Retro Review: FULL ECLIPSE (1993)

Full Eclipse is a made-for-TV horror movie from 1993. Unlike other entries in this series, Full Eclipse is a bit more extreme. It’s not a network made-for-TV horror movie. It’s from HBO — and not Game-of-Thrones-Season-Eight HBO. This is Tales-From-The-Crypt HBO.

In fact, Full Eclipse could be viewed as a lost Tales From The Crypt film. Add a Cryptkeeper segment to the front and back, and it could fit in with Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood. (I’m not counting Ritual…)

The first time I saw Full Eclipse, a friend and I finished watching a different movie around midnight. He flipped to HBO as I got ready to leave. I could barely keep my eyes open. The opening credits of Full Eclipse started: green titles over a full moon with a moody synth score. Intriguing. The writer’s name popped up: Richard Christian Matheson.

I immediately woke up. Richard Christian Matheson is the son of the great Richard Matheson, who was my favorite author at the time. My buttocks returned to the recliner, and I proceeded to let Full Eclipse ensconce me in 1990s crapulence.

Let’s see how Full Eclipse stacks up against other made-for-TV horror movies like The Intruder Within, Midnight OfferingsCurse of the Black WidowSatan’s TriangleKilldozer, Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell , Invitation to Hell Summer of Fear,  Savages,  Moon of the Wolf, The Initiation of Sarah, Crowhaven Farm,  A Cold Night’s DeathSnowbeast, The PossessedChiller and Dark Night of the Scarecrow.

This is the most trustworthy man I have ever seen.

 

Full Eclipse

Anthony Hickox (Waxwork) helmed Full Eclipse. He’s English, so one expects a degree of refinement and a tyrannical desire to tax tea. Instead, Hickox smacks viewers over their head with John Woo-style action before western audiences knew John Woo from Al Leong.

Full Eclipse stars Mario Van Peebles when he was in the midst of his greatest run: Heartbreak Ridge, Jaws IV, New Jack City, Posse, Highlander III and Solo. Who can forget that streak? It even, pardon the pun, eclipsed Martin Kove’s run from Karate Kid to Karate Kid III, a stretch that included the glorious Steele Justice.

 

Paid in Full Eclipse

The movie starts by panning over a seedy LA: a hissing cat, a slob about to make pork-burger love to a kept woman, gangbangers and graffiti punks. One imagines Rorschach looking down from above and wishing for napalm bombs to wash away the filth with cleansing fire.

Yet, Mario stands as the thin black line between creeping chaos and order, a cop cruising the night streets with his partner, played by Anthony Denison (Wild Things 2). Denison tells Mario he is going to get married.

Uh-oh, Denison signed his death warrant making an announcement like that in a movie like this. Not only that, Denison plans to retire from the police force, as well. Talk about jumping off the temple roof and expecting angels to catch you (lest you dash your foot against a stone). Denison is begging to get greased here.

A call comes over the radio. A hostage situation unfolds at a nearby club. The duo pulls up to the building with screeching brakes and flashing red and blues.

“Jimmy, you feel like dancing?” Mario asks.
“Let’s wait for SWAT.”

At that point, a body gets tossed out of a second-story window and splats on the street. Drokk waiting. Waiting is for girls — the real kind and the Bugs Bunny kind. Mario and Denison go in via air ducts on the roof. Never mind said air ducts look like culvert sections with caps cut out of tin five minutes before filming. Mario believes they are real and that’s enough for me.

The criminal dudes inside the club are so 1990s they could have come directly from a taping of MTV’s Singled Out. One of them even has a goatee and wears flannel. They likely listen to Man In The Box when planning their crimes. The leader mini-UZIs a hostage and tells the woman who got blood splattered on her, “Red looks good on you, baby!”

The scene culminates with slow motion, double-fisted Berettas, wire work, an anguished “NOOOOOOO!” and Denison’s blood dripping from the ductwork.

