The S from hell

[azumanga]

For the next several years after, when shows like "Bewitched" would start to roll the end credits, I'd be running to the other side of my house yelling "Help! Help! Screen Gems! ABC! Screen Gems!", then go into my bedroom closet, curl up into a fetal position and drown out the music.

Out of curiosity, did you also act similarly after shows like Hazel (whose final season was on CBS), I Dream of Jeannie or The Monkees (both NBC)?

Personally, after SG's use of the Columbia Lady and the populuxe dancing sticks, they decided to go to the "S from Hell", so they could be more "modern" with the era, never mind that many kids (and some adults) who grew up during the late-1960s and the 1970s would develop a fear of the ends of TV shows. Despite the high fright level, SG used the "S" until around 1975 (and the music (truncated around 1971) through around 1977 or 1978.

I also don't know of any other scary logos similar to the "S", other than Viacom's "V of Doom". Don't know how that was created, though I bet that the conductor was in a very bad mood the day of recording, after an all-night session of finding the right music to fit the logo; so he had the orchestra play five ascending notes, record them on a worn reel-to-reel tape, and walked out the door.

One, however, has to wonder if Sony had the "S from Hell" in mind when they brought back the logo for their new film label (though colored silver on black, with much more pleasant music)?

I thought [the "S from Hell" music] sounded like an old Baldwin Orgasonic. I don't think the Moog had been invented yet.

At least some sort of analog electronic music must've been available at the time -- Eric Siday, the writer of the "S from Hell" music and a noted electronic musician, was also responsible for the CBS Color bumper music and the ABC radio news sounder.

 

[LKellerIII]

I don't know about you guys. I was a normal kid with normal fears...you know...clowns, whatever was lurking in my closet at night that couldn't get out as long as the sliding door was closed, etc. etc.

TV shows could scare me - there were a couple of Twilight Zone episodes that gave me nightmares. But I don't remember ever being scared by an animated logo at the end of a TV program. As a matter of fact, I rather liked them, and would usually wait until the end of the credits just to watch them. My favorite for awhile was the Four Star logo with those stars flying up toward the camera. It probably scared you guys. Buncha woosies... ;D

 

[firepoint525]

I remember a TV commercial that featured a beating heart scaring me senseless back when I was in about second grade, but beyond that, I don't remember much about it, except that I was crying for hours afterwards, and was inconsolable.

Fast forward about six to eight months, and I see the same commercial again! Only this time, it had no effect at all on me! Good thing, because this time, it was first thing in the morning, and I was getting ready to go to school!

 

[Markieo]

For the next several years after, when shows like "Bewitched" would start to roll the end credits, I'd be running to the other side of my house yelling "Help! Help! Screen Gems! ABC! Screen Gems!", then go into my bedroom closet, curl up into a fetal position and drown out the music.

Out of curiosity, did you also act similarly after shows like Hazel (whose final season was on CBS), I Dream of Jeannie or The Monkees (both NBC)?

It was for ALL Screen Gems shows, the ones that I knew that it was coming (Jeannie, The Second Hundred Years, The Flying Nun) I had a chance to hide. But when I was watching Huckleberry Hound at age 6 it came out of nowhere and ZZAP! Same thing when the game show "The Perfect Match" was on at my Uncle Leo's house. No copyright, no warning, just the theme song "You'll love The Perfect Match, You'll love DUR DUR DING A LING DING RING A RRRRRRRRRRING!!" My scream could be heard for blocks and my Uncle Vickie would yell "STOP THAT AWFUL SCREECHING"! I think I was about 11 when I could listen to the music, but even longer before I could watch the two parallel lines form together with the dot in the center and "SCREEN GEMS" zooming in your face! BTW The SFH started in September 13, 1965 and ended in August 1974. Then the CPT Pretzel (SFH in opposite, yellow on red) was used from '74 to '76. Also, Eric Siday owned the second moog in existence, the SFH has moog written all over it.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I wasn't really scared of the logos themselves as a kid, but some of them had music that would scare me, particularly the ends of some CBS shows like The Twilight Zone and Gunsmoke. I don't know why it was that so many production companies used music in their closing logos that either had a loud orchestra or really bad synthesizer music. When SyFy has TZ marathons they will show some uncut episodes with the scary logo included.

 

[NoWayNoCC]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the PBS bumper that appeared at the end of 'Sesame Street' in the '70s.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

I wasn't really scared of the logos themselves as a kid, but some of them had music that would scare me, particularly the ends of some CBS shows like The Twilight Zone and Gunsmoke. I don't know why it was that so many production companies used music in their closing logos that either had a loud orchestra or really bad synthesizer music. When SyFy has TZ marathons they will show some uncut episodes with the scary logo included.

