd act I think species would have stood the test of time like other science fiction films from around this time. Instead it's treated like the sleazy cousin to the Alien franchise and it really doesn't deserve that. There are fleeting glimpses of an excellent alien body suit and make up for Sil that are used in the climax of the film, but for some weird fucking reason the film makers felt like that an excellent H.R. Giger designed suit a la Alien would be too boring and that we'd rather see a weightless, shadowless, cartoon puppet sloppily marionette its way around a cave wall in the last act. Its a glaring slap in the face to anyone who invested seriously into the plot of this movie and it looks like a Nintendo 64 graphic, and that's not even the worst effect in the 3rd act. There was a child in the film that the characters were supposed to kill, and it would make sense that it would look human because Sil looked human before her metamorphosis but the studio felt that killing a child would go to far, so this little naked kid (who looks like he's 5 or 6) dips behind a rock and reemerges as a grotesque stupid fucking looking grasshopper thing with the face of a newborn baby with needle teeth. Thank God it's burned with fire minutes after it's shown, because it was a lazy half assed attempt to avoid offending soccer moms and it looks like it. This whole movie falls apart after Sil gives birth and its a damn shame.
Best Aspect: Sil Team 6
The only thing that holds the final pieces of species together is the cast. Species is like the character actor avengers, and even when the effects and decisions by the studio get stupid, these invested and talented actors sell the fuck out of it. It actually does manage to sell the last act and save the movie. Without this team of characters it would have absolutely been unwatchable after Sil kills Doc Oc. I just love this crew, they all feel like real people and the chemistry between them is palpable. I don't even care if it's another species movie, but this team needs to get back together.
Best Character: Killer Queen
It seems odd to say that in a film with all these talented actors in it that the best character would be an alien who for the first half barely has any lines, and for the second half barely has any lines and is a horribly depicted CGI disaster, but hear me out. I'm not giving her the best actress award (though she should be credited for holding her own in this group), but Sil is what makes this movie so much more than what people expect. The marketing for species actually kept me far from this movie. I was put off by this film thinking it was going to be like oh it's an alien, and it's horny, and it's got T!++ies, but then the ti++es kill you (and they do). Yes, the themes of the film are mature and sexual in nature. Yes, Sil does have an animalistic drive to reproduce and It's not repressed, but it's not as exploitative as the trailers and tag lines related to this film would want one to believe. Sil is driven, dangerous, and a survivor. She is constantly outsmarting the team pursuing her. I'm into Sil as a monster. She deserves better marketing, and she deserves to have been portrayed by that awesome practical effect Giger put together. Sil we didn't do right by you.
Best Kill: No Means No
Speaking of not doing right by Sil. The best and most deserved kill in Species is the death of Robbie. Robbie is a night club douche bag who Sil determines would be an easy catch. She begins to seduce him and then with her alien senses determines that he has a genetic condition that would not produce the strongest off spring so she changes her mind. This does not sit well with the scumbag who then begins to simultaneously slut shame her and push his weird body up against her. Sil handles this the way I wish every woman could, and she uses her freaky cool alien tongue to punch through the back of his stupid skull.
Worst Character: Nice Guy Wilford Brimley
Rapey Robbie. Fuck him.
Worst Aspect: Art is Dead
If you follow my lead and check out GoodBadFlicks Exploring Species you will learn that behind this whole film was a very contentious relationship between the studio and H.R. Giger. I am not the worlds biggest Giger fan, and have found that the number of weird nerds who ape his work has made the aesthetic overall tiresome. BUT, when you hire and artist and blow smoke up their ass and tell them you want them to take the artistic lead on your project you have to honor that shit, and had the studio respected Giger at all we would have had an S tier movie on our hands. Everything I find wrong with Species roles back to the inauthenticity of the studio to the vision of both the writers and to Giger.
They clearly just wanted his name and did not want his input. While I believe that films often benefit from some restrictions, and that Giger did have some wild ideas that would not have fit well in the story, they clearly wanted to use his connection to the Alien franchise to lure fans of those films in to see Species. Giger didn't deserve that, and Species didn't deserve that. He put a lot of free work into this movie and the studio just didn't care. He created the above mentioned awesome looking Sil suit and the studio cared more about showing off their new cool CGI than creating something that looked good or cool.
Honorable Mention Effect: Long Black Train
One of the aspects that Giger put a lot of time into, and was seemingly very fixated one was a Ghost Train. It's not my thing, and I'm happy they at least honored him somewhat by shoehorning it into a nightmare sequence. But google this Ghost Train. It deserves to be mentioned here somewhere.
Best Scene: Business Time
In a movie with so much sexual energy and mature themes, a movie that is primarily about an alien getting busy, with quite a bit of nudity, it's weird that the most charismatic and charming scene is a sex scene that features no aliens, no nudity, and no actual sex. After they believe they have saved the day Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger feel the pressure of their working relationship somewhat alleviated and are now free to act on the mutual attraction the actors had been selling for the first 2 acts of the movie. The filmmakers made the wise decision to let these freaking pros navigate this scene however they wanted and they went full on goofy with it. It's incredibly realistic in that they seem to really enjoy each other and it's not this serious overproduced Hollywood sex scene. It feels honest, like what really happens when real people have a connection. It's just damn endearing.
Worst Scene: Anti-Climax
The worst scene of the movie is the third act. I have gone over this quite a bit here already so I'll try not to rehash too much. It doesn't ruin the movie thanks to the talented cast, but I would love to have seen the final product if this movie had not had so much studio interference.
Summary
Species came out as MGM's response to competitors big Science Fiction adventures that had blown away box offices in the last few years. Hot off the heels of Jurassic Park and StarGate, MGM was looking for it's high budget adventure and greenlit this sexy alien invasion story. Unfortunately because it was greed that prompted the studio and not genuine interest in the product there are a few points where that shows. The advertising and marketing relied on an artist who they manipulated, and sold a sleazy scary sex romp that this movie is just too smart for. I'm thankful that what was contained within this film and what the studio sold the world are not the same. However, that's a huge misstep on the studios part. Species is as clever, ambitious, and mature as it's creature. It has a shining spot for some of the most overlooked and underappreciated talents in it's industry at the time. If you have ever been turned off by what seemed like a raunchy twist on Alien, please check out species with an open mind. It's really good.
