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Scary Logos

Not quite a logo, but symbolic, nonetheless: I used to get the creeps back in the B&W era of TV late at night from some of the national anthems stations would play at sign off.

The Navy especially had a couple of creepy ones: One ended with a long shot of a large company of sailors marching forward with "eyes right". They were in full battle regalia, and they looked like they were about to invade Rhode Island.

The other creepy Naval anthem film showed an entire Navy band playing the song. There were various shots of the ensemble and a fluttering American flag, always sandwiched in between front/center shots of the conductor's back. He was waving his baton back and forth, up and down, and so on. I was always afraid that he was going to turn around, look at the camera, and say something creepy to the audience.

As they used to say, there's the right way, the wrong way, and the Navy way.
 
Here's another one that scared me #2less.

Peter Gunn.

There was a commercial lead-in that had (I'll describe as best as I can) dartish black spots that sort of formed a stick figure to the one side of the screen, and then the words "PETER GUNN" to the other side. While this 5 second vignette was going on, some quasi music - which I can't describe - played in the background.

There are chills still up my spine as I type this.
 
...I just came across one that I haven't noticed in years, and it still creeped me a bit. It's the 1968 variant on the ABC logo that they used for their theatrical films division back when --

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/5517/

...overlong and the music is overdramatic (sounds like the opening to Tora! Tora! Tora! tho that was a 20th Century-Fox item rather than ABC Pictures International). I saw this at the local opening of Take The Money and Run, which Woody Allen distributed through ABCPI. Seeing this damned thing five stories high on a drive-in theater screen -- especially the globe seemingly trapped within a strip of film -- was way too much for this 8-year-old to handle...

...as I understand it, this was first used on the 1968 theatrical film Candy, which I think the ABC network has yet to run itself (it got an X upon its first screening by the MPAA ratings board and had to be notably recut before it got its eventual R)...
 
timmyb said:
Here's another one that scared me #2less.

Peter Gunn.

There was a commercial lead-in that had (I'll describe as best as I can) dartish black spots that sort of formed a stick figure to the one side of the screen, and then the words "PETER GUNN" to the other side. While this 5 second vignette was going on, some quasi music - which I can't describe - played in the background.

There are chills still up my spine as I type this.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you're describing the opening theme and title to Peter Gunn. The theme music (by Henry Mancinci) was quite famous.
 
Lkeller said:
timmyb said:
Here's another one that scared me #2less.

Peter Gunn.

There was a commercial lead-in that had (I'll describe as best as I can) dartish black spots that sort of formed a stick figure to the one side of the screen, and then the words "PETER GUNN" to the other side. While this 5 second vignette was going on, some quasi music - which I can't describe - played in the background.

There are chills still up my spine as I type this.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you're describing the opening theme and title to Peter Gunn. The theme music (by Henry Mancinci) was quite famous.
Click to expand...

Not quite. Ironically, the Peter Gunn opening didn't creep me out. This was like a 3 to 5 lead-in to a commercial break during the show. Like the five-second shot of the big wave with "Hawaii Five-O" zooming in just prior to a commercial break.

Oh, another creepy (to me) commercial lead in when I was a kid. The Bullwinkle Show! Where Bullwinkle and Rocky were caught in a storm and then fell thru the ground and then came up thru the ground with the corn!! There were two differing tunes to that 5 second spot, one was sort of light and airy. The other sounded like the end of the world.
 
Oh, another creepy (to me) commercial lead in when I was a kid. The Bullwinkle Show! Where Bullwinkle and Rocky were caught in a storm and then fell thru the ground and then came up thru the ground with the corn!! There were two differing tunes to that 5 second spot, one was sort of light and airy. The other sounded like the end of the world.

I was an adult (ok older) when I figured out what that meant. Actually a girlfriend figured it out. They were pushing up daisies -the end! Pretty clever of Jay Ward & Bill Scott. Bullwinkle was filled with little secrets like that.
 
therealjm12 said:
Oh, another creepy (to me) commercial lead in when I was a kid. The Bullwinkle Show! Where Bullwinkle and Rocky were caught in a storm and then fell thru the ground and then came up thru the ground with the corn!! There were two differing tunes to that 5 second spot, one was sort of light and airy. The other sounded like the end of the world.

I was an adult (ok older) when I figured out what that meant. Actually a girlfriend figured it out. They were pushing up daisies -the end!
Click to expand...
...yeah, I guess I'd look that ticked off too if I had to push up dasies in that manner ;-) ...
 
i know its a old thread but the Group W logo use to make me scared
 
I'm a lot younger than the rest of you, but there were many scary logos I remember from back in the day as well.

1. The "kid in bed" DIC logo. Very eerie logo to have at the end of a cartoon. Went on for YEARS in the late 80s, and 1990s.
2. Renaissance Pictures with the portrait being ripped up in loud thunder. A very scary logo, usually seen at the end of Xena in the late 1990s. The Tibetan monk chanting just made it worse!
3. WGBH Boston, which has been mentioned before. I literally have to mute that logo if it's pre-1993, when it airs at the beginning of a WGBH-produced show (which was way too many). The jingle is creepy and still gives me the chills to this day.
4. At the end of Hollywood Squares episodes (Bergeron, pre-2002) were two really creepy logos (to me as a young child). One Ho Productions which was Whoopi Goldberg's production company...a very creepy, to me as a young child, still portrait of Whoopi is on that logo. And then Moffitt-Lee Productions which had a walking TV robot and weird robot noises. Hated both of them.
5. And for some reason, hated Harpo Productions at the end of Oprah...the old one with a cartoon Oprah pulling a wagon with the "HARPO" logo on it. That went on until around 2003 or 2004 before Harpo changed the logo. Maybe it was the fanfare.

Never minded the V of Doom, or the 1960s Screen Gems, or even Revue/Universal Television, which that jingle lasted well into the 60s and can still be seen today on reruns of Universal classic TV shows.
As for home entertainment/VHS companies, not too many creeped me out, but Gorgon Video (a horror distributor ran by MPI, I believe) is really creepy, with a Medusa sticking out its tongue as if it was a snake...and a bunch of fire. Looks like a logo out of hell.
Interglobal Home Video also creeped out a bunch of people with its moog synthesizer and beeping. It was out of Canada and was similar to Goodtimes, releasing videos in EP mode.
Many people who have watched Simitar's really crappy EP mode tapes probably remember a really creepy logo with an ugly S logo, loud synth music, a dark background, and a bunch of lights flashing. You'll find it on YouTube, just search Simitar Entertainment.

And like many kids who grew up in the olden days of VHS, some retail tapes had a white screen test pattern at the very end with a tone of some kind (believe it was 1khz). Freaked me out as a little kid when we forgot to rewind a retail/rental tape. Every time I put in a retail tape, I rewind it as soon as the credits begin, or as the credits finish up their listing of the cast. I don't care about the rest of the production staff, so it gets rewound. Not a logo, but still freaky.

-crainbebo
 
Stanislav said:
There's a funny, classic comic radio EBS test that has circulated for decades -- they have a group of people sort of jazz/scat-singing the text, and the test tone plays "Mary Had a Little Lamb." They also punctuate it with sound effects; for instance after the phrase "in the event of an emergency," you hear an audience in mock horror going "oooooOOOOOO!" You can find a RealAudio file of it on this page (scroll down to "Funny EBS Test -- I didn't want to hotlink to it) -- there is mention of the people behind it, and the site claims that some stations actually used this on-air as their regularly scheduled test (which I'm sure earned no smiles from the FCC).
Click to expand...

I wonder if that was the one on the LA Air Force set of production music discs...the one which ended with "Did you pass?"
 
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