SUPERSONIC SAUCER (1956) – In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday Balladeer’s Blog presents a look at another harmless, all-ages sci-fi turkey, this one from England. Supersonic Saucer was produced by our old friends in Great Britain’s Children’s Film Foundation, the same group behind the previously reviewed serial Masters of Venus.
Believe it or not, Frank Wells, son of H.G. Wells himself, penned the story for this So Bad It’s Good flick. At an English boarding school, a few students whose families are too poor to be able to pay for their travel expenses wind up having to spend the holiday break at the school. They are looked after by the Headmaster and his tween son Rodney (Fella Edmonds), a science nerd who resents having to babysit.
Top-billed actress Marcia Manolescue, an English actress of Asian descent, plays Sumac, one of the students whose family could not pay travel fare home and back. Another such student is Greta (Gillian Harrison) and rounding things out is Adolphus (Andrew Mette-Harrison), the tubby youngest character.
While killing time over the holiday break our youngsters visit an observatory, where they are allowed to use the telescope for a time. They spot what seems to be a spaceship headed for Earth from Venus, but none of the adults on hand believe them.
We viewers know the kids are in the right, and the spaceship/ flying saucer is really a Venusian youngster. That alien entity used its race’s ability to morph from Muppet-like form to amoeboid form to flying saucer form fit for interplanetary travel.
The alien visits our lead characters upon arrival on Earth, drawn to them by the telepathic “fix” it got on them when they spotted it through the telescope. Because of the Venusian’s transitionary form that resembles an oversized amoeba the youngsters name the alien “Meba.”
The goofy looking Venusian resembles a thick, tall worm in a white hijab in its “normal” form but is hilariously rendered as a cartoon flying saucer with eyes for its airborne and spacefaring form. The “special” effect is as laughable as the cartoon spaceships in American movies like Invaders from Mars.
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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. 
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. 
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. 
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. 
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