Gregory Hines is tapped to hunt down a fembot fatale (Renée Soutendijk) in this oh-so-nineties ticking time-bombshell thriller with a terminatwist.
See, when EVE VIII is damaged during a bank robbery on her field test, she stops following her mission parameters and starts acting out the repressed memories she was programmed with from her creator’s own psychology. Dr. Simmons had an abusive alcoholic father who eventually pushed her mother into traffic, and that ends up being the core operating system running loose inside a nuclear-armed body. Every man EVE encounters who triggers that memory gets handled accordingly.
Renée Soutendijk, a Dutch actress in her first American film, plays both the scientist and the fleshy wom-android, and director Duncan Gibbins cast deliberately against type, which is why Hines is here as a hard-nosed military expert. There’s also an emotional undercurrent that you don’t often see in these cyber-movies, and there’s enough breathing room for the audience to take in some of the more poignant beats. The film cost 13 million and only made 5.4 million at the box office, though I expect the VHS crowd was more forgiving if they spotted it on the shelf next to American Cyborg, TC 2000 or Cyber Tracker. I’ve always been down with these borg on a rampage types.
Sadly Gibbins died in the 1993 Southern California wildfires at 41, and Eve of Destruction was his only science fiction film.
Given the glut of kiIIer borgs that littered video stores during the decade, this one fell through the cracks of the bottom shelves and never achieved critical mass among genre fans. But for lovers of capital-B hit-and-missy maladroid cinema, it’s rather fun waste of time. You can file it on the shelf somewhere between Species and Soldier. -Pop