Also, tears dripping from my eyes. I don’t deserve this movie…

I’ve never seen an AK eject full cartridges before…

 

The Full Eclipse Monty

Cut to Mario visiting Denison’s bullet-riddled, unconscious body in the hospital. Denison’s fiancé is present, looking suitably sad. She is played by Jennifer Rubin (Screamers). One gets the sense Mario could comfort Flavin with smoooooth lovemaking, but he has a wife of his own, played by Victoria Rowell (Dumb and Dumber).

Mario and Victoria are in marriage counseling because Mario is too much of a man and always angry at how bad guys make the world a bad place.

“Can’t you ever stop acting like a cop?” Victoria asks.
“That’s what I do, baby. I’m a cop. I can’t just drop my life on the way home to get dry cleaned.”

Meanwhile, a mysterious man visits the comatose Denison and injects him with a mysterious drug. The next day Denison shows up at the police station, fully healed.

Mario is perplexed.

“What are you doing here?”
“Hey, modern medicine, what can I tell you? At least I’m not pissing out of my armpit.”

They go out for donuts because they’re cops and thwart a drive-by shooting to work up an appetite. Mario dives through the air firing twin Berettas. Denison runs after the perps, leaping from vehicle to vehicle like a coked-up Lord Humungus Marauder. For a finale, he jumps on the back of a motorcycle and steers the criminal into a brick wall at full speed. Fireball blooms. Denison walks out of the wreckage with a smoking jacket and a smile.

Mario is perplexed.

Meanwhile, I haven’t been this happy since my prostate was the size of a softball. Seriously, the last time the doctor checked it, he said, “I don’t know whether to stop the examination or use you to pick up a seven-ten split…”

 

Full Eclipse Metal Jacket

Mario is called into the office of a crisis counselor to help him deal with being too much of a man. The crisis counselor invites Mario to join a special support group.

The crisis counselor is played by some guy named Bruce Payne (Always Bet On Black). Never heard of him, but he seems like a stand-up fellow, a real top man with a warm personality that will surely prove to be a trustworthy ally of Mario for the rest of the film. No doubts about that whatsoever.

Once Mario leaves, Bruce sits in a fetal position. I can’t see that being anything but totally normal because Bruce comes off as congenial as Jimmy Stewart after a warm beer.

Mario goes to a bar to shoot pool with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. The only way he could be more manly is if he put a foot up on a barstool and slapped Susan B. Anthony on the backside after she sashayed by to cast an emotion-driven vote.

Sure, Candidate A is the most benevolent man I have ever seen, but the tone of his last speech made me feel fat, so I’m voting for Satan.

Denison walks into the bar cosplaying Judd Nelson from The Breakfast Club. He announces that he is not going to get married anymore and thanks Mario for being a good partner. Then he puts a gun in his mouth and blows his brains out.

Mario is perplexed, so much so he has no choice but to sit on a beach and watch seagulls. I feel you, Mario. I did the same thing when a girl told me she couldn’t go out to eat with me because she was making a pack of ramen noodles.

Cammy, I know you’re reading this. Look at me now!

Live look of me at LMO Headquarters…

 

Full Eclipse Speed Ahead

Eventually, Mario joins Bruce’s support group. Even a strong man knows he can’t be an island forever in a sea of…something or other. The support group is made up of Jason Beghe (Monkey Shines), John Verea (ex-husband of Gabrielle Anwar) and Paula Marshall (Hellraiser III).

They all have tragic backstories, not as tragic as losing out on Gabrielle Anwar in real life, but still pretty bad. For example, Paula shares that she, “Tried to stop a pimp from whipping up on his whore. Bitch stuck a blade in my back…”

This is the most believable dialogue I’ve heard since my last Alan Sorkin film.

Since Bruce is the epitome of a gentle soul, he gives an inspiring speech to make everyone feel like they are in a safe space full of love and rainbows.

