The brainchild of producer Owen Crump, 1971’s Zeppelin is a good old fashioned WWI action fantasy, lavish for its time, and still packing enough style and swagger to be worth a look in 2022. Michael York plays Geoffrey Richter-Douglas, and if you think that’s a mouthful, you’re right. His character is supposedly German-Scottish, but he’s enlisted by the top brass in London to join the fight against the plotting Germans by going undercover on a zeppelin mission.
Having established that undercover zeppelins are dropping bombs all over Blighty in the opening scenes, we might expect this film to be about a mission to stop deadly zeppelin raids or even production, but there’s a quick science lesson to show us why they’re so hard to shoot down. Richter-Douglas heads off to German and infiltrates a secret mission; the Germans are heading over to Bonnie Scotland in the hope of stealing the Magna Carta, which is apparently hidden in a local castle. Richter-Douglas manages to stop his cover being blown, but does he have what it takes to Die Hard his way out of the heist and stop the zeppelin mission in its tracks.
With a booming Roy Budd score and some not-bad visuals of the zeppelin taking off and landing, this technically passes muster as a well-upholstered action romp. The support cast is also rich; Alexandra Stewart and Elke Sommer provide the glamour, the latter as a zeppelin scientist, and there’s war movie stalwarts like Andrew Kier, Marius Goring, Anton Driffing and even the original Maigret, Rupert Davies. Dr Who star Fraser Hines even has a bit as a radio operator who gets chucked out of the airship while in flight.
Of course, absolutely none of this actually happened, and the mission is fictitious; there’s an odd foreshadowing of Raiders of the Lost Ark in depicting a German search of an ancient artefact, and things move at a reasonable clip to a firey, all guns blazing climax. Zeppelin is old-fashioned to a fault, but looks handsome in widescreen and HD, and is worth a look when modern cinema is getting you down; it’s a romp, but not too silly and apart from some pitiful blue-screen, generally keeps the British end up without crashing and burning too hard.
This was a good one back in the day. Following on from Fraulein Doktor and pre-Hindenburg you might have expected a good WWI yarn but with realism instead of this Indiana Jones type spectacle. Great cast. Went out in the UK on the ABC circuit as the top half of a double bill with Start the Revolution Without Me.
I’d give this a go some day.
Is the correct answer, and quite a sensible one too.
Unfortunately, it didn’t come up in a search on prime. Only the dvd and vhs did.
No YouTube in the US for this one?
I haven’t looked. I don’t think of youtube as something to go to for movie watching. Maybe Great Aunt Mabel and her asthmatic cat or some dork explaining how to play a game like Magic the gathering, but not movies.
Movie prints on YouTube are often better than the ones Amazon charges for.
Owen Crump. Now there’s a name you’d rather not have.
Michael York’s real name was Hugh Johnson, which would have got some smiles.
Haha took me a few seconds but I got there.
Sigh. I’m pretty sure he’s related to Pat McGroin.
Sigh.
Blerk
I always get him mixed up with Hugh Jarse.
I have many friends called Owen Crump and no-one had ever suggested anything amusing about that name. What’s funny about it?
How very unoriginal of your friends. But that makes it even funnier, a clump of Clumps!
How very dare you, Mrs and Mrs Clump will not stand for being mocked!
That’s fine, they can sit.
Laughter, applause.
takes a bow
Standing ovation, cheers.
I am worthy.
Or even a clump of Crumps!
…there’s no end to this insensitive mockery of the good name of Owen Crump!
Would a clump of Crumps be chumps I wonder? I like to think so.
Just let it go! Let it go.
Pshaw. Meanie, I was having fun. Now you’ve put the crunch on the clump of Crump chumps. sulks.
It’s over. Walk away. No winners here.
I had so many more lined up! OK I’m gone.
Cor! I remember cranking away like that on the old kinetoscopes in the nickelodeon. Good for the one to five-minute quickies but I think my arm would fall off if I had to watch Zeppelin on one.
I bet you were always down the pier with your What the Butler Saw! Jellied eels and periwinkles!
I once got sick on a surfeit of eels. Lampreys actually. But that was long ago.
I’m sure a stirring game of the Minister’s Cat in the parlor will have rejuvenated you. Do you still use that shed on wheels for your daily immersion in the sea?
Decorum must be maintained. The whole shed goes out into the water with me. What sort of woolens do you wear when splashing in the Clyde?
Long John, striped and down to the ankle, then grease my handlebar moustache with wax. Where is your local swimming spot?
You can book a campsite here:
https://www.grandriver.ca/en/outdoor-recreation/Guelph-Lake.aspx
I only stay in the best hotels…