York is both an aerospace engineer and a British military officer. He reports Stephanie's offer to his superiors. They tell him to accept, and soon York is in Germany as a double agent working in the German air force. York is to provide the British intelligence about Germany's new zeppelin, the LZ36.
York boards a test mission of the LZ36, and meets the ship's near-elderly designer, Professor Altschul (Marius Goring), and Altschul's hottie young wife Erika (Elke Sommer). Altschul and Erika are proud of the zeppelin's technology, but less keen on the war crimes it might commit. Captain Whitney (Rupert Davies) is nominally in charge, but Colonel Hirsh (Afton Diffring) has ultimate authority.
Hirsh orders the zeppelin to head to Scotland to take Balcoven Castle, where the British have stashed priceless documents. York's role is to help navigate the zeppelin to the castle. He attempts to sabotage the mission, and is caught in the act by Erika. Because it is a movie, she does not turn him in, and even seems secretly pleased by his actions.
The zeppelin lands near the castle, and a commando team exits to seize it. A battle ensues, which the Germans lose, forcing a retreat to the airship. Although damaged, it takes off and heads back towards Germany. It engages in gunfights with British planes and is shot down, killing almost everyone on board, though not York and Erika, who end up on the coastline of neutral Netherlands.
How others will see it. J. Paul Getty was, at one time, the richest person in the world. His son, J. Ronald, became an executive producer of a handful of films, of which Zeppelin was most prominent. Nonetheless, the budget for the movie was frugal.
During filming of aerial combat scenes, an accident between a plane and helicopter resulted in five deaths.
Zeppelin was a box office disappointment, and it was also critically panned. Today at imdb.com, it has an okay-plus user rating of 6.1 out of 10. The user reviews mostly award the movie 6 or 7, with more of the former than the latter. Reviews tend to praise the airship and its interior set design, while the cast and story receive less attention.
Although Michael York is the star, there seems greater interest in Elke Sommer, a bombshell actress especially popular during the 1960s. Berlin-born Sommer for once plays a scientist instead of a sexpot.
How I felt about it. It must be the nonconformist in me that likes Zeppelin. The screenplay, co-written by producer Owen Crump, is better than expected, and the direction by unheralded Etienne Périer (Bridge to the Sun) makes the best of the material.
The film's most obvious weakness is the presence of Atschul and his wife on the zeppelin. Atschul's motivations are at best mixed, and his presence is a hindrance to the airship's military mission. His curiously youthful wife, Erika, is there strictly to provide a potential love interest for Michael York. Her reactions to his murdering the telegraph operator, and sexually assaulting her, amount to nothing at all. It is as if these sorts of things occur every day around her.
Most of the movie has an interesting storyline with tangible suspense concerning what will happen when the airship reaches Scotland. In its final third, Zeppelin transitions from a wartime movie into a war movie, with soldiers battling for control of Balcoven Castle, and vintage biplanes in machine gun duels with the zeppelin crew. These scenes are undeniably entertaining, though inferior to the preceding scenes of York interacting with Germans within the airpship.