Film: Iron Sky (2012)

And now for something completely different…. All those Nazi super-technology conspiracy myths turn out to be true when some near-future US astronauts paying a return visit to the Moon stumble across a huge Nazi base on the dark side. This prompts the Nazis to launch a reconnaissance mission to New York by ambitious senior officer Klaus Adler (Götz Otto), accompanied by his naïve and enthusiastic girlfriend Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), to prepare the way for an attack on the Earth to establish the Fourth Reich. Cue lots of culture-clash comedy with everybody's best-laid plans going seriously awry.

The movie is a Finnish-German-Australian production, with the principal actors being from Germany, Australia and New Zealand. I suspect that it didn't go down too well in the USA, since it isn't just the Nazis who are parodied but the Americans too. The Moon mission turns out to be a re-election stunt by the US President (un-named, but clearly Sarah Palin, played by Stephanie Paul) who seizes on the opportunity to boost her popularity rating. And what could be better than a Star Wars-type battle against the Nazis?

This film is in hilariously bad taste throughout, and I frequently laughed out loud at its sheer effrontery. Don't bother to point out the plot holes or scientific nonsenses, this film revels in them (World War 2 era motorcyle-sidecar combinations puttering across the Moon?). The story was by Johanna Sinisalo, a Nebula Award-nominated Finnish SFF writer, but the sense of humour seemed to me to have a strong Australian flavour - subtle it ain't! I don't know what the film-makers were on, but they surely had a ball. Probably best watched in company with the aid of alcoholic pre-lubrication and with your critical faculties locked away for the ride.