I brought that up a couple pages ago. I think some of the scariness might have been the fact that the logo music came after half a second or so of silence. This was talked about a lot on the old Scary Logos group on Yahoo! as well. A few people have mentioned Eric Siday; His musical cues were called "Identitones", and ReelRadio.com has part of a demo presentation of his, which includes "CBS Presents This Program In Color", the ABC ID from the 60s', the old ABC News sounder from the 60's, and even the Maxwell House Coffee percolator sound, and yes, the dreaded S From Heck.

remember a TV commercial that featured a beating heart scaring me senseless back when I was in about second grade, but beyond that, I don't remember much about it, except that I was crying for hours afterwards, and was inconsolable.

Wonder if that was some sort of PSA? Some of those were awfully frightening on purpose, because the Ad Council, the American Cancer Society, and others were trying to scare you into buckling your seat belts, not taking a puff on that cigarette that older kid with long hair offers you, and of course, not littering..You don't want to make an actor of Italian descent pretending to be an Indian cry, do you?

Back on topic, the Carson Productions logo from the 80's was actually a little unnerving to me, many years after stuff like that bothered me as a rule (I was a grownup by then). Another one I haven't seen mentioned anywhere, and can't find on YouTube, either: The closing NBC News logo from the mid 60's at the end of Huntley-Brinkley. (The closing logo, not Beethoven's 9th, aka the one used today on "Countdown With SportsBoy".)

 

[firepoint525]

You may be right, Corky. That may well have been (and probably was) a PSA. Strange that I only remember seeing it twice.

For those of you who are relatively new to this board, there was a thread here entitled "Scary logos," or something like that, a year or two ago on here. If you feel like searching for it, have at it. I remember a number of great youtube links being posted on that one.

 

[azumanga]

[The S from Hell was] for ALL Screen Gems shows, the ones that I knew that it was coming (Jeannie, The Second Hundred Years, The Flying Nun) I had a chance to hide. But when I was watching Huckleberry Hound at age 6 it came out of nowhere and ZZAP!

Was the "S" also tacked onto shows that pre-dated its introduction in 1965? I would think SG would keep on the logo used at the time the program was made. Also, on properties that SG syndicated, but did not own, did they also tack on their identity (the "S" or otherwise)? I read somewhere that SG syndicated Universal's horror movies until the 1970s.

Same thing when the game show "The Perfect Match" was on at my Uncle Leo's house. No copyright, no warning, just the theme song [and the "S" animation and music]...

Didn't know they did that for videotaped programming, especially when the videotape concept was still young. Did the "S" also appear at the end of shows such as "Playboy After Dark" or "All About Faces"? I think "Days Of Our Lives" and "The Young and the Restless" were also SG productions, but they only ended with a credit for them (and later, CPT) until the 1980s, when they started showing a logo.

 

[dustintv]

I have never understood why anybody would be scared of the closing tags. They certainly weren't scary to me as a kid, I always thought they were cool(especially Viacom's and Proctor and Gamble).

Except for the closing tag with the dog! Man that ugly hideous dog with the creepy old man voice that said "Sit Ubu sit!" : ;D

 

[rhead]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the PBS bumper that appeared at the end of 'Sesame Street' in the '70s.

Funny you should mention that, as that was the one logo that actually did scare the crap out of me when I was a kid. The Screen Gems logo is before my time, although if I did see it at the end of a rerun, I probably didn't think much about it.

The PBS logo from the 70s and early 80s didn't only appear at the end of Sesame Street, but all PBS programs. On a black background, a blue P would move toward the center of the screen, which then became a P-head (facing left), which then moved to the left side of the screen, with the word "PUBLIC" under it. Then, an orange B would appear, two dots would be punched out, and the word "BROADCASTING" would appear under "PUBLIC." Finally, a green S appeared at the end, two dots punched out, and the word "SERVICE" at the bottom. A rather jarring (and to a little kid, outright SCARY) tune would play as this was appearing on the screen; Wikipedia describes it as "a rapidly descending, telephone-like scale, followed by five Moog tones."

Simply being within earshot of a TV tuned to PBS unnerved the hell out of me when I was little, that's how much that logo freaked me out! This, of course, annoyed the hell out of my mother, who made a point to tell me so every time the issue came up. After reading this thread, as well as the "Scary Closing Logos" thread that was posted on here a few years back, I'm glad to know that I was not a weird kid with serious mental issues just because I was scared of a stupid TV logo!

