Target: Eve Island

Made after he had found his feet in film production but before his confidence had been damaged by too many flops, Eve Island is one of Cliff Twemlow’s most successful works. It’s also the one made under the most notorious circumstances, and whilst it may fall short in quality terms as all his films do, it really looks impressive when you bear in mind that all the cast and crew had to eat during much of the shoot were the coconuts they managed to knock down from trees.

One can see that one is in for something a bit more advanced this time around when the film kicks off with a proper credit sequence – one which taps right into the zeitgeist for 1983, with blue and purple light on consoles, computer screens, barbed wire and missiles, set to one of Twemlow’s fantastic scores. From there we cut to two speeding cars pursuing a frantic woman; then to hero William Grant (Brett Sinclair) in bed with one of his staff members. Their fun is interrupted by a call from spymaster Major Barrett (David Rankin, who acquits himself fairly well in this, his only acting role). There’s a slice of exposition followed by a heavy helping of Bond-style innuendo, and then the film proper begins.

The fleeing woman, it emerges, was Professor Lindenbrook (Kay Harris), who has information of interest to the Russians and, for reasons no-one even attempts to explain, has been taken all the way to the Caribbean for interrogation. Grant is dispatched to identify her location and deal with notorious Russian agent Stella Starlight (Ginette Gray), an encounter which will follow a predictable set of rule-breaking rules. We get a bit of gritty Mancunian action, with a lot of fighting and some car crusher peril, before heading to more exotic climes. Islands drift into view in a grey-blue sea, just like they do in films with proper budgets, except that these ones were plainly filmed through the window of a passenger plane.

Although he would famously fall out with Twemlow partway through, director David Kent-Watson is in his element here and having a lot of fun. There are some nicely framed sequences, but they are oddly juxtaposed with scenes in which unlikely angles have been chosen for apparently experimental purposes, such as one where, for now obvious reason, we seem to be lying on the floor of a hotel room watching Grant as he sits on a bed. In another scene, a female character has been carefully positioned to look sexy in such a way that her voice isn’t properly picked up by the microphone at all, and all we get is a sort of muffled grunting which nobody bothered to re-dub.

The actual sexiness of the film will depend on your patience with the innuendo and levels of interest in women who, regardless of the type of character they’re playing, are all dolled up in cheap nylon with big hair and Page 3 girl-style make-up – indeed, some of them may well have modelled for the tabloids, as they were mostly glamour models of Twemlow’s acquaintance rather than actual actors. Seduction being part of Grant’s schtick, there are all manner of gratuitous interludes which play like the short dramatic scenes at the start of the porn films of the era, sometimes rather delightfully. We also get an odd scene in which two women, one of them topless, try to drown each other in a hot tub.

Grant certainly seems to know more about this than he does about spying. He’s the sort of man who will carefully search his room but not look in the wardrobe or under the bed. Fortunately for him, he’s up against villains of the ‘let me tell you my entire plan because nobody will ever believe you’ variety, and aided by people who take him altogether more seriously than he deserves. Healso gets assistance from comedy master of disguise ‘crazy Max’ – Max Beesley Snr in what is undoubtedly the worst performance in any Twemlow film, which is saying something – whilst Twemlow himself appears as the mysterious Chaser, letting fly with his fists in the style that fans had by then come to expect. There’s not much gore but there’s plenty of fighting, some of it with distinctly odd effects. At one point a man abruptly passes out as a result of being kicked in the stomach.

If some of the more militaristic fighting looks more realistic than expected, that’s because it is. During filming, the team found themselves caught up in a coup which could very well have become a Cold War flashpoint, as US forces sought to drive Cubans and Russians out of Grenada. It was an incredibly dangerous situation, but famously, rather than flee, Twemlow decided to take advantage of it for additional production value. Most of what was captured as a result appears in a lengthy action montage towards the end, intercut with scenes of the stars chasing each other, speeding around on various forms of transport and falling in water. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the lively pacing and score make it perfectly possible to tune out and watch it right through before realising that.

With a final twist remarkably similar to one in an episode of Dangermouse from the previous year, Target: Eve Island may raise a few eyebrows, but despite this, and its general scrappiness, it’s fun to watch and delivers a good bit of bang for its buck.

Reviewed on: 26 May 2025