Iron Sky: Ten years on, this space-set satire feels even more relevant today

05:04, Aug 16 2022
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Iron Sky is now available to rent from iTunes. It is also available to rent on DVD via Aro Video and DVD and Blu-Ray from Alice's.

Iron Sky (M, 93mins) Directed by Timo Vuorensola ***½

Nasa and other space agencies and individuals’ focus might have been on Mars, but movie-makers in 2012 were obsessed with the dark side of the Moon.

Hot on the heels of Apollo 18's and Transformers 3's long-hidden Moon-based menaces came this Finnish- German-Australian comic science-fiction actioner.

It posited the theory that before the fall of the Third Reich, a group of Nazis – who had managed to develop space travel – set up a Moon base from where they mined Helium 3 and waited for their opportunity to return to Earth.

Less a pastiche of Nazism than a skewering of right-wing America, Iron Sky is a low-budget, but high-spirited black comedy.
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Less a pastiche of Nazism than a skewering of right-wing America, Iron Sky is a low-budget, but high-spirited black comedy.

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They managed to evade detection during the Apollo moon landings of the 60s and 70s, and it's only in 2018 – when the US President (Stephanie Paul in a parody of former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin) seeks to reignite her re-election hopes by re-entering the space race – that astronauts aboard the USS Liberty learn the truth.

However, before they can send word back to Mission Control, their lander is blown to smithereens. The only survivor is black astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby). He's captured by the Moon-Nazis, who interrogate and experiment on him, using an Albinism serum in an attempt to Arayanise him.

Fearing that he may be the start of a US Moon invasion, the Reich's forces, under the command of Führer Wolfgang Kortzfleisch (Udo Kier) and the ambitious Klaus Adler (Gotz Otto), immediately advance plans for their reoccupation of the "Fatherland", which now includes cosying up to the US Republicans, followed by a "meteor blitzkreig".

Julie Dietze plays Renate Richter in Iron Sky.
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Julie Dietze plays Renate Richter in Iron Sky.

Less a pastiche of Nazism than a skewering of right-wing America, Iron Sky is a low-budget, but high-spirited black comedy. Filled with corny one-liners, gratuitous expletives, overacting, kick-ass females and more cleavage than a butchery competition, Finnish director Timo Vuorensola's film is an unabashed B-movie and the throwback to the likes of 1980s and ‘90s films Total Recall, Starship Troopers and, perhaps more pertinently, Flash Gordon and Barbarella (mysterious clothes sheddage abounds) and direct-to-video "cult-classics" like The Eliminators.

Tonally, Michael Kalesniko's script is all over the shop – it veers from fish-out-of-water comedy to V-esque sci-fi and seems to want to be a 21st century Dr. Strangelove and yet feels more like an ‘80s era Doctor Who episode. The special effects are best described as clunky, but at least they are chunky and clear and there's a sense of fun that was lacking from that other higher-profile historical mash-up of 2012, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

If you're expecting a big budget space extravaganza, you're going to be sorely disappointed, but if you're after a slice of subversive sci-fi, then Iron Sky is ausgezeichnet fun.
Supplied
If you're expecting a big budget space extravaganza, you're going to be sorely disappointed, but if you're after a slice of subversive sci-fi, then Iron Sky is ausgezeichnet fun.

Credit also for the use of German with English subtitles, rather than the traditional comedy German accents, and for Slovenian industrial music band Laibach's evocative, ironic score which includes hints of Wagner, Deutschland Uber Alles and a poignant, yet pointed take on the Star Spangled Banner.

If you're expecting a big-budget space extravaganza, you're going to be sorely disappointed, but if you're after a slice of subversive sci-fi, then this is ausgezeichnet fun.

In English and German with English subtitles, Iron Sky is now available to rent from iTunes. It is also available on DVD from Aro Video and DVD and Blu-Ray from Alice’s.