Here is an interesting Wikipedia article about all of PBS's idents, as well as those of its predecessor, NET:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_idents

 

[rhead]

It was for ALL Screen Gems shows, the ones that I knew that it was coming (Jeannie, The Second Hundred Years, The Flying Nun) I had a chance to hide. But when I was watching Huckleberry Hound at age 6 it came out of nowhere and ZZAP! Same thing when the game show "The Perfect Match" was on at my Uncle Leo's house. No copyright, no warning, just the theme song "You'll love The Perfect Match, You'll love DUR DUR DING A LING DING RING A RRRRRRRRRRING!!" My scream could be heard for blocks and my Uncle Vickie would yell "STOP THAT AWFUL SCREECHING"! I think I was about 11 when I could listen to the music, but even longer before I could watch the two parallel lines form together with the dot in the center and "SCREEN GEMS" zooming in your face! BTW The SFH started in September 13, 1965 and ended in August 1974. Then the CPT Pretzel (SFH in opposite, yellow on red) was used from '74 to '76. Also, Eric Siday owned the second moog in existence, the SFH has moog written all over it.

The "unexpected" factor; surprisingly, that was, on one occasion, the case with me and the one logo that scared me as a kid (the 1971-1984 PBS logo.)

Apparently, back in the early 80s (and possibly in earlier years), PBS programs did not appear strictly on PBS stations. If the TV was tuned to PBS, I at least knew the scary logo was coming and could "run and hide." So, imagine my shock early one Sunday morning when I tuned to Houston ABC affiliate KTRK-TV (channel 13), and as soon as the closing credits to the program that was ending were over, THE PBS LOGO APPEARED! I couldn't flip the channel fast enough!

Being the TV geek I was as a kid (and still am now), I found out later that this was not the only instance of PBS programming appearing on non-PBS stations. My late grandmother told me that she was flipping through the stations early one weekend morning, and saw the PBS logo not only on KTRK, but also on then-independents KTXH 20 and KRIV 26. Why this was necessary when Houston has a PBS (KUHT Channel 8 ), I have no idea, but that's another discussion for another thread.

 

[azumanga]

Then the CPT Pretzel (SFH in opposite, yellow on red) was used from '74 to '76.

I didn't think it was a "pretzel" -- the logo, which (in its finished form) was a rounded rectangle with a line drawn down from the top, which supposed to look like a TV antenna. Apparently at the time, Columbia Pictures was trying to overhaul its image for is film and TV divisions -- while it found a new image for its motion pictures (the "sunburst") around 1975, it was still undecided what to do with its TV division, other than reflagging Screen Gems as Columbia Pictures Television (to be in line with the other studios). The pretzel / antenna was apparently a stop-gap, until they decided to adopt the sunburst, matching the film logo.

The actual 1974-1976 dates were kind of iffy -- I recall some shows during the 1974-1975 season, such as "Police Story" and the new "Police Woman" series, using the Screen Gems copyright and logo (the logo being static as the show's theme plays), switching to the CPT name and logo the following season. I also recall the CPT pretzel / antenna being used through around the 1977-1978 season.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the PBS bumper that appeared at the end of 'Sesame Street' in the '70s.

Funny you should mention that, as that was the one logo that actually did scare the crap out of me when I was a kid.

Not me, though -- while the S from Hell scared the bejeezus out of me as well, I paid no mind to the 70s PBS logo.

Apparently, back in the early 80s (and possibly in earlier years), PBS programs did not appear strictly on PBS stations. If the TV was tuned to PBS, I at least knew the scary logo was coming and could "run and hide." So, imagine my shock early one Sunday morning when I tuned to Houston ABC affiliate KTRK-TV (channel 13), and as soon as the closing credits to the program that was ending were over, THE PBS LOGO APPEARED! I couldn't flip the channel fast enough!

Being the TV geek I was as a kid (and still am now), I found out later that this was not the only instance of PBS programming appearing on non-PBS stations. My late grandmother told me that she was flipping through the stations early one weekend morning, and saw the PBS logo not only on KTRK, but also on then-independents KTXH 20 and KRIV 26. Why this was necessary when Houston has a PBS (KUHT Channel 8 ), I have no idea, but that's another discussion for another thread.

Some PBS shows, such as Villa Alegre, Rebop and Vegetable Soup, saw airplay on commercial TV stations, even where a local PBS station was already available (unlike Sesame Street, which generally appeared only on commercial TV stations where there is no local PBS outlet). No doubt commercial stations aired these programs, with the PBS logo intact, in order to get brownie points for the FCC.

