Michael York and Germany don't mix

Another of the movies that I forgot to record off of TCM and had to watch on the Watch TCM app before it expired was Zeppelin.

The year is 1915, which means that the UK and Germany are at war during the Great War. As you may recall, back in that war the Germans hoped that their relatively new airships would be able to bomb London from the air, since planes were not advanced enough to drop bombs until the next war. The British are well aware of what the Germans are doing, setting up the sort of searchlights that you've seen in a hundred other movies about the two world wars.

Stationed in London is British army lieutenant Geoffrey Richter-Douglas (Michael York), who, as you might be able to discern from the name, is of mixed heritage, both Scottish and German. Now, for various reasons, including the fact that his girlfriend is a spy, both the Germans and the English have reason to believe that Geoffrey might be useful to their side in intelligence gathering. With that in mind, Geoffrey's commanding officer suggest that he fake a defection back to Germany.

The reason for this is that the British have reason to believe the Germans are working on a more powerful zeppelin than what they've been trying to deply up to this point. Geoffrey's mission would be to get the information on the new Zeppelin, code named LZ36. He flees to Germany, even getting himself shot in the process, which also helps in that the Germans might be more likely to believe that he's sincere about his defection should anyone question him.

And as you might guess, people are going to question him. Working on the LZ36 is Prof. Altschul (Marius Goring), who has a much younger trophy wife named Erika (Elke Sommer), although she's no dummy herself and is actually working on the zeppelin, not just married to the professor. Erika thinks Geoffrey might be a spy. Some in German intelligence think so, too, but need him in part for his knowledge of the Scottish coastline which is going to be necessary for their mission. Besides, if they take him aboard the LZ36, they can keep their new friend close and enemies closer, as the phrase go.

As for that mission involving knowledge of the lay of the land in Scotland, it's a fairly audacious mission. One is to bring paratroopers armed with mustard gas over to Scotland; the other is a morale-sapping mission to invade the castle where a whole bunch of historical documents have been moved to to get them out of London where the documents would be in greater danger of being destroyed. Crazy, I know, but some of these war movies have even dafter missions.

Zeppelin isn't exactly great, but it's definitely modestly entertaining. It's definitely worth watching if it shows up again, but I'm not certain I'd pay the Warner Archive prices for it.