Zone Troopers | |
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![]() Italian poster | |
Directed by | Danny Bilson |
Written by | Danny Bilson Paul De Meo |
Produced by | Paul De Meo |
Starring | Tim Thomerson Timothy Van Patten Art LaFleur Biff Manard |
Cinematography | Mac Ahlberg |
Edited by | Ted Nicolaou |
Music by | Richard Band |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Empire Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $3.5 million [1] |
Zone Troopers is a 1985 American World War II science fiction film directed by Danny Bilson and starring Tim Thomerson. It was filmed in Italy by Empire Pictures with Charles Band as executive producer. The original music score was composed by Richard Band.
Set in Italy in World War II, four members of an American military patrol, led by their grizzled sergeant (Tim Thomerson), are lost behind enemy lines. They discover an alien spaceship that has crash-landed in the woods, along with its crew. The alien pilot is dead, and one of the aliens has been captured by the Nazis, hampering efforts of the aliens to return home. A larger Nazi unit, with scientific and medical personnel, also investigates the crash, seeking to capture the alien's technology and use it to win the war. However, the aliens side with the Americans after the Nazis' actions against their crewmember.
The film was released on videocassette by Lightning Video in 1986. In 2005 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer issued a widescreen print of the film, which was shown on Showtime, fueling speculation that a DVD release may be possible in the near future.
The film was released on a manufactured-on-demand DVD-R by MGM as part of their Limited Edition Series on December 6, 2011.
The film was released on Region A Blu-ray on July 28, 2015 by Kino Lorber. It features a commentary track by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, an interview with Tim Thomerson, and the film's original trailer.
This film reunited a significant portion of the cast and creators of the 1985 film Trancers .
TV Guide found that while "Thomerson [did] a nice job as the sergeant", the movie failed to mesh the war and science fiction genres well and moved at a slow pace. [2] Creature Feature gave the movie 3 out of 5 stars, found that it was gentler than other Charles Band productions, saying the movie was mildly enjoyable and praised the 1940s era sound track. [3] Radio Times compared the film to the earlier movie, Trancers , describing Zone Troopers as a "witty, irreverent, time-travelling adventure [that] also deserves cult classic status." [4] As of August 2019, the movie has a score of 42% at Rotten Tomatoes. [5]
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Joseph Timothy Thomerson is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for his role as Jack Deth in the Trancers film series, his work in numerous low-budget features, and his comedic television roles. He appeared in the films Uncommon Valor, Air America, Volunteers, Who's Harry Crumb?, Iron Eagle, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Trancers is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by Charles Band and starring Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, and Art LaFleur. It is the first film in the Trancers series. Thomerson plays Jack Deth, a Philip Marlowe-esque police detective from the 23rd century who travels to the 1980s to bring his old nemesis to justice. The film portrays a unique method of time travel: people can travel back in time by injecting themselves with a drug that allows them to take over the body of an ancestor.
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Trancers 6 is a 2002 American science fiction horror film directed by Jay Woelfel and starring Zette Sullivan, Jennifer Capo, Robert Donavan, Timothy Prindle, Jere Jon, Jennifer Cantrell, Ben Bar, James R. Hilton, Kyle O. Ingleman, Gregory Lee Kenyon and Douglas Smith. The film was produced by Johnnie J. Young of Young Wolf Productions.
Daniel Bilson is an American writer, director, and producer of movies, television, video games, and comic books. Together with his frequent collaborator, Paul De Meo, he is best known as the writer for the film The Rocketeer (1991) and creator, writer, producer and director for the television series Viper, The Sentinel (1996) and The Flash (1990). He has written multiple issues of the comic book The Flash, as well as scripts for multiple video games, including James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2003). Da 5 Bloods (2020), based on a screenplay written by Bilson & De Meo, was released following De Meo's death.
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Predator is an American science fiction action anthology media franchise centered on the film series depicting humankind's encounters with an intelligent race of extraterrestrial trophy-seeking hunters known as the "Yautja". Produced and distributed by 20th Century Studios, the series began with Predator (1987), directed by John McTiernan, and was followed by three sequels, Predator 2 (1990), Predators (2010), The Predator (2018), and one prequel, Prey (2022). The series has led to numerous novels, comics, and video game spin-offs such as Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005) and Predator: Hunting Grounds (2020). The Alien vs. Predator franchise combines the continuities and universe of the Alien franchise with the Predator franchise and consists of two films as well as varying series of comics, books, and video games. Unlike the Alien franchise, which features a continuous story arc, the Predator films are more non-linear, instead focusing on individual encounters with the Predators spread across multiple timeframes.
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Paul James De Meo was an American screenwriter and producer for film, television and video games. He frequently worked with Danny Bilson. Together, they wrote Eliminators (1986), The Rocketeer (1991), the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2003), the television series Viper, The Sentinel (1996), and both the television and comic book series of The Flash (1990). Da 5 Bloods (2020), based on a screenplay written by De Meo and Bilson, was released posthumously. He wrote two comics based on the Red Faction series: Armegeddon and Red Faction: Guerrilla: A Fire On Mars produced by Wildstorm Comics.
Trancers 4: Jack of Swords is a 1994 American sci-fi fantasy adventure film starring Tim Thomerson as Jack Deth. The film also features Stephen Macht and Stacie Randall. It was filmed back-to-back with Trancers 5: Sudden Deth in and around a castle in Romania that was also used in another Full Moon Entertainment produced film series called Subspecies.
Biff Manard was an American actor.