The Curator of Schlock #408 by Jeff Shuster

Eve of Destruction

She is very sensitive. 

The Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando,  rigged up a hammock for me to sleep on. He took the hardwood floor. He didn’t have much furniture, kept extolling the virtues of minimalism before finally nodding off, his snores making me toss and turn before I finally conked out. I dreamed of reopening the Museum of Schlock and getting the key to the city for my cultural contribution to the great city of Orlando. — To be continued.

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Tonight’s movie is 1991’s Eve of Destruction from director Duncan Gibbons. The movie starts out in a fancy hotel room with a yuppie gentleman getting dressed for a night on the town. He doesn’t tip the room attendant. He fumbles with his tie and we learn that his hotel room is not really a hotel room, but a scientific research facility where the United States government is trying to perfect lifelike robots for military purposes.

We’re introduced to Dr. Eve Simmons (Renée Soutendijk), a robot scientist who just happens to have created a robot that looks and talks exactly like her. The robot is named EVE VIII. The scientists send her out for a test run in public, seeing how she’ll mingle with real American human beings. She goes into a bank, but a robbery ensues while she’s in there. EVE VIII’s handler gets blown away. One of the gunmen shoots EVE VIII which ends up being his last mistake as she keeps coming for him. She throws the robber through the bank window killing him instantly. Unfortunately, that bullet that landed inside Eve VIII disrupted her circuits and she’s locked in “battlefield mode.”

Who are you going to call to put this manic mechanical monstrosity down? Why Colonel Jim McQuade as portrayed by Gregory Hines. Sadly, the killer robot will not be taken down by McQuade facing her off in a tap dancing competition. Instead, McQuade and the rest of the brass have to wait around until EVE VIII causes some mayhem. Said mayhem comes in the form a hillbilly EVE VIII meets in a seedy bar. The guy looks like Chuck Niorris’s brother. EVE VII invites him back to her hotel room, but the guy’s idea of foreplay involves him repeatedly calling her a “bitch.” Eve VIII is very sensitive and doesn’t like being called “a bitch” so she appears to disembowel him with her teeth.

She beats up more hillbillies. The cops show up and she lights them up with the machine gun she took from the bank robbers. Dr. Simmons reveals to Col. McQuade that one of her sexual fantasies was to moonlight as a prostitute at a seedy bar. That must be where EVE VIII got the inspiration from. Col. McQuade then demands that she tell him all of her sexual fantasies so he can better catch EVE VIII.

Meanwhile, EVE VIII is getting tailgated by a yuppie who’s late for an important meeting. He finally pulls past EVE VIII calling her a stupid bitch as he drives by. Then he flips her the bird. I guess this triggers another homicidal tendency in EVE VIII as she then rams her car into his causing his air bag to go off. She then runs him off the road, but our yuppie friend manages to pull himself together and get back on the road. Too bad EVE VIII is waiting for him. She drives headlong into his car again, killing the yuppie.

The impact of the crash arms a mini nuclear bomb inside EVE VIII. She’s now a walking nuclear bomb. Dr. Simmons and Col. McQuade have less than 24 hours to find EVE VIII or she’ll explode.

Maybe this killer robot thing wasn’t such a good idea.

Y’all have a good weekend. Until next time.

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Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, and episode 549) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.