Zone Troopers (1985) – Aliens, Allies, Nazis and World War II

I don’t recall ever having heard of Zone Troopers before last week. That’s 26 yeas and two months after it was released. I’m not sure why it took so long to watch as it was pretty fun.

Taking place some time in World War II, a patrol of American G.I.s, behind enemy lines in Italy discover a big secret: they stumble upon an alien ship that has crashed to Earth.The Nazis are rushing to get to the ship, and have already captured an Alien. Snooping around by one of the troop and a reporter gets them captured by the Nazis complicating things even more. Luckily for these two they have a few things going for them: the Nazis obviously learned to shoot from the same folks that teach Star Wars Storm Troopers to shoot, and secondly that they’re led by the Sarge, played by penultimate “Oh that guy”, Tim Thomerson. The Sarge is the toughest Sarge out there I guess, and he shows it. There’s one scene where he mows down a bunch of Nazis that had what was left of his depleted patrol pinned down. It was like one man versus the Nazis. Pretty cool, if stupid stuff. Then there’s the scene where one of the captured G.I.s punches Hitler right in the face. You don’t see that every day. Anyway, the Sarge and a G.I. rescue their two captured comrades and the captured alien. They start off towards their lines while being pursued by Nazis looking to recapture the alien. After some battles and such, the alien meets up with there own kind – they show up the Nazis in a silly battle and eventually mostly everyone lives happily ever after…except that it would still be World War II, which I imagine mostly sucked for all those involved. But i digress. The special effects aren’t much to write home about, but neither are they terrible for what I must have been a pretty low budget production. In a couple of places I might even call them good. The Bug Eyed alien was interesting looking too. Not too bad at all for a low budget flick.

In a nutshell Zone Troopers was a fun watch. Nothing amazing, so don’t set your hopes high, but altogether a fun, cheezy sci-fi flick. If you get a chance, go ahead and watch it – I don’t feel like I wasted my time. And you know what? As of just now – while writing this, I just discovered that it is available on Youtube for however long that lasts. That link, of course, will be under the trailer, so you really don’t have any good reason not to watch it! Hehehehe…

Here’s the Trailer:

And here’s the whole freakin’ movie: