The Evolution of Sil: A Giger Concept Brought to Life

Last month, actor Michael Madsen passed away after a career spanning more than four decades. For most, Madsen’s image will forever be associated with brutal, baritone killers in crime classics like Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco. But if you can get past Madsen’s grizzled exterior, it’s worth remembering a smaller, more recent credit from 1995’s Species.

The movie has some notable appeal of its own. Arriving on the heels of Alien 3 and a rash of other monster movies like The Puppet Masters and Mortal Kombat, Species was a demented, off-kilter thrill ride that captured a cultural moment in which old-school alien paranoia had suddenly made room for a brand new killer coming out of Hollywood.

Directed by Roger Donaldson (No Way Out, The Bounty), Species takes place in a world on the verge of alien invasion. Two separate radio signals have been beamed to Earth from outer space. The first, as it turns out, is a message detailing a never-before-seen form of fuel, and the second is a more mysterious set of instructions on how to create a half-human, half-alien hybrid. Unsurprisingly, the government opts to do both.

Produced under the aegis of Dr. Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley), a half-human/half-alien child named Sil is born in her crib. In her early years, she was played by Michelle Williams. Sil is believed to be a docile organism that can be controlled at will. The tests quickly show otherwise.

Sil ages at an accelerated rate, maturing into the body of a 12-year-old girl in just a matter of three months. She also exhibits disturbing, almost violent tendencies. After Fitch decides to kill Sil by releasing cyanide into her cell, Sil escapes, and the chase is on.

To capture her, Fitch assembles a task force of crack specialists to hunt Sil down, including molecular biologist Dr. Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger), anthropologist Dr. Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina), and Dan Smithson (Forest Whitaker), a bad-boy empath with the ability to read Sil’s feelings. Of course, the most able-bodied mercenary on the team is Preston Lennox (Michael Madsen), who rolls in guns blazing.

Fitch’s team takes them on a long, cross-country chase, which eventually leads them to Los Angeles. Sil has grown into a full-blown adult and found the city of Angels. Played by Natasha Henstridge in her adult phase, Sil is sophisticated, sexually mature, and determined to find a mate, reproduce, and ensure the survival of her species.

Sil does her best to act like a human, but is also ruled by primal urges. Kill after kill, she begins to pick up patterns in human behavior that would be able to lead to a successful pairing. A train tramp, a nightclub hooker, and even her unwitting boyfriend are not enough, though, and Fitch and his team desperately try to capture her.

A Kill-Sized Monster to Sex and Seduce

Species is, of course, known for its horrifying creature design. Done by legendary surrealist artist H.R. Giger, the late Swiss artist was best known for his work in Ridley Scott’s Alien, for which he designed the unforgettable xenomorph that still sends shivers down our spines to this day.

Giger described Sil as being “an aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly.” And that she was. The creature design for Sil was quite remarkable and unlike anything in popular sci-fi at the time. Giger’s concept of Sil in her final phase featured translucent skin that the actor, Natasha Henstridge, described as being “a glass body but with carbon inside.” When asked about the similarities between the xenomorph and Sil, Giger told SFX Magazine that Sil “has nothing in common” with the alien. “She is an Earth female with the skeleton of a bat, together with skin and muscles from other species.”

Giger had originally envisioned a series of stages in Sil’s evolution. But because of time and budgetary constraints, he had to nix them, only incorporating a giant transformation cocoon into Sil’s biological toolkit.

The final battle would have her emerging in the film’s third act as a ravenous, “killer mama” alien with the sole purpose of laying her eggs and creating more of her species.

In the end, Giger didn’t care for Species at all. It was too derivative of his Alien work. Giger thought Species cribbed too many concepts, including the infamous “punching tongue” gag, from Alien. Most controversial of all, Giger thought the famous “birth of the alien” scene was a direct rip of the chestburster scene at the end of Alien. It was so close to Giger’s mind that he put his foot down and insisted on replacing the flame-thrower deaths with Sil being shot through the head.

Killing her off for the second time

Species was a box-office hit, but it didn’t please the critics or anyone at all. There’s a thin veil to the politics of Species that don’t amount to much. Questions are raised about bioethics, the implications of alien contact, and maternal instinct. But they’re all buried under wooden dialogue, a unlikable villain in Fitch, and a lot of shallow, by-the-numbers horror. Kingsley just phoned it in, while Whitaker’s empath just sort of stands in the shadows, murmuring inanities.

Screenwriter John David Feldman later said the idea for Species germinated after he read an article by Arthur C. Clarke, who had postulated that there might not ever be any aliens coming to Earth because there was simply no way to get here any faster than human travel. What if, Feldman wondered, aliens had managed to beam to Earth using radio signals? What if their intelligence, for whatever reason, had decided to come to Earth not with physical machines, but blueprints to make something more organic?

The result was a film that was somehow part cautionary bioethics tale, part horny alien invasion movie, and part Gigercore fever dream. For all its faults, Species has some endearing elements to it, and its appeal is undeniable. And for all its missteps and egregious flaws, it also served as a launching pad for career-defining performances from Henstridge and Madsen.

The movie is just one of a glut of monster movies in the mid-’90s, but it resonates uniquely because it allowed Michael Madsen to do something in his career that he didn’t do much. He played a human, even if he was very much not the same kind of character he usually played. In a way, Species is a reflection of how alien the role was to his other films. But not so much that Madsen can’t be remembered for it as he lay on his deathbed.