Feb
1
“Eve of Destruction,” a forgotten 1991 cheapie released by the long-dead Orion Pictures, is one of the myriad “Terminator” ripoffs that emerged in the late-1980s and early-1990s. Low-budget genre filmmakers followed James Cameron’s lead in knocking out movies about cyborgs that pass as human, both saving tons of money on SFX and capitalizing on the limited acting range of their stars. See Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “Cyborg” or “Universal Soldier” for further examples of this phenomenon.
“Eve of Destruction” is about a female Terminator, the Eve VIII (Renee Soutendjk), a blonde automaton who’s damaged during a foiled bank robbery, making this film perhaps the only movie I’ve ever seen in which a robot runs errands. Eve VIII goes haywire, dons a leather jacket and goes on a killing spree. She’s been programmed with the memories of her maker, Dr Eve Simmons (Renee Soutendjk again), so she acts out Simmons’ kinky fantasies and hostilities with equal aplomb.
Terrorism expert Col. Jim McQuade (Gregory Hines) is brought in to take down Eve VIII. He’s given one of those pistols with a gigantic laser sight mounted on top, so you know he means business. Or, he can’t aim for shit.
“Eve of Destruction” wastes a lot of its potential with a draggy middle section. I like movies about meta-human femme fatales tear-assing through a major city; “Species” is a solid superbitch movie. “Eve of Destruction,” however, doesn’t do enough with its concept and requires a crazy amount of suspension of disbelief in its final third. Eve VIII, who’s got a nuclear device built into her spine (naturally) hops a cross-country flight from Nor Cal to New York to pay a visit to her doppleganger’s ex-husband and their son. Okay, so it’s a full decade before 9/11, but still. How does this cyber-chick get through the airport scanners with a nuclear bomb built into her central nervous system?!
I have to call bullshit on the illogical internal logic of the film. When the highly-decorated military types who populate these kinds of movies are telling Col. McQuade how to kill Eve VIII, they say that her vulnerable spots are comparable to those of human being. Then five seconds later, they say something that directly contradicts that by adding that her heart is simply there for cosmetic purposes or something equally goofy. Why would an artificial person have a heart that’s just for display purposes only? Why would anyone?
I wanted to like “Eve of Destruction” more than I did. There’s a dearth of excellent films about bionic women. Then again, I have yet to see “Lady Terminator.”
-Brad Lohan
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