Zone Troopers (1985)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2022) Well, here’s a surprise! Before turning to his life’s work in terrible movies featuring puppets, well-known schlock producer Charles Band turned out slightly-less-terrible movies not featuring puppets. Or, at least, puppets meant to be aliens. Clearly a low-end film but not quite as cheap as Band pictures would later become, Zone Troopers has the benefit of an interesting premise: What if American soldiers in WW2 Italy encountered an alien ship? What if they fought the Nazis to rescue an alien survivor? What if the aliens sided with the Americans? What if one of the soldiers punched Hitler in the face? Yeah, there’s plenty of potential to Zone Troopers. Alas, fully unlocking its premise would require far more wit than was collectively assembled here – the approximation of a competent film is haphazard at best, and the constant tonal changes of the film (which eventually slides into a kid-friendly cute-alien kind of thing) are wild and severe. It’s hardly credible as a WW2 recreation, and the script is far from being as fun as its premise suggests. Zone Troopers gets a few points for potential, but hardly anything is left over for execution.