Werewolf Winter: Full Eclipse (1993)

When I was near the end of my summer vampire movie countdown, I mentioned over and over again that original and unique ideas went a long way when it came to me liking a movie. Adding interesting genre twists is clearly so much better than repeating the same old tired story of Dracula. But... are there some ideas so stupid that they break this rule? Are there some ideas so god-awfully ridiculous that they never should have made it past the pitch room? Yes, and the proof is the movie Full Eclipse.

So what is this pitch that should have ended in a quick slap to the face rather than green-lighting? Werewolf Super Cops. I'll pause here to really let that sink in.

In fact, it's a whole TEAM of Werewolf Super Cops!

The film opens with two policemen, Max and Jim, who clearly have been partners for a long time. They joke about their relationships and eat donuts together - all the typical policemen clichés. It also becomes clear that Max is the "risky" street-smart cop, and Jim is the battered and wise cop with the New York accent (even though the movie takes place in Los Angeles).The tropes run so deeply so quickly that Jim literally says "I'm getting too old for this shit" less than 10 minutes into the film. Jim also mentions that he is getting married and retiring, and so this case will probably be his last. Gee, I wonder if anything is going to happen to Jim on this final case.

"Wow, my character is being insanely developed in the first five
minutes of this movie. I sure hope I don't die tragically..."

Sure enough, Jim is fatally injured in a hostage rescue. (A rescue, I might add, which has some of the most ridiculous and unrealistic gun shooting I've seen since Underworld.) However, a mysterious figure comes into his hospital room and gives him some sort of shot which magically heals his wounds. Soon, Jim is back out on the street and taking even more risks than his daredevil partner.

"All in a day's work!"

However, Jim is acting stranger and stranger, resulting in him committing suicide right in front of Max. When Max goes to visit Jim's fiancée, he notices claw marks on his late friend's desk, as well as strange research about dogs and mythology.

At this point, I found the movie to be over the top, but not terrible. The movie (which was originally made for HBO) looked low-budget and silly, but it was mostly entertaining. But then... oh my goodness. Then everything goes so stupidly nuts.

Max gets called into the precinct to see a man named Garou, an officer who leads a specialized police team. Garou wants Max to join his "elite team," but Max soon discovers that they are acting as vigilantes and that all members must take a strange yellow serum (yes, the same serum given to Jim) which transforms them into... something "like an animal."

The word werewolf is never used in this film, it is heavily implied that the serum is supposed to be some sort of "werewolf formula." The problem is that no one looks like a wolf. In fact, nothing about their transformation is wolf-like in the slightest. Their teeth get pointier, but they also get long Wolverine-like claws and ridges on their foreheads like Star Trek villains, none of which indicates "wolf." In fact, I never would have guessed werewolf at all by the make-up; it's only the dialogue which keeps mentioning "top dogs" and the fact that the group is a "pack" that makes it at all clear.

After much resistance, Max is finally pulled into the pack and takes the serum in order to get the claw-and-wrinkled-forehead-but-not-at-all-very-werewolf-like powers.

'SNIKT'

The noises in this movie are truly bizarre. Whenever a "werewolf" character attacks someone (or just has any kind of "anamalistic" feeling) there are animal sounds dubbed over which I think were supposed to indicate that the character him or herself is actually making the noise, but it is not at all realistic and rarely matches the dramatic situation. Even better, they sound like wild cat noises, not wolf sounds. It's just a mess.

The acting in this movie fluctuates from mediocre to absolutely terrible. The worst is the female werewolf love interest, who delivers her lines with all the sincerity and passion of a telemarketer. Mario Van Peebles, who plays Max, doesn't seem horrible, but he's basically just playing 1990's-black-police-officer character trope #5 rather than a full, flushed out protagonist.

And oh, how silly it all looks. It's like this movie desperately wanted to be based on a comic book (even though it isn't) and threw in ridiculous "superhero" and science-fiction looking details which didn't fit either the werewolf storyline or the police storyline. For example, the entire "pack" task-force had futuristic looking guns and strange headgear that look like they are plucked straight out of a 90's X-Force comic.

Complete with terrible 90's comicbook T-shaped face window 

The worst part about this movie is that it never crosses into "so terrible that it's amazing" territory. No, this is no Howling III. The ridiculous is just subdued enough that you can tell people were  actually trying to make a serious TV action film and failed just enough to make the movie annoying to watch rather than laugh-out-loud silly.

By the time we get to the end of the movie, I couldn't care less about Max and his battle against Garou (who, yes, turns out to be evil). The bland, badly-acted 1990's cheese was just a bit too much for me. I can take vampires fighting the mob, but not this. In my opinion, super-werewolf-LAPD is officially an idea which should have ended up in a trash can. Which was then set on fire. And then the ashes dumped into another trash can. Which was then set on fire.

Long story short, unless you have a real fondness for 1990's TV action and really miss late-night reruns of Generation X, this movie is in no way worth your time.

Rating: 1 out of 5 bites