Masters of Venus
Masters of Venus is a 1962 British science fiction black-and-white film serial directed by Ernest Morris and starring Norman Wooland, Mandy Harper, and Robin Stewart. It was produced by A. Frank Bundy for the Children's Film Foundation and distributed as a weekly serial in eight 16-minute parts, each of which ends on a cliffhanger, for Saturday morning cinema clubs. The complete serial has a running time of 133 minutes.
Two children are accidentally launched into space in a rocket built by their father, and land on the planet Venus.
Plot
The rocket Astarte is prematurely fired into space by Venusian saboteurs. On board are two children. When the rocket ends up on Venus, they experience a sequence of Flash Gordon style adventures, in a civilisation which consists of the super-advanced survivors of Atlantis. Ultimately, by their intervention, war between Earth and Venus is averted.Production
One of the regular characters, the Venusian girl Marla, was played by the 16-year-old Zienia Merton, who later in her career would appear in Doctor Who and in Space:1999.There were two types of Venusians, a group of five-fingered ones and a group of six-fingered ones. Actors playing the latter had to wear gloves to simulate 6 fingers, and as a pair could not be found small enough for Zienia, she recalls the director telling her to "keep my hands clasped and not to point at anything."