NB: this article contains some saucy language and imagery that may be considered not safe for work.

Director Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin took a B-movie concept – that of the female alien seductress – and turned it into an arthouse masterpiece starring Scarlett Johansson. 1995’s Species, on the other hand, positively revels in its trashiness, with a mutating lady monster (played by Natasha Henstridge) scurrying around Los Angeles and attempting to copulate with its populace.

At the time of release, your humble writer went to a local cinema to watch Species with a group of friends, purely on the basis that it featured some creature designs by Swiss artist HR Giger – most commonly noted for his work on the classic Alien. Surely, we all thought, Giger would add a touch of class to the movie. Yes, Species‘ premise was pure B-grade stuff, but wasn’t the same true of Alien?

When we stumbled out of that mid-90s fleapit some 108 minutes later, we were all chattering bemusedly at the madness we’d just seen. It’s fair to say that Species isn’t quite in the same league as Alien – even if it does share certain traits in common – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few remarkable things to note about it. Things like these…