Review: "Iron Sky" is send up to bad B movies and great fun

"Iron Sky" R
The team behind 'Star Wreck: In the Pickening', the oddball mash up between The Next Generation and Babylon 5, is given 10 Million dollars Finnish, and given actual B movie actors, like Odo Keur,to make the most outlandish Nazi movie spoof ever, the relatively ignored Iron Sky, which is probably the most brilliant B movie of 2012. The premise, in 1945, Nazi Germany, feeling the end was near in the Great War, launched a top secret space program to the dark side of the moon, where they might as well have found Transformers, but didn't. Instead they found something called Helium 3, and let their society evolve for over 70 years in seclusion until the day when they would return to the Earth, in peace, ha, and conquer it. Although their tech was considerably less advanced than other Earth tech, they managed to construct a fleet of saucer warships, Zeppelin space carriers carrying space rocks, and a giant Leviathan war machine thing that shoots everything in sight, a literal plot device as a giant super weapon.
     It is 2018 when the invasion begins and all hilarity is unusual given New York is clearly somewhere in Eastern Europe, (Frankfiurt on the commentary), and the field scene was one in Australia (not Austria). The goofy UFO invasion is a clear spoof of classics such as Plan 9 from Outer Space, Elsa She Wolf of the SS, and Independence Day. And how can you not root for the Dr. Strangelove riff in Odo Keur as the 'Moon Fuurer', complete with twitching arm and coughing spats! They even pay homage to The Great Dictator, the Charlie Chapin film. 
     The mockery of the United States is handled with goofy neo-con results in that the president is clearly a riff on Sarah Palin, ha, and her aide is some kind of vamp parody of Michelle Bachmann (as a female Dick Cheney, which is just weird). The President spends much of the movie claiming she will arm for war to win an election, and her space battleship is the George Bush, commanded by the vamp chick.
     It is R rated and at timesd extremely unsettling and offensive, but that's half the fun, especially when the offenses are immedately followed by albino humor, off color schitck, and crazy overacting.  It never takes itself too seriously, right on out to the hilarious 'everybody's armed their ships' space war, because evidently they watched Star Wars a lot.
     The Blu-ray version includes plenty of extras, casting stuff, behind the scenes stuff and commentary. Get that version.
Review by Adam Browne