Deadly Species

Deadly Species (2002) This movie shows the value of staying in school and getting a graduate degree while at college. While similar to the dead teenager category of flick, this is more like a dead undergraduate movie. That is, all the undergraduates in the flick die horrible deaths but those with graduate degrees seem to have a slightly better chance of starring in the sequel. The movie also has the required number of naked and semi-naked coeds to pique the interest of those of us with poor taste and low expectations. Without giving too much away, let me just say that the first coed to take a bath and become totally naked also dies first.
The plot goes something like this: PHD professor and graduate degreed wife get turned down for a grant to finance an expedition into the Florida Everglades to search for evidence of a lost tribe not seen since the Spanish explorers. Funding mysteriously comes from a shady financial supporter who must come along if they want the money. Off they go into the swamps with a boatload of student victims and as sure as eggs fry on asphalt in Florida, they run into problems and body parts. Their benefactor is hiding something important from the professors and he is looking for something far more valuable than a possibly extinct tribe. The plot appears somewhat lifted from the movie Congo.

I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but it was better than expected. There is some logic to the plot, and they do tie down a lot of the plotlines at the end even if it is a stretch. If you like your monsters to look like guys in funny rubber suits, this movie is for you. The best line went to the professor’s wife warning him about going out in the swamp alone by saying, “Be careful”. Additional sparkling dialogue of similar quality can be heard throughout the flick. It could have been worse, and if the horror rack is low when you visit the video store, this could be for you. The movie is rated R for: multiple gratuitous orb exhibitions, nekkid coed, leftover foot, blood splatter, poor tent construction, under armed guards, goofy looking rubber monsters, and for the lack of sweat from any of a cast supposedly in the tropics.