Pop quiz: what’s the first Masters of the Universe movie? Chances are at least some of you guessed the 1987 live-action outing. Well, you’re wrong. Kind of. The first He-Man film was 1985’s theatrical The Secret of the Sword, which was in fact the first five episodes of She-Ra (which hadn’t premiered yet at the time) stitched together and trimmed down into something feature-length. It largely fell under the radar and most critics didn’t even bother to give it a review, but it actually made more money than the far more well-known The Transformers: The Movie would the following year. This may or may not have been due to He-Man not croaking on a stone death bed at the thirty minute mark. I kid, but Filmation head Lou Scheimer never would’ve allowed that to happen.
When the decision was made to introduce audiences to He-Man’s twin sister on the big screen, Erika Scheimer–Lou’s daughter and frequent voice actress at the studio–was tasked with and/or volunteered to produce a song which would be used for the opening and closing credits of the film. It was going to be a full 80s power ballad and would ultimately be used for the end titles of every She-Ra episode later on. In addition to writing the lyrics, Erika also sang the vocals of Adora/She-Ra. And can I just take a moment to talk about just how fucking cool this woman is? Like I would love to have a drink with her and just chat about all things Filmation with her. She just seems like so chill! Nepotism isn’t always a bad thing, you know (also, for a long time I was under the misconception she had passed, something I was extremely grateful to be wrong about).
Erika also created a music video for the song which, for whatever reason, was apparently never released publicly until The Best of She-Ra came out on DVD, which contained The Secret of the Sword as well as the top five episodes chosen by fans. I can’t find a specific reason why this was the case. Presumably this was made with the intention of promoting the film, and maybe they couldn’t find any way to feasibly air it on TV. There was no YouTube back then, after all, but there is now, so fortunately you can watch it. This isn’t the highest quality upload I could find from a video resolution standpoint, but the audio is solid, and really I wanted to share a version that included the end credits (which are missing from the upload on the official He-Man and She-Ra channel). Back when I was in community college I discovered this song and would listen to it on repeat while studying or working on papers or just fucking around. So I have a great fondness for it.
Have the power today, y’all!