Steven Spielberg’s sister Anne got her start as a producer for many of the cheapjack science fiction films of Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler. She had worked with them – and Cameron Mitchell – as far back as 1975’s Death: The Ultimate Mystery. With apologies to fans of the original Doctor Who series, to me “E-Space” will always mean EMENEGGER SPACE, as in the Emenegger-verse of his series of movies in 1980 and 1981.
Emenegger Space is full of Grade Z special effects, bad acting, a few good ideas and an overall feel of striving for Alien and Star Trek levels but falling far, far short.
WARP SPEED (1981) – Set in the far-off year 2013 (!) this movie features the crew of a spaceship sent to determine what happened to the vanished crew of a multi-year mission to Saturn. The organization they serve is called Starfleet, which serves as a reminder that by 1981 there was just the original Star Trek series, its cartoon version and one movie, not the enormous universe of spin-offs that we have today. Point being that the term Starfleet was apparently open for use by other creators. Starfleet features in another Spielberg/ Emenegger/ Sandler joint, too.
Adam West plays Captain Lofton, the leader of the now-lost mission, and has assorted offspring of Cameron Mitchell backing him up in this movie. One such Mitchell, Camille, stars as Dr Janet Trask, a psychic who is sent into the abandoned Atlas vessel to investigate the cause of the crew’s disappearance.
Trask is outfitted with tech which sends back images of the psychic visions she receives of past events on the ghost-ship. Amid assorted David Lynch-style psychosexual interludes we see disaster strike the Atlas, followed by an aborted mission and ultimately a mutiny as the crew try to get the damaged craft back to the Earth. Continue reading
OBJECT Z (1965) – Directed by Daphne Shadwell and written by Christopher McMaster, this was one of the many six-episode science fiction serials from British television of the 1950s and 1960s. The Quatermass serials are among the best remembered of those programs but there were also items like The Trollenberg Terror, a serial later adapted into the B-Movie The Crawling Eye. 
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I love sharing my enthusiasms. My blog posts where I provide contemporary slants to Ancient Greek Comedies to make them more accessible have been big hits over the years, so I’ve been trying it with operas, too. Previously I wrote about how Philip Wylie’s science fiction novel Gladiator could be done as an opera. Then I looked at how an opera version of the 1966 Spaghetti Western Django could be done and then an opera based on the novel Venus in Furs. 
BIDEN HAS KIDS IN CAGES (like during Obama’s and Trump’s administrations). Oh, that’s right, anti-Trump fascists never really cared about kids being in cages, they just wanted to use those kids as a political stick to attack Trump with. Now those hypocrites are back to not even pretending to care about such things. Anti-Trumpers apparently won’t complain about Joe Biden’s kids in cages. 
For Flashman Down Under, Flashman in the Opium War & Flashman and the Kings click 
The duo enjoy diving into the darker and more forbidden side of life where sex, booze and other diversions are concerned. Flashman happens to be with Burton in Egypt in early 1853 when the famous explorer begins his journey to Medina and Mecca disguised as a Muslim. 
I consider President Trump the best president for the working class and the poor during my lifetime. Here’s a take from a true working class heroine. Mary Harris Jones, the legendary labor organizer from the 1890s onward, also known as “the Miner’s Angel” and “Mother Jones,” spoke to Balladeer’s Blog yet again, despite being dead since 1930. 
BB: I admit the stench from Washington, DC is amazing. “Draining the Swamp” as it were, demonstrated the depth of corruption and outright criminal activity the Democrats and Republicans are responsible for. It took a de facto Third Party President like Trump to peel back the curtain. 
MJ: First off, President Trump is like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR was looking out for the working class and the poor, so rich fat cat scum tried to destroy him like they’re doing with Donald Trump. They even tried the noted Businessman’s Coup plot against FDR. 
THIRD, President Trump is like that Robert Redford fella when he played Brubaker! Like Trump, Brubaker was trying to clean out a virtual sewer of corrupt officialdom. Even if the scumbags fighting Trump oust him, it will be like the ending of Brubaker, when the prisoners – or American citizens in Trump’s case – gathered around to pay him respect. 
NICK CARTER IN PRAGUE (1978) – This film seems to like to hide from the millions of Nick Carter fans in the world by also going under titles like Adele Has Not Had Her Dinner or Dinner With Adele. I originally planned to review this movie last year but the passing of actor Robert Conrad prompted me to review his telefilm The Adventures of Nick Carter instead. 
The approach is wry and knowing but without stooping to the overdone camp of 1975’s Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, starring Ron Ely. Nick Carter in Prague is often labeled a comedy but don’t go into it expecting laughs, just lots of smiles like during Dick Tracy or Tim Burton’s Batman. It’s more “comedy” as in whimsical fantasy touches, not hard belly laughs. 
Remember when the following Democrat slogans were intended by me as humor? Well, the Democrats are proving they’re worse than any of us imagined. WE NEED THIRD PARTIES!
For Balladeer’s Blog’s review of the very first episode of this 1971-1973 series about London by Gaslight detectives from both the Victorian and Edwardian Ages you can simply click 
Episode: THE SECRET OF THE FOXHUNTER (February 3rd, 1973) 
Something I found interesting about the Duckworth Drew spy stories was the way that, despite their national chauvinism in which it is just assumed that Great Britain is “the good guy,” the rival powers of Germany, Russia and France are not depicted as devils incarnate. Certainly they’re never presented in truly sympathetic ways but since these stories were written before the World Wars and the Cold War, they’re comparatively restrained in dealing with Drew’s opposition. 
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