Minty Bliss and Selenite Secrets

I celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a Shamrock Shake from the McDonald's in Westmont. Now, I normally hate McDonald's, but I don't like liquor of any shade, so I figured this was the only green liquid I'd be getting today. It was actually quite good, a nose-clearing vanilla/mint greenish swirl. I drank it (too fast) while riding around a gorgeous park (too slow, so I could catch those river views).

I found a film I haven't seen since I was a kid at the Audubon Acme a few days ago and bought it last night - "Moon Madness." It's an animated version of Baron Munchausen's discovery of a lost civilization living in the center of the moon, the Selenites, and his quest to bring their Talisiman of Eternal Life back to Earth.

That's about all I can tell you, other than, according to the back, it was made in France in 1983 and (not too badly) dubbed into English in 1985, and it used to run frequently on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel in the 80s, which is how I remember it. In fact, there was a commercial for another 80s Nickelodeon French attraction, the animated series "The Adventures of the Little Prince," after the main feature.

(How nice it is to see the commericals AFTER the film instead of wasting 20 minutes BEFORE it! Why can't they do that now?)

The animation, with it's strange, sketchy moon monsters and round-eyed human (and Selenite) characters, is quite attractive for being an independantly made foreign cartoon from the 80s. Though not nearly as lush as Disney's finest, it feels something like one of the foreign cartoons Nick liked to run in the 80s done as a comedy ("Arcadia of My Youth," "Spartacus").

This movie seems to be completely and utterly forgotten; even the Internet Movie Database has nothing on it, and the few remaining copies cost a small fortune at Amazon.com.

(I only paid about $6 for the original Vestron Video copy at the Acme! : O 0 )

The most memorable aspect of "Moon Madness" (or at least, it's English dub) is the theme song. "The Secret of the Selenites" opens and closes the film and may be its most memorable aspect. The 80s rock-synthesizer tune is completely out-of-place in a sci-fi fairy tale set in the 18th Century, but it's nevertheless so catchy, I still recalled some of the lyrics and riffs 20 years after most the rest of the film had faded into the mists of my childhood.