Zone Troopers (1985)

“Zone Troopers” is a charming little WWII movie about a small army regiment and their unusual run-in with aliens that crash-land on Earth. It's just as engaging as its concept would have you believe, it's well-directed for a B-movie, and it pulls you into its world right from the start.

Joey Verona (Timothy Van Pattern) is the heart of this movie. He is a happy-go-lucky, young solider from New York who is glad to have the continued camaraderie of his childhood friend Mittens (Art LaFleur). The two are led by the extraordinarily uptight Sergeant Stone (Tim Thomerson). As the movie opens, we find Joey giddily happy to meet Charley Dolan (Biff Manard), a legendary soldier and journalist assigned to help the two rookies in battle. Van Patten is exceptionally well-casted. You can truly feel the joy in Joey's soul as he shakes Dolan's hand, welcoming him to their squad. Unfortunately, Dolan doesn't live up to his “skilled warrior” image and the quartet quickly find themselves stuck behind German lines.

The group becomes more and more desperately lost in the forest. Dolan and Mittens are soon captured at a Nazi base. It is now Joey and Stone's mission to find and save their lost comrades. There is a little alien-based exposition as this plot point unwinds. As Stone and Joey finally find the Nazi camp, they discover one of their most memorable sights: a gargantuan spaceship crash-landed in said Nazi camp. This is a great little sequence, featuring a fresh slice of Joey's childishness naivety and truly-impressive visuals for an 80's era B-movie.

You know you've screwed something up when this is a
screenshot  from the most boring scene in your movie.

Unfortunately, for how much I've built “Zone Troopers” up, this movie has one fatal flaw: the aliens themselves. There is one short portion where the four soldiers have to camp out with a lone martian and it is very well-done. However, once the aforementioned martian leads the troops to another spaceship and introduces the two races, “Zone Troopers” truly crash-lands.

When the aliens take the form of human beings in an effort to communicate, it seems as though the writer suddenly had a heart attack. At this point in the movie, for literally 20 straight minutes, the martians say nearly nothing. The majority of the final third of “Zone Troopers” is spent on the aliens quizzically holding their translators to their ears, looking at the soldiers like idiots. They offer no explanation of where they came from, no explanation of why they're here, no explanation of what it is they've achieved with their species at all, nothing. This is a glaring flaw that made me subtract an entire star from my rating (And as you can tell, I am a very forgiving individual when it comes to “flaws” in film). There is simply no reason for “Zone Troopers” to have done as little as it did with what is arguably the very reason for its existence.

Despite this, “Zone Troopers” does manage to make up for this flaw with a slew of positive aspects. The casting is excellent; the actors all own their characters with amazing conviction. The action scenes are over-the-top to the point of perfection. The classic big-band soundtrack is used subtly to an incredible effect. Most importantly, Joey is the “heart” who is always there to provide light to “Zone Troopers”'s darker moments. Nonetheless, when you get right down to the main point of this WWII alien-visitation movie, the movie fails to deliver on a level that is unforgivable. I hated the aliens and truly wish that “Zone Troopers” would have done what it should have done with them.

To conclude, I will provide a very simple capsule review: “Good, good, good, good, good, good, good, SUCK MY MOTHERFUCKING DICK, good.”