Australia's cinematic obsession with Nazi sci-fi genre fusion

Space Nazis from Iron Sky will land in Australian cinemas mid-year.

In a freakish coincidence, Australia has just given birth to two sci-fi comedy movies featuring Nazis, both due for local release later this year.

The German-Finnish-Australian film Iron Sky is a €7.5 million ($9.1 million) production set in 2018 and featuring an invasion of Earth by UFOs bearing Nazis from the dark side of the moon, where they've been hiding out since the end of the war. 

The 25th Reich is a $1.2 million tale about five US soldiers based in Bacchus Marsh who stumble across Nazi robots in the outback in 1943.

''It's a case of the zeitgeist, this whole Nazi sci-fi thing,'' says Stephen Amis, the Melbourne director of The 25th Reich. ''Some people have tried to pitch it as us versus Iron Sky but they're very different films. I just think the fact that two high-concept science fiction films are being made here at the same time is fantastic.''

Amis's film, which he has just finished cutting ahead of an April debut in the UK, has largely flown under the radar so far. Iron Sky, by contrast, has been attracting the fevered attention of fanboys since 2007.

In fact, the film's Finnish special effects guru Samuli Torssonen has been building an online fan base since he created his first crude Star Trek parody in 1992. In 2005, he and director Timo Vuorensola released a feature-length version of Star Wreck, to the delight of fanboys. In 2007, they began working onIron Sky, inviting ideas, input and financial contributions from their followers.

About €1 million of the movie's budget was raised through pre-sales of DVDs and merchandise, through ''crowd funding'' contributions and through direct investment. In return, fans got to name spaceships and contribute artwork used in the finished movie.

Half of Iron Sky was shot in Australia, at Warner Bros studios on the Gold Coast over four weeks in early 2011. (Outdoor scenes planned for Brisbane were cut short when the location disappeared under two metres of water during the city's January floods.)

That there is an audience out there is beyond doubt. Since the theatrical trailer for the film was posted on YouTube on February 8, it has been watched more than 6 million times.

Iron Sky debuted at the Berlin Film Festival a little over a week ago, selling out four screenings and attracting fans from all over Europe. Some of the reviews were savage —  ''one giant damp squib'', said The Guardian — but if ever a movie were critic proof Iron Sky could be it.

''This is a social media phenomenon,'' says the film's Australian producer Cathy Overett. ''It's very much about the community that's been built around the film, it's about having a lot of fun and a lot of people being involved in the process. The fan base is there and they're really excited about it — and hopefully it will pay off at the box office.''

For Stephen Amis, The 25th Reich is in part an exercise in showing what is possible with a little bit of creative thinking. His shooting budget was less than half a million dollars. The special effects were created by eight teams dotted around the world, working, thanks to time differences, almost 24 hours a day for two years. ''This movie was really made via the cloud,'' he says.

Most importantly, it was an attempt to show that Australia could make a sci-fi genre film to be proud of. ''I didn't want to do a big tent-pole film like Transformers, both for aesthetic and budgetary reasons. I wanted to go back to that 1960s Ray Harryhausen stop-motion feel,'' he says (Harryhausen was the special effects mastermind behind such cult classics as the Sinbad films and the original Clash of the Titans).

What he's ended up with, Amis insists, is a film in the mould of early Spielberg and Lucas. ''It's extremely tongue-in-cheek,'' he says. ''The material is treated very seriously but in the end it's a rollicking adventure and it's very funny.''

Australian audiences will to be able to judge for themselves when The 25th Reich hits cinemas in August. Iron Sky will be released locally mid-year.

For anyone who can't wait that long, the SBS comedy series Danger 5 might be the perfect tonic.

A genre mash-up that combines Nazis, dinosaurs and classic 1960s TV series (such as Thunderbirds and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), the six-part series from Adelaide-based writer-director Dario Russo starts on February 27.

Source: smh.com.au