L'ange de la destruction

A peculiar story of a woman scientist trying to track down (with the help of a tough army colonel) a female robot with nuclear powers, who not only looks like her but also shares her thoughts and memories. The gimmick is that the robot has no inhibitions, and acts out the woman's darkest sexual and violent fantasies, until "it" gets completely out of control. The story provides plenty of opportunities for male-bashing (it seems that almost every man that the robot meets is a chauvinistic pig), and the film doesn't miss any of them. But if you're patient, you'll be rewarded; the climactic sequence in the New York subway is excitingly staged and delivers the goods. And Renee Soutendijk is utterly convincing in both her roles. (**1/2)

Of all the thousands of movies I've seen that have employed guns and tanks and exploding things, this is the first that made me want to turn the gun on myself. As each scene wore on and on, I kept gesturing in the air to 'hurry it up'. It was as if dead people were on the screen. The characters spoke so slow, I began to doubt that any of them ever spoke before! A world of frustration. There was only a little tension, a fair plot and a whole lot of inconceivabilities. Supposedly, the robot was infused with the memories and life experiences of her/its creator. So, it was expected to act and respond according to this 'information'. Yeah, right. Yawn. Gregory Hines was right for the role and his performance was very good, as expected. Everybody else were rank amateurs, as evidenced by their uninteresting, wooden deadpan styles. Avoid this movie unless you want to eat your own lead salad.

Awesomely underwhelming tale of a scientist who designs a female robot, half WESTWORLD half TERMINATOR, modelled on her own personality, emotions and thought-processes.

Sometime Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk, whom one might unkindly describe as Lee Remick's less attractive sister (on a good day) has her hands full when EVE turns feral and runs amok. Gregory Hines, hopelessly miscast in his role as a Wesley Snipes PASSENGER 57 type operative, heads up the chase to defuse Eve with Ms Soutendijk's somewhat reluctant help.

Looking rather dated these days, especially by 90's standards, the film gets nowehere at a remarkably slow pace leading up to the subway climax which at least heralds the end of the movie!

Yawn.....next please?

My review was written in January 1991 after a Times Square screening.

Intense thesping by Renee Soutendijk in dual roles as "Eve of Destruction" almost lifts this tasteless horror fantasy above the norm. Inconsistent scripting and direction reduce the Orion release to a genre fan special with limited chances at finding a crossover audience.

That's a shame, because there are germs of interesting ideas in the screenplay by helmer Duncan Gibbins and Yale Udoff, latter the scripter of Nicolas Roeg's intriguing "Bad Timing".

Pic's basis is that most durable of sci-fi properties, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", which ranks second only to Bram Stoker's "Dracula" for inspiring motion pictures. "Eve" is the third recent pic to hark back to James Whale's classic "Bride of Frankenstein" after last year's satire "Frankenhooker" as well as mad scientist Bruce Davison creating a female cyborg in "Steel & Lace".

Italian bombshell Rosalba Neri played "Lady Frankenstein" in 1971 and created male monsters, but "Eve" goes one logical step further in having Dutch actress Soutendijk as scientist Eve Simmons creating a robot in her own image.

Effective opening scenes show the robot , Eve III, on a test run in San Francisco being damaged by gunfire during a bank holdup. The man monitoring Eve is killed and the beautiful monster becomes a loose cannon.

Gung ho Jim McQuade (Gregory Hines), no relation to Orion's "Lone Wolf McQuade" of eight years ago, is called in from his anti-terrorist activities to find Eve and immobilize her with a shot through the eye. What he isn't told is that Eve was created as a robot/bomb with nuclear capability.

Since Eve is endowed with her creator's memories as well as good looks, the trail to track her down retraces Dr. Eve's childhood traumas and current relationship;s. Film's psuedo-feminist theme is bungled badly: the monster starts living out Simmons' unrealized sexual fantasies only to kill or maim the endless stream of male chauvinist pigs it teses.

Further, the doctor's unresolved problems with her estranged dad (Kevin McCarthy, in a brief uncredited role), who beat her mother and caused her death, leads to a contrived scene of robot revenge.

Aiming at the low-end audience, film's nadir is a tasteless scene of sexy Eve picking up a guy in a bar and then biting off his most prized possession in a hot sheets motel room. The audience is spared the visualization of this "Porky's" level horror motif, but the damage to the film's tone is irreversible.

Running motif of Eve going into her killer molde whenever some guy calls her "bitch!" is the worst sort of pandering to one's assumed target viewer.

Atmospheric climax of Hines chasing Eve (clutching Simmons' son she takes to be her own) through the Manhattan subway tunnels is clumsily directed by Gibbins with several anti-climaxes and a fake James Bond-style countdown as the activated robot is seconds away from a nuclear explosion (film coincidentally is lensed by Bond cinematographer Alan Hume). Much is made of the boy' safety during this sequence, but pic foolishly ignores him completely once the danger is over.

Soutendijk, a versatile thesp who has followed her Dutch triumphs like "Spetters" with several U. S. telefilms and two American features released by Shapiro Glickenhaus, brings utter conviction to both roles to carry the picture.

Hines, no stranger to action roles in "Wolfen" and "Off Limits". Still seems out of place espousing Oliver North-style rhetoric in playing a shoot first, ask questions later hero. Supporting cast is weak in what plays like a 2-1/2 hander.. Makeup effects are satisfying, notably Soutendijk's more than nude scenes as she peels away body tissue to make self-repairs on her robot body. French ace Philippe Sarde contributes an effecitve musical score.

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.