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Eve of Destruction
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The release of Eve
of Destruction direct to video in the early 1990s proved that, in someone’s
estimation, the theatrical market was not yet ready for films about female Terminators and Robocops
– more threatening, apparently, to the mainstream audience
than the feisty heroines of Thelma and Louise (1991), particularly when they castrate the men they are about
to fellate. Is that market any more ready for such a spectacle now?
Eve of Destruction has a great High Concept
hook: a scientist, Eve (Renée Soutendijk, Dutch star of several Paul Verhoeven
delights), creates a robot in her own image. “Eve 8” is programmed with its
inventor’s feelings and memories.
When Eve 8 goes haywire after being shot in a bank
robbery, “she” – as an obliging doppelgänger – not only lives out Eve’s deepest
fantasies (like being a hooker for a night in a redneck bar), but also exacts
revenge on the entire male race on her Master’s behalf.
In her finest moment, Eve 8 totals a particularly
obnoxious, harassing male driver on the road, the impact transforming her into
... a nuclear bomb! Poetic justice, indeed.
The film works hard to arrive at a more seemingly palatable
ideological conclusion. The outcome of the
final Aliens-inspired battle between
Good (human) and Bad (android) Eve over the fate of
humanity and (especially) the definition of femininity is predictable. The narrative pretty much sides with the viewpoint of
its bullish male hero, Col. Jim McQuade (Gregory Hines), who equates “horny and
psychopathic” women on the loose with the international terrorist threat
(shades of William Gibson’s short story “New Rose
Hotel”).
But Eve of
Destruction can hardly contain the thrill set loose by its iconic images of
a woman mad as hell, and not taking it anymore. It’s a veritable Ode to Aggro
(as Brits and Aussies call that “rage” so often mobilised in the titles of B
action movies). What Eve 8 does to Eve’s horrible old father (Kevin McCarthy)
is particularly worth seeing.
Former music video director Duncan Gibbins (his clips
for Banarama, ABC, George Michael and The Eurythmics are burned into the brains
of anybody who came of age during the 1980s) tragically died in 1993 at the age
of 41. He co-wrote the script of Eve of
Destruction with Yale Udoff [1935-2018], whose major claim to fame (beyond
writing for Film Comment in the
1960s) is the screenplay of Nicolas Roeg’s modern classic Bad Timing (1980).
MORE Gibbins: A Case for Murder © Adrian Martin November 1991 / January 1993 |
