Zone Troopers is a playful mashup of WW2 action and campy sci-fi adventure. A comic book brought to life, it features scrappy US Soldiers, inept Nazis, and retro-style bug aliens painted in PG tones.
The film isn’t a mainstream cult classic. Still, you need not search the far corners of the internet to find appreciation for this nifty genre twist. And followers of this blog will notice some familiar creatives at work here.
The film is from (mostly) the same braintrust as Trancers, written by the duo of Danny Bilson (also directing) and Paul De Meo (the duo behind my beloved trashy monster beatdown film Arena.)
And if you need more low-budget credentials, it’s produced by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures (Re-Animator).
But even solid creators miss the mark from time to time.
Zone Troopers boasts stamps of approval from card-carrying VHS generation members. Yet it has a woeful 43% audience score (at time of writing) on film site Rotten Tomatoes.
This dichotomy is no death sentence for an unheralded film scraper like myself but no happy omen.
So is Zone Troopers a good movie?
The Plot of Zone Troopers:
Sergeant Patrick “The Sarge” Stone (Tim Thomerson) and what’s left of his men are stuck behind enemy lines.
The squad includes young comic book reader Joey Verona (Timothy Van Patten), veteran George “Mittens” Minnensky (Art LaFleur), and journalist Dolan (Biff Manard).
While the soldiers try to find a way out, they stumble into the crash site of an alien spacecraft.
As the Nazis roll in, will the squad escape? And do the mysterious alien beings come in war or peace?
The Rest of the Main Cast Includes:
- William Paulson as Alien
- Peter Boom as Col. Mannheim
- Max Turili as Sgt. Zeller
The Good Things:
Casting +3 Points
Coming straight off Trancers, the filmmakers didn’t cast a wide net, bringing back Thomerson, LaFleur, and Manard.
It’s an easy leap for Thomerson to fill the shoes of the hardcase Sarge. The character lacks the nuance and quiet cool of Trancers’s Jack Deth. Still, thanks to Thomerson’s grace in the boots, you sense a bit more heart in this one-note character.
LaFleur hams it up as Mittens. He brings charisma to a classic grizzled vet. The rugged heavy of the group puffs his cigarettes and dreams of blonde dames. He affectionately names his machine gun after a girl back home (Velma) and doesn’t bend under the torture of interrogation.
We buy into Tim Van Patten’s wild-eyed, enthusiastic young Joey, ever the optimist in the face of peril.
And Manard improves on his Trancers showing as the daring and curious Dolan.
Setup and Tone, + 2 Points
The campy tone is refreshing.
While there are WW2 action films, dramas, and even monster movies, I can’t think of another that mixes friendly retro aliens (spoilers, I’m sorry) into the mix.
And trapped behind enemy lines with only their wits and the grit of The Sarge to get the squad through, the film sets out a straightforward narrative for us to slip into the drama.
The Not-as-Good Things:
Sleepwalking Middle, -4 Points
**Some Plot Spoilers Here**
This film dies at the hands of that cinema mass murderer known as Act II.
The first act jumps right into the action and moves okay, but it downshifts into slow plodding that deflates any momentum.
After a skirmish with Nazis and some character-introducing scenes, it’s time for the movie to show us the goods – the crash-landed spaceship. We get there right when you’d expect, ~22 minutes in.
Yet what could be a compelling reveal trends boring.
The team has split into pairs. While Mittens and Dolan discover the spaceship through the Nazi documents….documenting it, Joe and The Sarge explore the fallen, sputtering space cruiser.
The film cross-cuts between the two groups for a staggering ~20 minutes combined (I’m not exaggerating – I checked the runtime).
Cuts had to be made here, and I’d trim to the bare seconds Dolan and Mittens at the Nazi camp. The audience already knows there’s a spaceship because The Sarge and Joey are walking around one. It’s a double exposition for the audience.
From here, we’re locked in more exposition about the aliens, the Nazis doing nothing meaningful with one in a crate.
Then it’s an interrogation scene – a trope almost as worn as references to “not being in Kansas anymore” (though the film may have liked the opportunity to punch Hitler in the face).
Altogether, these sequences last from minute ~22 to minute ~50 (of an ~83-minute film).
The movie finally starts doing action things most of the way through Act II, which is far too long for us to care. It should be out of exposition and delivering by then.
