MASTERS OF VENUS (1962) – A year before Doctor Who came to British television this 8-part movie serial played theaters as part of the viewing block for Saturday Morning Cinema Clubs.
Our British cousins could drop their kids off at theaters for a few hours of tame entertainment from such “clubs” while they themselves shopped or ran other errands.
The Childrens Film Foundation produced several such serials into the 1970s.
Because Balladeer’s Blog reviews items that range from mild and child-friendly to blood-soaked and transgressive, let me make it clear that Masters of Venus, directed by Ernest Morris, is just fine for family viewing.
It’s available on DVD and streaming, so you could get it to enjoy with the kids or grandkids (“aliens” as the one and only SP Wilcen calls them). Some versions keep the story separated into all 8 15-minute episodes, complete with the teaser for the next week’s installment, while others jam the whole thing together. Among the jammed-up versions, some are complete at nearly 2 hours in length and others are trimmed down to 93 minutes or 72 minutes.
THE STORY – The fictional British space program is preparing an expedition to Venus. The man in charge of the project is Dr. Ballantyne (Norman Wooland), whose children Jim (Robin Stewart) and Pat (Mandy Harper) ride their bikes to visit the rocket base one day.
The base comes under attack by mysterious Men in Black (I’m serious) armed with ray guns that shoot knockout beams. Security guard after security guard falls to the Men in Black, who turn out to be Venusians who don’t want Earthlings visiting their planet.
Jim and Pat ultimately hide from the intruders in the project’s rocket the Astarte, where the black-garbed Venusians knock out the two pilots before the vessel winds up launched prematurely. The rocket seems destined to be lost in outer space until the two pilots regain consciousness and reorient the vessel for its original destination of Venus. 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. 
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