Bullet Points: Full Eclipse

There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the total solar eclipse of 2024. I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t heard or read “path of totality”. With all the eclipse this and eclipse that, it is no wonder I found myself compelled to watch and review 1993’s Full Eclipse, even if it was lunar and not solar…

• Club MVP: The movie begins with a look at some of the seedier aspects of life in L.A. as the opening credits roll. We cut to Detectives Max Dire (Mario Van Peebles, Solo) and Jim Sheldon, having a conversation about Jim’s future as they cruise the streets of Los Angeles. Jim is horny, looking to retire with a 3/4 pension and marry the love of his life, Helen. Seconds later a call comes over the radio that there is a hostage situation at a nightclub… Max and Jim don’t hesitate to respond. When the arrive on the scene one of the hostages is defenestrated from the building. There’s no time to wait for SWAT, Max and Jim are going in! They get up to the roof and get inside via airducts… Jim hits the mandator “I’m getting to old for this” line as he squeezes in. Inside the maniacs that are holding the hostages and are waiting for a jet that will likely never come, shoot out the speakers that have been pumping out loud dance music this entire time… they do so because they think they hear something in the ducts above. So they proceed to shoot up the ducts… Jimmy is shot… Max jumps down, guns blazing taking out the baddies in heroic fashion, but then he notices the blood dripping from the duct that Jimmy was in.

• Dire Straits: If having your partner on life support isn’t enough stress, Max has also been dragged to a marriage counselor by his wife Anna. Anna feels like being married to a cop like Max is more than she originally signed up for… Meanwhile, at the hospital a uniformed officer goes in to Jim Sheldon’s room and injects something into Jim’s IV. Is this the end of Jim Sheldon!?!? …I sure thought so, but I was nearly as shocked as Max when Jim shows up in the police locker room the next day, more than ready to go! In stereotypical fashion, Max and Jim’s first stop is a donut shop and that ends up being the right place at the right time, as they have a ringside seat for a drive by that is going down. The perpetrators drive off, Max heads to the car to pursue them… but Jim just starts hoofing it, running through traffic, running ON traffic… when the shooters trade their car for a motorcycle with a sidecar, Jim jumps on as the weave in and out of L.A. traffic before ultimately smashing into a brick wall… Jim walks away unscathed!?!?
• Interesting Offer: After receiving a medal of honor for his actions at the nightclub, Max returns to an empty home. There’s a message on the machine from Anna that she has gone to Houston to spend some time with her mother and that she will talk to him in a couple of weeks. But there’s also a message from Detective Adam Garou (Bruce Payne, One Man’s Justice), who would like to see Max in his office as soon as possible. Max goes to see Adam the next day, Adam invites Max to one of his officer crisis counseling meetings… Max isn’t too keen on the idea, given how well his marriage counseling went. Adam tells Max he is too good of a cop to lose and Max tells him that he will think about it. Max then meets up with some cop buddies at a bar an that’s when Jim shows up and eats his gun! Suddenly, Adam Garou’s offer seems more interesting…

• Meet the Team: Max ends up at a meeting at Adam’s place and there he meets other cops who have had similar hardships… there’s Doug, Liza, Ramon and Casey (Patsy Kensit, Lethal Weapon 2). And it quickly becomes apparent to Max that this isn’t a typical therapy session, this is a group that enforces moral laws vs. technical laws. Max hits the line of the movie asking if what they are doing is “Pseudo Charlie Bronson Vigilante Shit”. Max is then is invited them to watch Adam and his team in action as they crash a gun running party! But not before they shoot up with some sort of PED… because Adam isn’t just a detective, he’s a scientist too.
• Twisted Tale: Things get stranger and stranger as the movie progresses… we get Casey getting very aggressive as she attempts to recruit Max with her team… in other words she slips him the PED orally and they screw each other’s brains out like a couple of wild animals… literally! With the drug now in his system, Max begins to change. These changes ruin the birthday party his friends (and wife!) throw for him. Next thing Max knows he’s being ushered away from the party by his new “team” and completing a mission with them… Which leads to Max finding out the truth about Adam Garou and the supernatural reason all his work with police departments across the country happen to coincide with lunar eclipses and the Max vs. Adam final battle is set in motion!

I really didn’t know what to expect when I first hit play on Full Eclipse. And as I continued to watch the unexpected kept coming. About the only thing I did expect was that Bruce Payne would end up being the bad guy and Full Eclipse did not disappoint there… but I had not idea he would turn out to be a werewolf!

Overall, I wasn’t wild about Full Eclipse, but it did have its moments so it’s not like I hated it, more like I only halfway liked it.

If you haven’t had your fill of this review, get full with these Bonus Bullet Points…

• Familiar Faces: Willie C. Carpenter plays Edmunds, the police brass that brought Garou in to help clean up Los Angeles. I’ll always remember Carpenter from his work in Hard Target… Jennifer Rubin played Helen, Jim Sheldon’s bride-to-be. Rubin will always be Taryn from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors to me.
• Home Box Office: Full Eclipse was first unleashed on the world on Saturday November 27, 1993 on HBO.
• Directed By: Anthony Hickox was at the helm for Full Eclipse. Hickox may be best known for his work in the horror genre with films like Waxwork and Hellraiser III. But he dabbled in the action genre more and more as time went on, including Storm Catcher with Dolph Lundgren and Submerged with Steven Seagal.