 

[ixnay]

The logos that scared me (in no particular order):

1962-75 NBC peacock (it looked scary even when static)
1971-84 PBS head
the Bing Crosby Productions logo (was it used on anything else besides HH?)

ixnay

 

[Markieo]

[The S from Hell was] for ALL Screen Gems shows, the ones that I knew that it was coming (Jeannie, The Second Hundred Years, The Flying Nun) I had a chance to hide. But when I was watching Huckleberry Hound at age 6 it came out of nowhere and ZZAP!

Was the "S" also tacked onto shows that pre-dated its introduction in 1965? I would think SG would keep on the logo used at the time the program was made. Also, on properties that SG syndicated, but did not own, did they also tack on their identity (the "S" or otherwise)? I read somewhere that SG syndicated Universal's horror movies until the 1970s

Same thing when the game show "The Perfect Match" was on at my Uncle Leo's house. No copyright, no warning, just the theme song [and the "S" animation and music]...

Didn't know they did that for videotaped programming, especially when the videotape concept was still young. Did the "S" also appear at the end of shows such as "Playboy After Dark" or "All About Faces"? I think "Days Of Our Lives" and "The Young and the Restless" were also SG productions, but they only ended with a credit for them (and later, CPT) until the 1980s, when they started showing a logo.

AFAIK, SFH was at the end of "Playboy After Dark", and they had a in-credit "S" during the closing credits of "All About Faces", white on blue background, "A 'S' Screen Gems Presentation".

The logos that scared me (in no particular order):

1962-75 NBC peacock (it looked scary even when static)
1971-84 PBS head
the Bing Crosby Productions logo (was it used on anything else besides HH?)

ixnay

BCP was used at the end of "Ben Casey". Also several ABC "Movies Of The Week" in the early '70's.

 

[firepoint525]

I remember wanting to get a cat after seeing the kitty meowing at the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on that MTM logo.  For a long time, I thought "MTM" stood for "Mary Tyler Moore."

Years later, I saw that same logo on the end of episodes of St. Elsewhere, only this time the meowing kitty was wearing surgical scrubs!  ;D

Anyone remember the first "Cousin Oliver" episode from The Brady Bunch?  Oliver is snoring, and Peter remarks to Bobby, "he's roaring like the MGM lion!"  That comment was hilarious, especially considering that Oliver's snoring supposedly woke him up from a deep sleep (making such a comment even further unlikely), but take that same scenario off of TV, and away from writers, and the comment would more likely be something like, "he's roaring like a lion!"  The reference to the MGM logo was what made that scene even funnier than it otherwise might have been.

 

[azumanga]

I remember wanting to get a cat after seeing the kitty meowing at the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on that MTM logo. For a long time, I thought "MTM" stood for "Mary Tyler Moore."

Years later, I saw that same logo on the end of episodes of St. Elsewhere, only this time the meowing kitty was wearing surgical scrubs! ;D

As far as I know, MTM did mean "Mary Tyler Moore" -- I think at the time, she was co-owner of the company.

Also, the MTM cat had many variants over the years, especially from the late-1970s onward, to fit the particular program -- more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTM_Enterprises

 

[LKellerIII]

I remember wanting to get a cat after seeing the kitty meowing at the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on that MTM logo. For a long time, I thought "MTM" stood for "Mary Tyler Moore."

Years later, I saw that same logo on the end of episodes of St. Elsewhere, only this time the meowing kitty was wearing surgical scrubs! ;D

As far as I know, MTM did mean "Mary Tyler Moore" -- I think at the time, she was co-owner of the company.

Also, the MTM cat had many variants over the years, especially from the late-1970s onward, to fit the particular program -- more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTM_Enterprises

"MTM" did stand for Mary Tyler Moore. The company was created to produce her own show, then The Bob Newhart Show and Rhoda. The company later branched out into other comedies and dramas. Mary's (then) husband Grant Tinker ran the company, if I remember correctly.

I assume everybody realizes that this was meant to be a little homage or parody to the MGM logo, which featured a roaring lion.

Interestingly, nobody has mentioned being scared by that lion logo.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

The 2 best MTM variants--"The White Shadow", where the kitty is dribbling the basketball, and "Newhart", with Bob's deadpan "Meow".

 

[anotherguyTN]

The 2 best MTM variants--"The White Shadow", where the kitty is dribbling the basketball, and "Newhart", with Bob's deadpan "Meow".

Then there was Newhart's final episode, which had the two Darryls (who never talked) yelling "QUIET!!!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McVWkGWMHKI&feature=related ;D