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EVE OF DESTRUCTION
Rating: 
USA. 1991.
Director – Duncan Gibbins, Screenplay – Duncan Gibbins & Yale Udoff, Producer – David Madden, Photography – Alan Hume, Music – Philippe Sarde, Visual Effects Supervisor – Dale Fay, Graphic Effects – Light and Motion (Supervisor – Robert Ryan), Special Effects Supervisor – Steve Galich, Makeup Effects – Art & Magic (Supervisor – R. Christopher Biggs), Production Design – Peter Lamont. Production Company – Nelson Entertainment/Interscope Communications.
Cast:
Gregory Hines (Colonel Jim McQuade), Renee Soutendijk (Dr Eve Simmons/Eve VIII), Michael Greene (General Curtis), Kurt Fuller (Bill Schneider), John M. Jackson (Peter Arnold), Ross Malinger (Timmy Arnold), Kevin McCarthy (Bill Simmons)
Plot: Dr Eve Simmons takes Eve VIII, a female military surveillance android she has designed in her own likeness, on test maneuvers in the downtown area. But Eve VIII is damaged while trying to foil a bank robbery and goes amok, trapped in Battlefield Mode. Anti-terrorist specialist Jim McQuade is brought in to try and stop Eve VIII as it goes on a spree, trying to eliminate the hurts from its creator’s past. But efforts to stop it are hampered by its built-in nuclear weapon that can be detonated at the slightest threat.
Eve of Destruction is probably the dullest and certainly the most brainless of all the copies of The Terminator (1984). Duncan Gibbins’ action slams and bangs with as much routine excitement as the film’s medium budget can muster. But the things one is asked to find credible programing and design for a robot are impossible to believe – one can perhaps ignore the ridiculousness of taking a military defence robot into a downtown bank on test maneuvers, but to build a robot with thermonuclear capacity that can be set off by a good bump and with no off-switch or override commands defies so much commonsense as to verge on the laughable. And the scenes with the android coming on to guys and biting their dicks off, or ramming drivers on the highway are just ludicrous. Eve of Destruction is a super-dumb film.
Dutch actress Renee Soutendijk is okay in her American debut, although a clearly miscast Gregory Hines, who spends most of his time yelling at her, comes across amazingly dopily.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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