EVE

EVE

(Spoiler Alert!)

When I was an English Major in college thirty years ago, my favorite professor imparted a valuable bit of wisdom to the class that I still use today.  What he told us was that every author is influenced by other thinkers and writers, but he wasn’t accusing them of plagiarism.  He simply meant that writers often share common concerns that transcend time and place.  After I graduated, I carried this theory with me, expanding it to include other forms of art like music, sculpture, painting, and, yes, media.  This is the underlying theme of my next few posts where I look at works from different decades that examine the same issue, cloning.  Since, at least, the Nineteenth Century, writers have been fascinated with the potentials of science and concerned about what could happen if the knowledge fell into the wrong hands.  Novels like Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1823), The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1870), and the mad Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1886) served as warnings about the dangers scientific discovery posed if allowed to run amuck.   It is my belief that today the film industry has joined in this conversation.

During the 1990s something amazing happened to me.  I became a big fan of a TV show entitled The X-Files.  You might have heard of it; it was kind of popular.   People still watch the reruns, but you had to be around when the show was airing to understand what a powerful influence it had on our culture.  Phrases like ‘I Want to Believe’ and ‘The Truth is Out There’ became a part of the general vernacular.  I even have an old T-shirt with my favorite X-Files axiom, ‘Trust No One’ written on the back.  References to the show’s plots and characters popped up in numerous television shows.  Not even the music industry escaped its influence.  David Grohl, the lead singer of the Foo Fighters (a term pilots used in WWII to describe UFO sightings), made a cameo appearance in the “Pusher” episode (Season 3) and wrote “Walking After You” for the soundtrack of I Want to Believe;   Bree Sharp wrote a love song to David Duchovny, who starred as Fox Mulder; and two bands, Killswitch Engage and Eve Six, were named after X-Files episodes.  

If you’re wondering what all this TV talk is doing in a blog about movies, let me explain.  As I have already mentioned, I don’t believe that art spontaneously generates from the cosmos.  Even popular culture, which includes movies and television, is influenced by something that is happening or being talked about in the social milieu.  Thus, the reason I am including the X-Files here is because when I saw the episode about cloning, ‘Eve’, in 1993 it reminded me of a movie I’d seen on HBO in the 1980s about the same phenomenon entitled Anna to the Infinite Power.  Then I remembered that when I first saw that movie, I recalled an intriguing film from the 1970s named The Boys from Brazil, which centered around the same theme.   My intent here is to discuss ‘Eve’, which is most recent, and from there, trace back to what came before, what came before that. 

First, I want to give you a general understanding of the show’s structure.  If you know anything at all about the X-Files, you know that the series revolves around two main characters, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who are responsible for investigating X-files.  These are cases that involve events which defy logic: like UFO sightings or Bigfoot.  Agent Mulder is interested in these cases because his sister, Samantha, mysteriously vanished while he looked on when they were children.  Although his memories of the event are sketchy, Mulder’s research over the years has led him to see strong similarities between what happened to his family and stories told by alien abductees; since then, his further work with X-files has led him to believe in the paranormal, in general.  Agent Scully, on the other hand, is a medical doctor who is skeptical of anything that cannot be explained by logic; she was brought in by the agency to debunk Mulder’s theories. 

In ‘Eve’ Mulder and Scully are investigating a case in Greenwich, Connecticut where a man has been poisoned with digitalis then exsanguinated through two holes in his neck.  Mulder likens the particulars of the murder to cattle mutilations by extraterrestrials and treats it as an X-File.  Because the man’s wife is dead, the only living witness is his eight-year-old daughter, Teena, who says she can’t remember what happened.  While the agents are interviewing her, they receive a call from headquarters telling them that an identical murder has occurred in Marin County, California and, also, includes the exsanguination of a little girl’s father.  Feeling even more confident that he is dealing with alien activity, Mulder decides he and Scully need to go there immediately.  When they get to California, the first thing the agents see is that the victim’s daughter, whose name is Cindy, is identical to Teena.  At that point, even Scully realizes that something out of the ordinary is going on, although she does not believe aliens are the answer.  In this case, the man’s wife is alive and, through questioning her, the agents learn that Cindy was conceived through invitro fertilization.  By doing further research, they discover that Teena was conceived the same way by the same company.

  

Scully and Mulder naturally head to the fertility clinic where they are told that the person in charge of Teena’s and Cindy’s conceptions was Dr. Sally Kendrick, a brilliant scientist who was fired for tampering with genetic material. The agents return to DC and Mulder is contacted by his confidential informant, Mr. X, who explains that Dr. Kendrick came from an embryo produced by the Litchfield Project, a governmental experiment that altered embryonic chromosomes to generate super soldiers that were named Eves and Adams.  Mr. X directs Mulder to a hospital for the criminally insane to speak with Eve 6, a homicidal psychotic, who is incarcerated there.  When they get to the facility, the agents are handed flashlights and told to use them instead of overhead lights because the patient prefers the dark; because of this, no one in the hospital has ever gotten a good look at her.  While being interviewed, Eve 6 tells Mulder and Scully that the Litchfield Project caused the Adams and Eves to have 10 extra chromosomes which made them stronger and smarter than other people.  When it was discovered that it also caused them to become psychotic, however, the program was ended.  All the Adams and Eves eventually committed suicide except for Eves 6, 7 (Kendrick), 8, and Teena and Cindy who, in reality, are Eves 9 and 10. 

Learning that Teena has been kidnapped, the agents figure that Kendrick and Eve 8 are working together and head back to California to guard Cindy.  Despite their best efforts, however, Cindy is grabbed by one of the Eves and taken to a motel where she is united with Teena.  The kidnapper, it turns out, is Dr. Kendrick who has been watching the girls for signs of psychosis and decided to reclaim them when they killed their fathers.  When she begins to feel ill, the doctor realizes, too late, that she, also, has been poisoned.  By the time Mulder and Scully arrive, Kendrick is dead, so, believing the girls are no longer in danger, the agents decide to return them to their residences.  During the drive, the girls ask the agents to stop so they can go to the bathroom and get something to drink.  After ordering sodas, all four head into the restrooms where one of the girls asks Scully for help while the other sneaks out and pours digitalis into the agents’ drinks.  When they are ready to resume the trip, everyone grabs a drink and heads out to the parking lot.  Mulder realizes he forgot his keys, goes back to retrieve them from the table, and he sees the tale-tale green residue of the digitalis.  Understanding now that, rather than being the victims, the girls are actually the perpetrators, Mulder runs out and knocks the drink out of Scully’s hand just in time.   

The girls are taken to the same mental hospital that houses Eve 6, who welcomes them.  Then a woman wearing a physician’s lab coat walks in.  Unfortunately, because no one has ever seen Eve 6 clearly, no one realizes that the doctor and the patient are identical.  Eves 9 and 10 know who she is, however, and smile at the, heretofore, missing Eve 8.  She returns their welcoming expression, says she’s been waiting for them, and the episode ends.

That’s it, spoilers and all.  Next week, I’ll talk about Anna to the Infinite Power.  Until then, enjoy a flick…or two.