Species III (Video 2004)

Sara (Sunny Mabrey), the daughter of Eve (Natasha Henstridge) begins her mission to mate with humans, while a specialist military team hunt her down to kill her before its too late.

Director:

Brad Turner

Writers:

Dennis Feldman (characters), Ben Ripley

Stars:

Robin Dunne, Robert Knepper, Sunny Mabrey

1 win & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Robin Dunne	...	Dean
Robert Knepper	...	Dr. Abbot
Sunny Mabrey	...	Sara
Amelia Cooke	...	Amelia
John Paul Pitoc	...	Hastings (as J.P. Pitoc)
Michael Warren	...	Agent Wasach
Christopher Neame	...	Dr. Nicholas Turner
Patricia Bethune	...	Colleen
Joel Stoffer	...	Portus
James Leo Ryan	...	Yosef
Savanna Fields	...	Young Sara
Natasha Henstridge	...	Eve
Reed Frerichs	...	ISD Staffer
Marc D. Wilson	...	Crew Chief
Matthew Yang King	...	Specialist Robert Kelley

Storyline

While being transported in a military ambulance and supposed dead, Eve delivers an offspring and is killed by a half-breed. The baby girl is abducted by Dr. Abbot, and a couple of days later she grows up, reaching adulthood and becoming a gorgeous young woman called Sara. Dr. Abbot expects to develop a perfect DNA using Sara's eggs and win the Nobel Prize, and invites the student Dean to be his assistant and share his research and future awards. But while Sara unsuccessfully chases a perfect mate for her to generate a perfect being, the flawed half-breeds led by Amelia try to reproduce with her to survive their species.

---

Plot Keywords:

military | student | species | research | direct to video sequel to theatrical movie | 

---

Taglines:

Beauty is only skin deep.

---

Genres:

Sci-Fi | Horror | Thriller

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence/gore, sexual content and some language

Details

Official Sites:

MGM The Official site for the Species 3 DVD

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 November 2004 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Experiência III

Filming Locations:

166 N Magnolia Ave, Monrovia, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

FGM Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

111 min 112 min (unrated)

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

A scene which was changed due to budgetary reasons had Sara scratch a campus student's cheek with her alien finger, which looked like a spike. Instead, this was changed to Sara throwing the man over her into a hedge in the final film.

---

Goofs

Despite never having any human contact, adult Sara clearly has pierced ears.

---

Quotes

Football Player: [after kissing Sara] How about a little tongue with that?
Sara: [grabs his face, then lets him go] You don't want the tongue.

---

Connections

Featured in 'Species III': Set Invasion (2004)

---

Soundtracks

"Seldom in Central Time"
Written by Jerry Brunskill
Performed by Jerry Brunskill

User Reviews

Great FX, bad acting

The special effects for Species III were excellent. Sure, like anything, if they had spent more money it could have been even better. However, for a Grade B Science Fiction movie, it had lots of cool effects, especially the gross birth scene. Some of the other effects, such as the goo inside the guts of the Aliens was on the level of the X-Files. However, there was a steady pace of gore or gross effects, so on that level, Species III was excellent. It was as gross as any good Science Fiction Horror-Monster movie should be.

However, the cast of Species III is the major downfall. Robin Dunne is not credible as a wonder-boy scientist who is building a Fusion Reactor as his school project and is also an expert on DNA splicing. How many people on earth are experts in both fields? None of them are still college students. Where did Dunne learn how to splice DNA and build Fusion Reactors if he is still a college student? Correspondence School? Aside from Dunne not acting, talking, or thinking like a brilliant scientist, he also looks like somebody you would expect to be working at McDonald's. Dunne looks dumb.

Sunny Mabry plays the lead Alien, and she is a far cry from Natasha Hentsridge. Mabry plays her role as a cold, arrogant, calculating creature who kills those who get on her nerves. What made Natasha Hentsridge so good in her role was that she conveyed all of the warm human qualities and she was very attractive and seductive. Even though Hentsridge was a monster, she also had a beautiful feminine side. Mabry does not have that at all. She just glares at everyone, and even the girl who plays her role as a child is played as a very rude and mean little girl. I am not sure why the screenwriter thought that making the Mabry/Alien character unfriendly and unappealing would be good.

Dunne room-mate at the College Dorm is played by John Pitac, who looks like a Pizza Delivery Boy. Why an incredible genius like Dunne would have a room-mate and best friend like Pitac also strained the credibility. Pitac seems like a real goofball at first, and then when the hybrid alien woman kidnaps him, he is suddenly at the Lab and he is splicing the DNA just as well as Dunne could. So apparently the College has two students who learned how to splice DNA while they were in High School??

Perhaps the best actor in this movie is John Knepper, who plays the role of Professor Almond, the guy who kidnapped the alien baby from the Military. When the movie starts, Almond (Knepper) is just a soldier. By the time the little alien girl is about ten years old, he is now a Professor at a University. Yet the aliens supposedly grow from baby to adult in just a few days, not even a year. How Almond became a scientist and a professor at a college so quickly is another gap in the story.

Perhaps the best creatures in this movie are the hybrid Aliens. Because of their defective DNA, they have some interesting problems, and the special effects used for the hybrids was pretty good.

Some other writer mentioned pacing. This story would not have seemed so bad if the pacing had been a lot quicker. Due to the plot holes and the lack of good actors, Species III should have concentrated its energy on the strong points, which were the gore and the special effects. Less clunky dialogue would have been good.

A few thoughtful edits could have made this movie a lot better. A good example of the dumb dialogue and directing occurs when when Dunne and Michael Warren (he plays the CIA Agent) rescue Pitac from the two Alien women who want him to create a new Alien from the Ova. The two Alien women are angry and tearing the lab apart and chasing after Pitac who took the canister with the Alien Ova inside. Pitac runs outside of the lab and gets to Warren's car which is parked right by the door to the lab. Pitac then stands by the door to the car and starts talking to Dunne (also standing outside the car) about how dangerous surfing the internet can be. Then the two guys leisurely get into the car, and I was thinking, what happened to the Alien women? They were right behind Pitac! Scenes that did not make sense like that one undermined the suspense of the movie. The director never maintained the pace, and he allowed bad attempts at comedy to ruin the sense of dread that should have been building up as the Aliens were all converging at the College seeking Dunne and the answers to their DNA problems.

Another big scientific mistake is that at one point Dunne allows his Fusion Reactor to blow up, and then Pitac tells Warren "Oh, it is alright now, the system is re-setting itself" as if a Fusion Reactor was like a computer which re-booted after the drive crashed. In theory a Fusion Reaction should keep sucking in more particles if it is out of control (like this one), and eventually it becomes a black hole or else explodes outward like a Nuclear Bomb. It certainly does not just blow up inside a Lab and then re-sets itself!

Overall Species III was not bad. It had excellent special effects but it was hurt by bad directing of below-average actors. If Natasha Hentsridge had played the Alien, and a good actor like Patrick Stewart had played the role of the brilliant scientist, Species III would have been very credible and much better than it was.