Eve of Destruction (1991)

The Dutch actress Renée Soutendijk (who made her name ten years earlier as 'The Girl with the Red Hair') is magnificent in her only American film as Dr. Eve Simmons and her robot double Eve VIII in this fascinating cross between 'The Colossus of New York' and 'Marnie'. It sounded like fun when it briefly hit cinemas 25 years ago; and after waiting a quarter of a century for it to turn up on TV or on the DVD rack, YouTube once again has finally come to the rescue...An exercise in which robot Eve is allowed out in San Francisco dressed (like Dr.Simmons herself) like Hillary Clinton inevitably goes wrong; and after being accidentally reprogrammed in Battlefield Mode she's transformed into a seriously hot Ms Hyde who rather than heading for an army surplus store and purchasing a set of combat fatigues instead opts for the hooker look: spending the rest of the film in blood red lipstick, a black mini skirt, high heels and red leather bomber jacket that she accessorizes with a red Mustang (which she later swaps for a red jeep). Thus equipped, she starts making life hard for sleazeballs on the pull, a yuppie roadhog and her abusive father (played in a brief cameo by an unbilled Kevin McCarthy). Then her maternal instinct kicks in...Obviously the people who designed Eve VIII never go to the movies, otherwise they would never have been careless enough to make their latest secret weapon a foxy blonde who can already kill a man with her bare hands even when not carrying an Uzi. She also happens to be a tactical nuclear weapon with a 24 hour trigger (I'm sure we've all met women like that; and the mind boggles at what the Taliban would have made of her had she ever been deployed against them). But scariest of all she's also carrying a lot of emotional baggage inherited from Dr. Simmons, whose memories and fantasies have been programmed into her; and reacts to the word 'bitch' the way Marnie Edgar used to react to thunderstorms and the colour red. The film's writers plainly felt this made the movie 'deeper'; but personally I would have been happier with her just sticking to being an unstoppable killing machine...

Low budget 90s cheese. Renée Soutendijk isn't awful, Gregory Hines is wasted, everything around them kinda stinks: Awesomely generic 80s soundtrack. The editing will make you scratch your head. Scenes go on forever, highlighting the terrible script. Get ready for expositional dialogue about "little Timmy" and a hilarious spousal abuse flashback.Only once you realize the film isn't meant to be taken seriously will it open up its charm to you. Eve has an Uzi with unlimited ammo, for blowing up cars and killing the also Uzi-wielding Marines. She also has "VHS- vision" and lots of goofy flashbacks. It wants to be serious, but mostly you'll be laughing at/be bored by this film. Then again, if you and some friends watch this with your brain off - you'll probably enjoy it. The final 15 minutes especially are a blast of bad-movie goodness. I guess future guns have huge laser sights.

The premise of this film is how robots, complete with comprehensive copies of human minds and with immense strength, power and armament, may deal with the darker parts of their copied brain. Renée Soutendijk gets to play both the human creator, Dr Eve, and her robot copy named Eve VIII, and pretty juicy parts they are to play too, poles apart, and every good actors dream role. And a pretty good job she does too, never too overplayed, never too crude, just subtle.When Eve VIII escapes and appears to go on to blood letting of extreme proportions we are treated to some insight into the darker parts of Dr Eve's mind, at first to titillate and then to hunt the errant robot down. And it is not badly done either. Okay some of the dialogue may be a little comical or flawed at times, but the underlying tale is always watchable and that is what films are supposed to be. Tension is ratcheted up nicely throughout, and the ending is almost as good as one would expect from this kind of B movie genre. It certainly puts to shame many much more hyped up pieces of the sci-fi genre around on the circuits these days.Worth a watch and six out of ten.

Thank you, Crow T. Robot for the basis for that tag line.I went to see this movie on impulse during its (very) short run in the theaters, not hoping for much more than a hidden gem or a quirky little film. It had Gregory Hines in it (who was great in "Running Scared" a few years earlier) and it had a fairly attractive blond playing a Terminator type, so how bad could it be? Well, I found out. When I came out of the theater, I was angry and annoyed; I didn't want my money back, I wanted the two hours of my life I wasted watching it back.When I saw it was showing again on cable many years later, I sat down to watch the final 20 minutes to see if I still hated it as much. I seemed to have mellowed towards EOD somehow in the intervening decade. On the small screen, it was OK, at least for the last 20 minutes. Not "Star Trek: TNG" OK, or even "Blake's 7" OK, but watchable; say, on a par with one of the products of the endless sausage factory of hackwork films you see on the Sci-Fi Channel, or "Roger Corman Presents" on Showtime Beyond.I feel badly for the Dutch actress whose career in the States was torpedoed by this mess. She is out of her element here, as is poor Gregory Hines, who I imagine grabbed his paycheck and ran, and hoped no one ever mentioned this movie again. And probably the original screenwriter, who hoped to advance his career with a decent premise, only to see all the life sucked out of his screenplay, went back home for a three week drinking binge .The problem with this movie, as I see it, is that the director really didn't know what he was doing, and didn't know how to get the performances he needed from his cast. And he didn't seem to understand the requirements of an action movie with futuristic elements. There were many potentially nice moments and lines of dialog which should have bubbled and popped like good champagne. Instead, they just sat there on the screen like stale tonic water - kind of like "Attack Of The Clones", come to think of it. The action and fight scenes were also underwhelming, badly paced and staged, and didn't live up to their potential - what should have been visceral and invigorating just thudded along without ever drawing in the viewer.Blond Netherlands Actress Lady, I hope you found happiness and fulfillment in some other manner, maybe on the stage or in European cinema. Gregory Hines, rest in peace; we won't think of this movie when we remember you, but instead will remember you as a great hoofer who got to play alongside Baryshnikov and Billy Crystal.