“You all have one thing in common. Each of you has an outstanding record. You’re warriors. That’s what you all wanted to be when you joined the force, but it goes deeper. You also wanted to strike back at the evil decay out there.”

The final member of the group is Patsy Kensit. Remember when she almost was a thing because of Lethal Weapon 2? Sparks fly between Patsy and Mario. You could make meth with that kind of chemistry.

Patsy coyly tells Mario that sometimes the group talks and sometimes they do…more.

Macaroni art?

We have to wait and see…

 

Full Eclipse Disclosure

We don’t have to wait long. The group don superhero outfits. They inject themselves with the same drug that compelled Denison to give his brains some air with a .357 slug, and each one turns into Wolverine — just with 95-percent less budget and 97-percent less repressed homosexuality. They then murder criminals having a garden party.

Mario is perplexed.

Eventually, Patsy cajoles Mario to try the drug. He refuses because he is too much of a man. Pasty has no choice but to seduce him, and they clutch erotically. In the throes of passion, Patsy grows fangs and Wolverine claws. Mario doesn’t notice, probably because he is too preoccupied with embarrassment because the back of his pants split while fumbling erotically.

I like that Hickox left the wardrobe malfunction in the film. It really grounds Full Eclipse in reality.

Yet, even Patsy’s erotic clutching cannot sway Mario in his decision to say no to drugs, so she shoots him. Psycho, yes, but still not as psycho as choosing a pack of twenty-five-cent ramen over a human being with feelings…

Sorry, I’m back from the beach where I watched seagulls. Where was I?

Oh yeah, Mario is dying from the gunshot wound, but Patsy injects him with the drug and heals him. Mario is now officially part of “the pack.”

To celebrate, Mario and Patsy turn into dime-store Wolverines and murder drug dealers.

 

Full Eclipse Contact

So, here’s the thing — it turns out Bruce is not a super nice man, after all. This plot twist has left me reeling. I truly believed he was a sensitive fellow whose altruism shown like a beacon of light in a dark world and that he had nothing but the best intentions for humankind at heart.

Nope. He’s a werewolf that has traveled the USA for decades, murdering criminals with the help of cops with tragic backstories. The drug is actually his own brain fluid. This factoid enables him to deliver the following line to Mario.

“This is my brain. This is you on my brain. Any questions?”

Gen Z is going to be so confused by that reference, and I’m not going to explain it to them either. They can sit there and suck on their ignorance and blessed youth and normal-sized prostates…

How does it all end? Bruce turns into a big werewolf and kills all of his sub-werewolves because…he can’t help himself maybe? Then Mario kills Bruce and moves to Denver, so he can use his werewolf powers to be Batman. Victoria is now a werewolf, too, even though she hasn’t really been in the movie since Mario told her he was “a cop, baby.”

I can’t wait until those ramen noodles are done…

 

Full Eclipse Court

Full Eclipse is fun, but it really needed a $20 million budget, Jean-Claude Van Damme and a reworked third act. Then you are truly cooking with gas.

The first act of Full Eclipse is fantastic for a TV movie. Things calm down in the second act, but the turn into what appears to be a mad-scientist movie works well. Then you get hit with the surprise werewolf angle, which is also aces.

Alas, the third act is where things become frayed. They try to wedge in some plot with a crowbar, but it doesn’t fit. A crime lord is portrayed as some sort of ultimate goal for Bruce, but the character carries no weight whatsoever. The crime lord seems to be there for no other reason than to delay a Mario/Bruce confrontation in order to hit a 90-minute runtime.

Too bad. The ingredients are here for a gem of a movie. It’s hard to go wrong with werewolves and guns (adding vampires to the equation is a bridge too far; sorry Underworld). Combining werewolves and guns inspired me to write DogSS of War, which has sold 11 copies so far in 2025! I dump all profits back into The Last Movie Outpost to remodel our headquarters. Unlike Bruce, I am truly altruistic. You saw the before picture earlier. Now, feast your eyes on the after…

 

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