Zepped

Zepped
Title card
Starring	Charlie Chaplin
Release date	December 23, 1916 (1916-12-23)
Running time	"Over six"–seven minutes
Language	Silent

Zepped is a 1916 propaganda comedy short film about a German Zeppelin attack on London during the First World War. Charlie Chaplin appears in the film, although it is unlikely he himself was involved in the production. Making use of stop-motion animation, Zepped may have used previously-unknown outtakes of three or four earlier Chaplin films: His New Profession (1914), A Jitney Elopement (1915) and The Tramp (1915), and according to Bonhams, By the Sea (1915).

Plot

Charlie Chaplin goes on an espionage adventure. When his neighbor mistakes a passing German Zeppelin for a giant aerial bomb, Chaplin a disguises himself to thwart enemy spies and save the day.

Cast

• Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp

Surviving copies

Two copies are known: one was unknowingly purchased by a collector who bought an old film reel tin on eBay for £3.20 (about $5) in September 2009 and found the nitrate film inside. He put it up for auction in June 2011 but the sole bid did not reach the £100,000 ($160,000) reserve price. The second copy was found in a tin of assorted items bought from a secondhand shop in Sheffield in July 2011.

Exported to Egypt

Although a 1917 advertisement in the Manchester Film Renter announced a trade viewing, it may only have been shown in Egypt. An October 1917 entry in the British Board of Film Censorship's Ledgers says it was "For Export Only", and a Ministry of Interior film censorship certificate displayed at the beginning of the film states it was "Passed for Exhibition in Egypt".