Upset that the Third Reich doesn’t appear in either this summer’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or Hellboy II: The Golden Army? Of course you are. Nazis have featured in many great Hollywood films, from Casablanca to Schindler’s List. They’ve been the focus of one of the best documentaries of all time (Triumph of the Will). They show up in the best musicals (The Sound of Music), the best action films (Raiders of the Lost Ark), the best science fiction films (Star Wars, sort of), the best comedies (The Great Dictator, sort of), the best dramas (Judgment at Nuremburg), the best foreign films (Rome, Open City) and even the best animated shorts (Der Fueher’s Face). In fact, without the Nazis, cinema might not have had so many great war films, POW films or other kinds of films necessitating a personification of evil.

Of course, like many others I would wish for them to have never existed, because millions of lives are more important than any number of classic movies. But the Nazis did happen, and they continue to populate cinema for better or worse. We all know about the latest product of Hollywood’s Nazi fetish, Valkyrie, and we’ve seen a ridiculous trailer for a new Russian Hitler farce titled Hitler Kaput!, which shouldn’t be confused with Germany’s recently announced Hitler comedy Mein Kampf, based on a play by George Tabori (I Confess). And now, because we still need Nazi sci-fi, there’s Iron Sky, for which a teaser trailer (see above) has just been released.

The movie, which would be better off titled Nazis in Space (or Space Nazis), is an old-fashioned sci-fi film scripted by popular Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo. Its premise involves a secret history in which the Nazis escaped to the dark side of The Moon in 1945. Now it is 2018 and time for the Nazis to return to Earth, Independence Day stylee. Iron Sky comes to us from the makers of the internet-released Finnish feature Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (the seventh in a series), yet it will be distributed to theaters, perhaps because cinema loves Nazis.

Still in the works and without an expected date of completion, Iron Sky will be looking for financing at Cannes this month (the film’s budget = $5 million). Meanwhile, the filmmakers are also looking to involve thousands of internerd helpers through some kind of social networking-type of web community called Wreck A Movie, where apparently they’re accepting suggestions and ideas for the movie. For more info check out the film’s website.

[via Aint It Cool News]