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. 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
VOYAGE TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH aka Planet at the Center of the Earth aka “Journey to the Centre of the Earth, or Various Adventures of Clairancy and His Companions, to Spitsbergen, to the North Pole, and to Unknown Countries, translated from the English of Hormidas Peath by M. Jacques Saint-Albin”. 
This particular story centers around the fictional seaman Hormidas Peath and his crew who became shipwrecked in the icy Arctic Sea in 1806. They were shocked to discover that temperatures got warmer the further north they went, so they kept following the warmer air until they reached the Iron Mountains. 
HOME aka Future Soap (1968) – This science fiction drama set hundreds of years in the future first aired on January 19th, 1968 on American Public Broadcasting’s N.E.T. Playhouse. Home is a 90-minute piece about the threat of overpopulation – and the excuses that threat gives the government to impose authoritarian conditions on the populace – set among a honeycomb of claustrophobic rooms in which citizens of the future must spend their lives due to the dictates of the government. 
Food is in pill form, rituals praising the government are required and “happy drugs” must be consumed daily in order to keep the populace in line. When a couple is able to obtain permission to have a child they must wait until someone in their communal room dies. 
CITY BENEATH THE SEA (1962) – For starters, this is NOT the 1970s movie nor the 1950s movie of this title. This City Beneath the Sea is a seven-part television serial from Great Britain. In the past Balladeer’s Blog has covered similar British tv serials like the original Quatermass adventures, Pathfinders in Space and its sequels, in addition to The Trollenberg Terror, plus Object Z and Object Z Returns. 
City Beneath the Sea stars Gerald Flood as reporter Mark Bannerman and Stewart Guidotti as his photographer Peter Blake. The villains are led by Germans who served in World War Two, like Denis Goacher as former U-Boat commander Kurt Swendler and Aubrey Morris as mad scientist Professor Ludwig Ziebrecken. 
AN AUTOMATIC ENIGMA (1878) – By Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the past Balladeer’s Blog has reviewed some of 
BETWEEN TIME AND TIMBUKTU – A SPACE FANTASY BY KURT VONNEGUT JR (March 13th) – Dated humor mars this generally well made 86-minute sci-fi story directed by Fred Barzyk and based on the writings of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 
THE CLONES (1973) – This neglected sci-fi item from the 70s was directed by Lamar Card & Paul Hunt, based on Hunt’s story. The Clones falls into that category of films that I always refer to as “X-Movies” because of the way they put one in mind of the paranoid and conspiratorial air of the best X-Files episodes. 
Gregory Sierra, best known to trivia buffs as “And Gregory Sierra” for the number of times he was credited like that in various television shows and movies, plays Nemo, a government agent tasked to keep the clone project a secret and bring in the escapee. 
FIVE TOMORROWS – On February 5th 1970, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. hosted an NET Playhouse presentation of five short films which presented grim visions of the future. Vonnegut was interviewed and offered comments on the international shorts from the high flux beam reactor in Brookhaven (NY) National Laboratories’ center for advanced experimental research.
THE ABYSMAL INVADERS (1929) – Written by Edmond Hamilton. This is a nice mish-mash of elements that are part Creature Feature, part Doctor Who and part Jurassic Park. Hamilton gets bashed as a hack but his stories are harmless fun. 
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE (1818) – Written under the pseudonym “D” this work was published the same year as Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. The story is presented as written observations of the world in October and November of the year 2318. 
Balladeer's Blog 