In Italy, an American military patrol discovers a crashed spaceship and its alien crew. It also finds itself up against a Nazi flank packed with soldiers and tanks. Also: Hitler gets punched in the face.Written by Paul De Meo (Eliminators) and directed by Danny Bilson (who also wrote The Rocketeer), this is a film long on humor and crazy ideas but short on plot. If you like Trancers, well, you'll like this as it shares a lot of the same actors. Tim Thomerson is great as the near-mythic Sarge, a man who never dies no matter how many times he's shot. If you've ever read Sergeant Rock, he'll seem pretty familiar.If Empire Pictures was around today, they'd be talking about a shared universe where characters from ReAnimator would battle Jack Deth from Trancers and The Dungeonmaster. Oh man - don't forget RoboJox, Dolls, The Eliminators and Klaus Kinski from Crawlspace!

When their platoon is attacked only The Sarge, Joey, Mittens, Dolan remain.When they're lost behind enemy lines, Joey thinks he's seen alien in the clear blue moonlight.The next morning, Joey has been unable to convince his friends of what he saw.Mittens and Dolan (thinking the creature was actually a deer) go on a hunt to find food, but they find a seemingly abandoned Nazi camp containing images and studies of a mysterious space craft in the deep forest, sadly they're captured before warning the others.As this happens, The Sarge and Joey discover the UFO themselves along with an alien creature following their every move...Any film with Dollman in is worth watching, but this takes a while to get going. Having heard it was a cult classic in some circles, I was getting ready for some camp lines and cheesy set pieces.For the first half an hour, it's an all out war movie, with the same action scenes and characters you would expect from any carbon copy war movie. It's comical in this first sequence though because Th e Sargein one instance shoots a platoon of Germans and they all fall over at the same time.Just when tedium sets in, it goes from generic to plain bizarre. The crew befriend the six foot cigarette eating grasshopper, and before you know it, extras from space 1999 arrive on the scene with cool ray guns and even cooler translators.The performances are what you would expect from a film like this, and you can forgive the dire editing and effects. Thomerson is as gruff as usual and the final sequence will have you laughing at the unintentional hilarity.

Or why didn't someone with a larger film budget? Because this whole movie is a lot of fun. I just wish the special effects had been a little better. I'm sure that crashed spaceship mockup did cost them a pretty penny though.The cheesiness of the low budget, reflected in the alien costumes and minimal military paraphenelia is about the only bad thing I found in this genre effort. Badmouthing this film is like kicking a friendly puppy. The writing was great, the acting was much better than it had any right to be, and even the directing was absolutely appropriate.Yes, it is not realistic in the slightest. Yes, it is a version of World War 2 based not on the actual war, but based on other cheap movies about the War. And then it throws crash-landed aliens into the mix. But that just makes it so much more fun.There's a standard low budget WW2 movie setup: ragtag group of GIs is caught behind German lines and has to fight their way out. Luckily, this is in Italy so the Germans are a little ways out on the end of their supply lines as well. We get all the standard war movie clichés: the gruff Sarge who can't die (Tim Thomerson), the comic relief kid from Brooklyn with his pulp magazines, the green Lieutenant just out of training school, the grizzled Corporal who's been through hell and high water with The Sarge (the Tom Sizemore role, here Art LaFleur) and the hard-bitten, cynical reporter/photographer who tags along.Into this "haven't we seen this before a FEW times" setup comes strange goings-on in the form of a crash landed alien spaceship. And that, kids, is where things get interesting and fun. Things just get more ridiculous from there, with a blown-up spaceship, magical alien gizmos that make Rita Hayworth appear, and even a cameo appearance from Der Furher himself, just so one of the heroes can punch him right in the face. That's entertainment.Do check out Zone Troopers, but make sure your tongue is planted firmly in cheek, as they say.

Charles Band is the kind of producer that gives films a bad name: Dollman, Trancers, Demonic Toys. All so bad they're just bad. However, he has redeemed himself with this little masterpiece, a film so bad it's amazing!!! My friends and I LOVE this film. It has so many moments: the appearance of the fuhrer, the young soldier playing with his toys, the revelation that the alien is female. If you don't smirk during this film then you have NO sense of fun - in fact, if you don't fall in love with this then you must be clinically dead!!! MOTHY HAS SPOKEN.So go check it out - YOU'LL LOVE IT.