The ‘Species’ series of films is probably a series whose time has long passed, but with that being said, when I heard that a fourth film, ‘Species: The Awakening’, was being prepped, I was near the front of the line to grab me a copy.  This was despite the fact that I was armed with knowledge that ‘Species III’ is the worst movie ever made in the history of mankind (Overstatement?  definitely).  Okay, so ‘Species III’, bad as it was, wasn’t the worst movie ever made but it sure did suck major ass, giving us little hope that ‘Species IV’ would be much better.  Then I hear that this film is actually premiering on the Sci-Fi network as one of their ‘Sci-Fi Originals’ prompting nightmares of Lorenzo Lamas and ‘Raptor Island’ running through my mind.  Another problem with ‘Species’ airing on the Sci-Fi network is that a major staple of the species series, which is hot naked women, would be totally removed.  Now watching a ‘Species’ movie without hot naked women is almost like watching pornography for the narrative, and while I’m sure that ‘Black Pie for the White Guy’ has a helluva story line I’m willing to bet a sawbuck that not to many folks who have seen that masterpiece, or something similar could recite the verse back to you.  Fortunately though I missed the Sci-Fi version of ‘Species: The Awakening’ and caught the unedited non-TV release that soon followed on DVD and I’m proud to announce that true to the genre there are hot naked women to be found.  And while the movie is certainly cinematically challenged, it is scads better than ‘Species III’.

Helena Mattson is Miranda Hollander who as we meet in the opening sequence is your typical 21 year old, insanely hot, long legged, flaxen blond haired Oxford bound university anthropology professor.   You’d think there was some kind of machine churning out these women because they are sooooo plentiful.  Miranda also has a loving uncle she stays with in Tom (Ben Cross), who is the caretaker at the local museum.  One night Miranda goes out on a date and doesn’t come home which has

her uncle, who is the only family she has around, somewhat concerned.  A jogger finds Miranda nude in a field and emergency technicians rush her to the hospital.  Things go from bad to totally f’d up when Miranda, lying unconscious on the examination table, turns into the Species alien and kills up pretty much everybody in the E.R.  She kills these E.R. attendants so brutally that I think even George Clooney and Anthony Edwards bit the dust.  Well when uncle Tom shows up on the scene he seems to know already what went down and grabs Miranda, who has turned back into a hot blonde, and ferries her to Mexico to find his ex-science partner for a ‘cure’.  Along the way he hits Miranda with the heavy stuff that she is actually something he and his partner made in a lab and that she’s a half alien half human clone – which she handles surprisingly well.

Things don’t go so well for Tom in Mexico as he is immediately attacked by a couple species hybrids, though we aren’t quite told why.  Soon though Tom tracks down his former god-playing geneticists partner Forbes McGuire who has quite the little cottage industry creating species hybrids of folks dead love ones for profit.  And, I might add, also creating hot Species whores with big fake breasts for himself to play with.  Forbes informs Tom that Miranda’s life line has come to an end, but it can be extended with a DNA transfusion from a live host.  Unfortunately Tom goes Abby Normal on us and finds a larcenous (but crazy hot) prostitute and the toxic mixture of the prostitutes DNA with Miranda’s alien DNA turn Miranda into the horny murderous alien we’ve all been waiting for.  Now on the loose behind the border looking for somebody to screw so she become pregnant and destroy the human race, it is up to our pair of incredibly irresponsible geneticists to stop Miranda and save the human race from the horny alien hotties.

‘Species: The Awakening’ was actually kind of a fun movie to be honest with you.  Yes, the story is completely ridiculous and the filmmakers introduced plot points and characters which they obviously had no intention of explaining or revisiting.  But unlike the putrid third film, they kept it moving in part by making it a good thirty minutes shorter than that film, and also kept the fake science mumbo jumbo to a minimum while keeping the evil alien tongue impalings high and the nudity plentiful.  Ably directed by some cat named Nick Lyon, who I’m almost certain watched that third film and made the critical decision to discard anything that didn’t directly lead to naked aliens, somebody getting killed horribly, or slimy alien battles or explosions.  And his film was all the better for it.

Of course ‘Species: The Awakening’ isn’t high art.  And whatever art as film may be, this is actually the opposite of that but as far as hot horny alien movies go, unless you go way back to the original ‘Species’, you can’t get much better than this one.