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• Classification: M
• Directed by Timo Vuorensola
• Starring Julia Dietze, Götz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul, Christopher Kirby & Udo Kier
• Runtime 93 minutes

THIS Finnish-German-Australian co-production, Iron Sky, was financed by international fans of the Star-Wreck website with its link to the film’s trailer. The first known movie so financed with numerous small community payments, that’s why it took six years to get to our screens. Iron Sky is a cheeky movie that pokes fun at many things American, and at the same time it’s an amusing history lesson. While it’s not a great movie, it’s not a bad movie, its crazy concept works to an extent, it has its moments, and it’s all a bit of harmless fun.

Written by Michael Kalesniko based on an original story by Johanna Sinisalo and Jarmo Puskala, and directed by Timo Vuorensola, the movie starts off as a satirical critique of the current political climate in America, and then becomes a satirical look at Hollywood’s sci-fi blockbusters. While is starts well, it later looses pace, and then picks up again with the final scenes with heavy dosed in pathos. Considering its low budget, the sci-fi action scenes don’t Hollywood’s, but are still quite an achievement.

At the end of World War II in 1945, the Nazi’s led by their new Führer, Wolfgang Kortzfliesch (Udo Kier), avoided elimination by utilising a secret Nazi space program that allowed them to leave Germany, and set-up a base on the dark side of the Moon. Here they built a large fortress which now houses a massive armada of flying saucers, ready to attack earth, and proclaim the return of the Fourth Reich.

Behind in the polls for her re-election, look-alike Sarah Palin US President (Stephanie Paul) and her press secretary Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant) decide another Moon landing could well lift the President in the polls. Landing on the Moon the first astronaut out of the capsule discovers a large open pit mining operation in front of him, but before he can return to the capsule to report his sighting he’s shot by a Nazi sentry. The Nazi’s are mining Helium 3 to fuel their nuclear reactor for their power supply. Hearing the shot, his colleague African-American James Washington (Christopher Kirby) hurries to see what’s going on. Finding his colleague dead he hides behind a rock, but is soon taken prisoner.

Grilled by the Nazi’s chief scientist, Doktor Richter (Tilo Prückner) who is amazed by Washington’s iPhone, a pocket sized computer more powerful than his massive mainframe computer. The Doktor’s daughter, schoolteacher Renate (Julia Dietze) teaches her students Nazi history, how victory in World War II was denied them, mainly by America, and it’s now time to avenge the situation.

Now Doktor Richter has made James Washington white, Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) a Nazi army officer who wants to overthrow Wolfgang Kortzfliesch, and become the next Führer, sets out with Washington to take a trip to America and negotiate with the US President for a new world order. Before take-off Renate smuggles herself aboard Alder’s (her fiancée) spaceship. Landing in America they dump Washington, who becomes a street bum, now a white African-American. Seeing the US President doesn’t work the way Adler thought it would. So on their return to the Moon Adler takes over as Führer, and launches a spacecraft attack on earth.

Watch the trailer

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• Jiro Dreams of Sushi [G] (Four Stars – in cinemas now)

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