Reviewed By: Jay Reel

Directed by: Jerry Williams

Released by: Goatboy Films

3 out of 5 Skulls

Far away, on the planet Zeppo, Empress Molly (Debbie Rochon) is bored and orders her minions to begin an invasion on the planet Earth. The takeover scheme includes resurrecting the dead to attack the living, but the zombies prefer throwing beer parties to dining on warm flesh. At the same time, a professor is working on a “pulsar weapon” to defeat the alien attackers. Troma maestro Lloyd Kaufman co-stars as the President of the United States! We’re doomed!

Looking like it was shot with 90’s era VHS video cameras and processed in black and white for that “retro” look, “Zeppo” appears to have been produced on a budget of pocket change. The script is full of frat-boy jokes and umpteen sexual references, and there are ample bared female bosoms on display. The pruducer/editor is Eric Butts and the production designer is “Your Mom”. The spaceships the aliens fly around in look like penises and titties, and are rendered by computer graphics cooked up by…I dunno…a Commodore 64 maybe? Mario Paint? The green-screen FX is laughably shoddy and the costumes look borrowed from a high school drama club closet. Yep, Zeppo is yet another SOV family and friends feature-length home movie. It’s also a pretty fun ride for most of its 90 minute running time. Debbie Rochon certainly adds a bit of B-movie class to the production, and hams it up as only she can in the few scenes she’s in. The story is a beer and bimbos riff on ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ (Plan 9’s Conrad Brooks even appears in a few quick segments). Lloyd Kaufman shows up, sitting at his Troma desk for most of his scenes, as he’s done in roughly 10,000 other such projects, but he’s good for a few chuckles. And God bless the young ladies in Zeppo who display their tig old bitties! If you’re a fan of Chris Seaver’s raunchy-but-clever style of video madness, you might want to give Zeppo a spin. At 90 minutes, it’s a little too long for this kind of slapdash production, but I was smiling through most of it, and even laughed a few times. Zeppo is for aficionados of VERY low budget genre indies. Others stay far away. If you’re down for stuff like this, I recommend it.

This review of Zeppo is based on a screener copy. The feature is presented in 16×9 Widescreen and stereo sound. I don’t believe the movie is available for sale at this time, but you can go to www.zeppothemovie.com for more info.

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