Full Eclipse (1993, TV Movie)

 

Starring:

• Mario Van Peebles
• Patsy Kensit 
• Bruce Payne 
• Tony Denison 
• Willie C. Carpenter 
• Victoria Rowell

Storyline
In Los Angeles, the criminals are one step away from taking over the city. Drugs and guns are all over the streets. It'll take a special kind of cop to put an end to it all. Max Dire (Mario Van Peebles) is a special kind of cop, which is why he's invited to join an elite squad - a secret police unit - authorized to do whatever it takes to put an end to crime. Their leader, Adam Garou (Bruce Payne) has a secret method for dealing with crooks, a serum which he injected into his gang of rogue cops that gives them an extraordinary strength and speed. A drug that gives them the power of wolves, and a deadly appetite for crime. Max is suspicious of Garou's renegade police force, but is soon seduced into joining them by their most beautiful member, Casey Spencer (Patsy Kensit). As Max soon discovers, there's a dark side to Garou's detective work and he must decide if he's going to run with the pack or stand against them. Either way, by the full eclipse, the streets will run with blood.

Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

Starring:

• Margit Evelyn Newton
• Franco Garofalo
• Selan Karay

blackhorrormovies.com
I don't know much about Papua New Guinea (except that it's apparently crawling with zombies and cannibals), but I don't think that the racial makeup of the populace is quite as black as HOTLD implies. Here, it looks more like Africa or the Caribbean than the South Pacific. Italian schlock master Bruno Mattei cuts corners by splicing stock footage of annonymous tribesmen eating maggots and grainy Mutual of Omaha-style animal footage into his yarn about, well, the living dead and the inevitable Hell that accompanies them. It's standard early '80s Italian zombie fare with enough action and gore to keep your attention and enough cheesy dialogue and bad makeup to have a drunken good time -- particularly the scene where the white heroine "blends in" with the natives by taking off her shirt and painting her face and torso. There's actually some message about supporting third-world countries buried in HOTLD somewhere, although it spends most of the time exploiting them.

Breeders (1986)

Starring:

• Teresa Farley
• Lance Lewman
• Frances Raines

blackhorrormovies.com
This film stands out for two reasons: 1) It's directed by Tim Kincaid, who helmed the famously awful Robot Holocaust, which was parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (He's since gone on to direct gay porn. Really.), and 2) It features a black female lead. For the purposes of this site, I'll focus on the latter. Theresa Farley stars as Dr. Gamble Pace, who notices a rash of rape victims coming into her hospital. Turns out an alien life form is using human virgins to reproduce. Looking at the cheap, bug-eyed extraterrestrial, it's clear that dinner and a movie won't cut it. It's all very tasteless stuff and is really an excuse to have a bunch of women in '80s hair run around naked. I can see why they'd be naked after the assaults, but for some reason, they're usually nude even beforehand; one even does an extended sans-clothes workout. Even more bewildering is why the vicitms end up in an alien jacuzzi full of a white creamy substance (I don't wanna know.) and why my DVD player isn't equipped with faster forward. Anyway, in the horror code of moralism, heroine Farley is the only woman not to get naked, so we're forced to focus on her -- ick -- dialogue. She's a pretty bad actress. Or, more accurately, she's a pretty, bad actress. And this is an ugly, bad movie -- although it's head and shoulders above Robot Holocaust.