IRON SKY *** Finland / Germany / Australia 2012 Dir: Timo Vuorensola. 93 mins
Vuorsensola’s engaging, partly crowd-funded high-concept wannabe-cult movie has a wonderfully loopy premise: in 1967, this would have been made for $20, starred John Carradine and entitled HORROR OF THE MOON NAZIS. In 1945, Nazis left the Earth, setting up camp on the Dark Side of the Moon. In the present day, the U.S. President (Stephanie Paul in a grotesque parody of Sarah Palin that wears a little thin after a while) sends astronauts to the Moon to boost her chances of re-election, particularly with the aid of one black astronaut (Christopher Kirby). In the process, Kirby is turned into an unconvincing Aryan as part of new Fuhrer Udo Kier’s plans for an invasion of Earth. Existing somewhere between the post-Roswell American sci-fi movie, 1970’s Nazisploitation and DR. STRANGELOVE, this free-wheeling, enthusiastic satire is a lot of fun, with clever gags about THE GREAT DICTATOR, lots of on the nose dialogue (“A good war always makes the president popular”) and remarkably good production values and visual effects. It’s fabulous to see Kier (though his screen time is limited) and Julia Dietze delivers a fine comic performance as a sexy Nazi schoolteacher. The dialogue also has an appealing tendency toward smutty, schoolboy humour, resembling Mel Brooks in his heyday: “He fell for the old one-last-blowjob offer!” / “Take positions around this fat phallus”.
Review by Steven West
