The Film:
Iron Sky
Where to Watch:
Netflix
The Premise:
Nazis who have been living on the dark side of the moon since 1945 decide the time is ripe to re-conquer the Earth after President Sarah Palin-alike sends a mission to the moon as a publicity stunt. A war between the Space Nazis and Earthlings ensues.
The Uncondensed Version:
The film begins with the failed mission of an American shuttle landing on the moon. When the astronauts landed on the dark side of the moon, they inadvertently trespass on a secret Nazi base. The first astronaut is shot, the second is captured, and the space shuttle is destroyed with a rocket launcher (Would a rocket launcher work in space? This is an important question to me).
The Nazis take the astronaut to their headquarters, which is A GIANT SWASTIKA-SHAPED BUILDING. How has no one noticed this??? Is this a commentary on the American space program? I just wasn’t expecting political commentary from a bad movie.
Now we get a little Nazi backstory. Renate is just the little Nazi who could. She teaches the children the Nazi ways of peace, unity, and love because she believes so goshdarn hard. If she’s guilty of anything, it’s believing too much in making the world a better place/Nazi propaganda. The future führer, Klaus, is played by Günsche from Downfall, aka the Nazi Who You Are Uncomfortably Attracted To (a role usually reserved for Ludwig Müntze, who at least has the decency to be a fictional character). Things on his wish list include babies with Renate and the death of the current führer.
Back to James, the second astronaut. James is African-American, so the Nazis, led by a man who looks suspiciously like Einstein, perform experiments on him to make him white. Einstein-alike is also working on a secret Nazi super-weapon, the Götterdämmerung (seriously). It turns out the device can be powered by IPHONES, so the Nazis’ strategy is to get James to bring them iPhones, and, essentially, “take me to your leader.” This really begs the question of how their cars and technology have not evolved since the 1940s (they have fucking space zeppelins, I swear to god), yet they have survived on the moon for 60+ years and have managed to create a super-weapon powered by iOS. I KNOW…it’s just a bad movie, but still. I would appreciate some consistency. Also, none of the Nazis need helmets or space suits on the dark side of the moon. That just bothers me.
So anyway. James, Klaus, and Renate go to Earth to find iPhones and meet the President. Then Renate falls in love with James and has to learn a hard lesson about neo-Nazis and Charlie Chaplin.
Meanwhile, the movie gets even more political as President Sarah Palin-alike reveals she has orchestrated the moon landing as a publicity stunt. But it hasn’t boosted her ratings as she had hoped. What will give her that ratings boost? Starting a war, apparently. I wonder where she will ever find a group of warmongers who are almost universally despised by the American people with whom to do battle.
Surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly), Klaus and Renate meet the President, quickly becoming key figures in her re-election campaign.
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin-alike’s campaign manager(I think?) becomes obsessed with Klaus, but he doesn’t really care about her since she’s not a Nazi. Though she does a pretty great/actually funny parody of the Hitler rant scene from Downfall (coincidentally, she is played by the Jabberwocky from Once Upon a Time in Wonderland [which became too unbearable even for me]).
Finally, there’s a war between the Earth and the Moon Nazis, which is going pretty well for the Earth until the Götterdämmerung is revealed to be a huge Nazi UFO/space warship. The movie ends pretty much how you would expect it to, though I won’t reveal every detail because THIS MOVIE IS ABOUT THE JOURNEY. And the moon getting nuked.
The Critique:
Overall an excellent bad movie. Not as good as Nazis at the Center of the Earth, but better than expected. I should never have suspected a film about space Nazis would be less than spectacular.
Some of the humor and quirkiness were actually effective rather than falling uncomfortably short as they do so frequently in bad movies. The strong sociopoilitical critique worked quite well, bringing environmentalism, nuclear weaponry, and the Republican Party under scrutiny, albeit largely for comic purposes.
The major disappointment of this film is, of course, the complete absence of Hitler. Surely colonizing the moon would require decades of planning. How did the Nazis utterly fail to bring Hitler with them to the moon??? I feel it’s just inconsiderate in this day and age to make a bad Nazi movie without the presence of Hitler or at least an explanation of his absence. I knew in my heart that the Götterdämmerung wouldn’t be Robot Hitler, but I was still extremely disappointed that Hitler didn’t appear in this movie, in robot form or otherwise. Coincidentally, I believe this is the only context in which I am legally permitted to express dismay at the absence of Hitler.
The Rating:
4/5 Pink Panther heads
What should I watch next? I’m thinking FDR: American Badass, but I’m willing to take suggestions for my Bad Movie Bucket List here.
The Pink Panther Snipes Again 