It turned out that the handle had compressed the eyeball in and pushed it up in the socket (think about squeezing arubberball), but it remained attached.
We don't usually think of "Brokeback Mountain" director Ang Lee as an effects filmmaker, but he gave us the romantic swordplay above swaying bamboo forests in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and, less happily, "Hulk" bouncing across the desert like arubberball.