By: Mordicai

 

Here’s one you might remember from late night cable… What happens when a group of American soldiers with names like “Sarge” and “Mittens” discover an alien ship shot down by everyone’s favorite bad guys, the Nazis? Unfortunately, we have an answer to that quandary. Zone Troopers plays fast and loose with both history and science fiction at the same time. It’s a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream and is sure to leave many a late night channel surfer wondering why he stayed up so late.

 

Whatever vestige of a plot it has is best summed up as such: some cookie-cutter G.I.s who are stranded behind the “Kraut line” in WWII fight those pesky Nazis and befriend an alien that eats cigarettes and makes fantasy pin up girls materialize. They run around what’s supposed to be Italy and shoot things, utter every wartime cliché known to man, and basically John Wayne it up for an hour and some change. Hitler even makes a blurry cameo in a film that’s two thirds Anzio and one

third “Star Trek.” As a whole, it comes off as a hand-me-down remake of a “Twilight Zone” episode, only without the drama or even an attempt at clever irony.

 

Decent sets including the interior of the alien spaceship with amenities like toggle switches, copper wires and a periscope, which just goes to prove that the aliens are only as technologically advanced as the imagination and budget of the set department allows. Also, the soldiers don’t seem to be satisfactorily astounded by their discovery, either due to the callousness of war or a major oversight by the script writer. This truly was “the greatest generation”—people today might actually stop fighting the Nazis for about five minutes to ponder the magnitude of mankind’s first contact with extraterrestrial beings, instead of trying to recruit them or sell them war bonds.

 

 

These aliens got no gratitude.

 

Now this is as good a place as any for a mini-rant about video capture devices… they suck, or at least, mine does. My device apparently lost interest in the film as well, the sound noticeably lagging a few seconds behind the actors’ lips, making it look like a horribly dubbed import. Not that the acting is anything that shouldn’t be missed. Familiar faces like Thomerson, LaFleur, and Manard (Surf II) are acceptable; you will easily recognize their square jaws from supporting roles in countless TV and film productions. I blame the scripting, not the cast for the arid emotional climate of the film—Charlton Heston couldn’t have saved this… or maybe he could have.

 

The goofy alien costumes are fine, but the film is splintered by jarring mood shifts from dramatic war play to campy humor. The cinematography is pedestrian: a couple of abrupt cuts had me wondering if the version I watched was a TV print. Decent production value almost makes this film watchable, and the hand-me-down special effects are fun in a cheesy 80’s kind of way. One thing that chapped my hide, however, was the false hope you get that the film is over twenty minutes before it actually ends. There’s an old rule of thumb that states a movie will probably suck if the monster/alien is pictured on the VHS cover… consider that myth confirmed.

 

 

What can you really say about a movie with lines like: “Did I just K.O. Hitler?” Zone Troopers is hardly memorable, shot down by the threadbare plot, and just as easily could have been a

forgettable war movie had they not thrown in the sci-fi elements. There’s no real depth or humor here, but it’s original enough to check out, especially if you’ve a rabid connoisseur of the sparse wartime alien film genre. I can’t really dislike this film, because it doesn’t aspire for anything substantial, which is good, because it doesn’t deliver much. The best way to view Zone Troopers is to have someone sneak in the video and “accidentally” press the TV/video button while channel surfing late at night, giving the appearance of happening across it on cable. It almost pulls off a campy silliness, but awkward battle sequences and a weak story sabotage the film’s ample potential. Set your phasers to stun and face to unimpressed.

 

 

2.5/5 Alien Sleeping Bags

 

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