Combat, -2 Points
You wish the film was the War of the Worlds lies it’s telling with its Blu-Ray cover (those flying ships don’t come).
The movie teases juicy pulp action. Instead, it settles for the concentrated OJ out of the freezer (that shit that inevitably gets watered down when you mix it with liquid and swirl the hell out of it with your best wooden spoon, trying to melt that floating orange turd into juicedom).
This isn’t Band of Brothers. Realism isn’t the goal. The picture had the freedom to go wild.
You could imagine our heroes mowing down hordes of Nazis video-game style. It could turn slapstick with comically bullet-diving heroes and villains and over-the-top moments.
Instead, it just portrays stale combat. Our heroes take cover behind untactical spots, like three men and one log, as their untactical foes slowly march into their weak ambushes.
Blargh.
The film adds a tame truck escape. It’s about two to three minutes long. Its game is running over unoccupied Nazi tents, though I guess it explodes one with a grenade. It plays a trick card when a Nazi tries to blow the truck up with a rocket, only for the alien to make the truck glow red in some kinda defense that vanishes the missile.
Even without the budget for large-scale battles, creativity could have salvaged something here.
Grab-Bag Production, -2 Points
The production design is an unhealthy mix of wins and sins. It’s like the costume and set designers at Empire Pictures were forced to raid other movies’ props.
Not being a historian, the Nazi and U.S. Army uniforms/equipment are capable period representations, especially for a low-budget assembly. Some weapons look like they’re firing without visual muzzle flashes popping off, but that’s getting into the weeds.
The crash-landed alien ship, mostly buried, is one impressive piece. Hissing various pots of steam and exhaust, its scale makes the moment.
And expecting it to be locked in the background, I was surprised the characters boarded it to explore it in more detail.
Yet later in the film, there’s a second alien craft (apologies – the glowing photo is all I could find) with no continuity. The yellow space cruiser of the first is replaced with a blue vertical-landing dome top like a Byzantine-influenced building.
As we’re led to believe this is the same alien race, it’s confusing.
And that brings us to the aliens. The first is a hairy bug monster, a Predator you could smack in the face with a run-of-the-mill fly swatter. It’s a creature so dull that even the on-screen characters ask why it just sits there.
But to make things worse, when a ship comes to rendezvous with the bug alien, we get unimaginative humanoid creeps – apparently from the same race. Maybe these WASP aliens are supposed to be Nazis from another dimension, come back to right the wrongs of their previous sins?
Vanilla Scenes, -4 Points
Zone Troopers gets the tone and spirit locked in but doesn’t sail because its scenes are bland.
Similar to how a book must incentivize the reader to turn each and every page, a film must do the same with its scenes.
While you wouldn’t say the movie’s moments are poorly written, they lack surprise or ingenuity.
Mittens stands up to interrogation because he’s a tough guy. It’s boring because he’s just getting punched in the jaw. The audience expects it; the film delivers it. Nobody wins.
The Sarge carries a mythos for being unkillable. But this is set up by a Nazi clearly shooting him and just being unharmed for no concrete reason until he says his helmet saved him. It’s shrug-worthy.
The pale-faced aliens aren’t interested in helping the soldiers. In their plain jumpsuits and humanoid appearance, the audience isn’t interested in them.
It’s strange from this writing team as Trancers is the complete opposite – full of quirks and catchy lines that catch you off balance.
Let’s Not Watch Zone Troopers
Total Arbitrary Points Score: -7 Points
Zone Troopers reunites the writing team of the sci-fi cult classic Trancers and some of its cast members.
But this time around, the same creative well poured out muddier waters.
Despite a playful setup for a creative romp blending WW2 action and 1950s aliens, the movie unceremoniously staples the two genres together.
The cast was capable. Yet they aren’t given too much to entertain, especially in Act II.
And we plod through scenes rather than get entertained by them. The film never gives us the delightful pockets of joy audiences crave.
I stand behind other works from these creative folks, and I don’t like being harsh. Still, while this movie is far from trash, this effort is too tame.
Zone Troopers is directed by Danny Bilson and rated PG.
You can rent it from Amazon Prime Video.
You can watch the trailer here. (For unknown reasons, it paints the movie as dark.)
Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered from online sources, such as Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
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