About an hour into episode eight of "Hunters," Al Pacino's character OKs the execution of Wernher von Braun.

By gunshot to the head.

As von Braun sits helplessly duct-taped to a chair.

The fifth episode of Amazon’s new show features a surreal satirical sequence proclaiming, “Come to Huntsville, Alabama, home of the Space and Rocket Center, staffed by Nazi scientists, smuggled here by your government. Oh yeah. It really happened. Huntsville, Alabama, it’s some f---ed up s---. But hey, we got to the moon!”

Safe to assume Jordan Peele, executive producer of “Hunters,” won’t be receiving a key to the city from Huntsville officials soon. Streaming on Prime Video since Feb. 21, “Hunters” depicts a band of vigilante Nazi assassins. Set principally in 1977 New York, the show stars Academy Award-winning film actor Pacino, in his first TV series, as the group’s leader, Meyer Offerman, tracking down and snuffing escaped Nazis now living new lives in the U.S. Peele is best known for writing and directing hit horror films “Get Out,” which in 2018 won Academy Award for best original screenplay, and “Us,” from 2019. Before that, it was his sketch comedy work on “Mad TV” and “Key & Peele.”

Production for “Hunters” looks expensive, the actors talented, costuming a fun mix of “Dazed & Confused” pants and “Almost Famous” set pieces. However, like “Get Out” and “Us,” some writing on “Hunters” doesn’t exactly suspend disbelief. (Peele doesn’t write or direct any of the show’s 10, season-one episodes.) For example, in “Hunters,” von Braun, revered director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center who guided U.S. spaceflight to the moon, is depicted as having faked his 1977 cancer death. He’s now living in seclusion, purchasing birdseed and helping a “Fourth Reich” engineer a pathogen into high fructose corn syrup.

At times "Hunters" is entertaining. Other times it calls to mind Quentin Tarantino doing "True Blood." The von Braun "Hunters" episode is directed by Michael Uppendahl, known for his work on acclaimed AMC costume-drama "Mad Men." In addition to Pacino, "Hunters" stars include: Josh Radnor, one of the dudes from CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother"; Carol Kane, Academy Award nominated actress of "Annie Hall" and "Father of the Bride," and Logan Lerman, from those YA fantasy fiction "Percy Jackson" films.

Unfortunately, von Braun’s Nazi Party past isn’t fiction, although that didn’t become widely known until about seven years after his death. It’s also true the charismatic scientist, born into Prussian aristocracy, developed the deadly V-2 missile for Germany, a fact known well before his passing.

Apollo 11 Splashdown Celebration at Huntsville. Von Braun, Dr. W, Being carried to The Speaker's Platform. (MIX FILE)

As Time magazine reporter Alejandro de la Garza wrote in a 2019 story examining von Braun’s complicated legacy, “Before he was building rockets for America, he was building them for Hitler. Germany launched more than 3,000 missiles of his design against Britain and other countries, indiscriminately killing approximately 5,000 people, while as many as 20,000 concentration camp prisoners died assembling the weapons.” de la Garza also wrote of von Braun, “Some have portrayed his time working for the Nazis as a survival strategy, but others have gone so far as to frame him as a war criminal, or something close to it.”

As de la Garza notes, since von Braun died before details of his Nazi past reached mainstream, “there’s no possibility of hearing him out.” A bio on NASA’s website reads, “Von Braun was a member of the Nazi Party and an SS officer, yet was also arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 for careless remarks he made about the war and the rocket. His responsibility for the crimes connected to rocket production is controversial.”

The “Hunters” scene where Pacino and crew find von Braun, portrayed by actor Victor Slezak, from 1995 film “The Bridges of Madison County,” features Tom Lehrer’s 1967 comedy-tune, “Wernher von Braun.” Sample couplet: “Call him a Nazi, he won’t even frown/'Nazi, Schmazi!' says Wernher von Braun.”

Thus far, “Hunters” has earned a 63 percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score of 70 percent. A two-star Guardian review calls the show “dangerously insensitive.” However, an NPR review proclaims “Hunters” to be “more fun than it should be,” while Rolling Stone says it “goes big on grindhouse style.”

Update: The sentences regarding von Braun’s Nazi Party past and V-2 missile development were edited for clarity.

MORE ON ENTERTAINMENT

Scout shares her ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ movie secrets

Is Bama’s mascot on this classic Aerosmith album cover?

The American dreams of wrestling’s ‘American Nightmare’

‘Mandalorian,’ metal and comedy: a Q&A with Brian Posehn

Animator talks Scooby-Doo, Smurfs, if Shaggy was stoned