Zone Troopers

Zone Troopers (1985) had very little chance of becoming anything other than a video store curiosity. Produced at a time when most kids were only interested in renting the goriest thing on the shelves, writer/director Danny Bilson’s homage to B-grade war movies and schlocky sci-fi was a poor match for tastes at the time. And, quite honestly, it’s still a bit of an odd duck now!

Given the chance to direct his own project after writing several hits for Charles Band (of the Empire and Full Moon dynasty), Bilson and co-writer Paul De Meo shot entirely in Italy with no supervision and came back with an endearingly earnest tribute to WWII TV shows like Combat! crossed with an Invaders from Mars twist that finds a squad of American GIs fighting to keep alien technology out of the hands of the Nazis.

Tim Thomerson (Trancers) is the “Iron Sarge,” leading his surviving squad members behind enemy lines to safety. But their discovery of a crashed spaceship – and a surviving bug-like co-pilot - creates a new mission objective. Outnumbered and surrounded, our soldiers must team-up with the “men from mars” to ensure that Germany doesn’t wind up with weaponry that could help them win the war.

Zone Troopers is low-rent in almost every respect. Yet the commitment by its cast and crew to the corny pulp war story is evident from frame one. This is a movie that laughs with the audience, but never mocks its own subject matter. That doesn’t even seem possible! But it starts with a cast that fits their stereotypes like a glove and look the part to boot, particularly Art La Fleur (The Blob) whose lantern-jawed expression finally cracks a smile when he breaks Hitler’s nose!

John Buechler’s alien effects are only questionably convincing, but fit the tone of the film. A few impressive full-scale spaceship sets and backdrops even things out. One gets the impression the filmmakers would have been happy just dropping the sci-fi stuff altogether and keeping the Sarge and company in their own element. But, as they explain in the audio commentary, sci-fi was Empire’s bread-and-butter at the time. Bilson and De Meo would go on to write the similarly retro-themed The Rocketeer in 1991 with slightly more success. But even that film’s pulp-stylings can’t match of go-for-broke eccentricities of Zone Troopers.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray looks downright amazing, with color and detail that defy description. Tim Thomerson contributes a 10-minute sit-down interview and Bilson and De Meo provide an audio commentary. That’s way more attention than most folks would ever expect for a film that pretty much gathered dust at the back of your local video store.