Science Fiction World

At the end of World War 2 the Nazis fled to the dark side of the moon, built a Lunar base in the shape of a giant swastika and established a Fourth Reich. For decades they have quietly constructed a space armada to help them conquer the Earth. Astronaut and fashion model James Washington (Christopher Kirby), part of an American mission to the moon launched solely to kick start a re-election campaign, discovers the Nazi base by accident and causes the Nazi Moon Führer (Udo Kier) to bring forward his plans to conquer Earth using a fleet of space Zeppelins and a titanic space warship called the "Götterdämmerung" (German for "Twilight of the Gods").

If ever there was a more promising or crazy premise for a film, I have yet to hear it.

Fortunately Director Timo Vuorensola takes nothing seriously with Iron Sky (his directorial debut) and manages to craft an entertaining and incredibly bizarre space jaunt that is very hard to pin down. If you like strange science fiction and weird comedy, this is something you don't want to miss. Some of the slow motion sequences involving the United Nations towards the closing third act are particularly out there.

The way Iron Sky was produced was a bit different too. The film is a co-production between Germany, Finland and Australia, with half of the film shot on the Gold Coast. Almost 1.3 million of its $10 million budget came from an online funding initiative, where public investors (fans mainly) share in any profits Iron Sky makes.

There are no particularly outstanding performances, but no particularly bad ones either. The two Nazi officers, the crazy Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) and the passionate and deluded Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), are both good - as is the American Astronaut Christopher Kirby.

For a film with a limited budget, the effects are outstanding. The retro spaceship designs are brilliantly realised and the space battles are fun, funny and visually spectacular. It's true that the script could have done with a bit more polish and the final act was a bit too swift, but for a film about Moon Nazis you can't go wrong. In fact, it's easily the best Moon Nazis film I've ever watched.