Iron Sky

Directed by Timo Vuorensola. Starring Julia Dietze, Christopher Kirby, Götz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul, Udo Kier. Club, QFT, Belfast; Light House, Dublin. 90 min

It’s 2018 and African-American model James Washington (Christopher Kirby) has landed on the moon as part of a publicity stunt to sweep the current president of the United States (Stephanie Paul) to victory in her upcoming re-election bid.

The unfortunate astronaut discovers that Nazis who fled Earth in 1945 are hiding on the dark side of the moon, from where they plan to launch an invasion. Can Washington and glamorous, sympathetic National Socialist Renate (Julia Dietze) save the day?

Viperfish and rare giant squids found kilometres deep down in the ocean have, by now, probably heard far too much about Iron Sky. Hell, they may even have been on the promiscuous weekly mailing list. From the New York Times to Which Lawnmower? no outlet has failed to give this crowd- funded, crowd-sourced, Finnish-Australian-German co-production publicity.

“Look at this film,” cried all known media, “It’s got Nazis on a moon base! It’s got Sarah Palin ersatz in the White House! Ho, ho.”

We love the production’s chutzpah. We love the bald satire of seeing the entire UN confessing to secret nuclear stashes. We even loved the hand-crafted special effects and CGI, a bargain on a €7.5 million budget. But we just didn’t love the movie. Unforgivably, for a kitschy comedy, Iron Sky is about as amusing as, well, fascism.

Where did it all go wrong? Film may be labour-intensive but, at the level of authorship, it rarely blossoms as a democracy. On paper, crowd- sourcing looks like a brave new world; in practice it’s production by committee.

Throughout Iron Sky, the dialogue is makeweight (sample: “You morons! And that’s an insult to morons!”), the plotting is muddled, and, while it may seem contrary to complain that a moon Nazi movie is silly, here goes . . .

History tells us that you can’t fake trash classics and you can’t manufacture a cult. Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Apple have retained a campy popularity because the people involved were earnest in their endeavours. In common with Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and the entire Asylum oeuvre, Iron Sky’s brightest ideas are all right there on the poster.