Writing about IMAX yesterday reminded me of one of my biggest childhood fears. It wasn’t the dark, it wasn’t monsters, it was… Village Roadshow’s ominous, creepy cinema logo from the 1980s. Just hearing the opening sound effect -- which I imagined to be the noise of an undead rapist grinding a steak knife against the skull of an orphan -- was enough to start me screaming as a child.
It’s the first logo on this video:
Ever have one of those lucid memories as a child that you carry through to adulthood? Every time I was forced to sit through that creepy sequence, certain that it was the soundtrack to my imminent death, I clearly remember thinking “How can they show this to CHILDREN??!“
In my mind, the logo now appears unintentionally comedic. Why advertise the glory of your film studio with something that sounds like music for pall-bearers to solemnly march to in 2080?
That construction of bad animation and creepy synths always sent me absolutely batshit with fear. At the 8 second mark where the “Village Roadshow Corporation” is shot into the screen with weapons constructed by robotic overloads from a dystopian future opening up a portal to hell -- that’s the point where I was never able to hold myself together.
Usually I had to flee away from the screen, cowering behind a seat for fear of whatever was about to sacrifice my fragile mortality and splice apart my sanity. The closing synth strains always sounded like nothing other than an off-hand apology from a cyborg that was only doing the job it was programmed for, right before it tore my face apart with lasers.
Got any ads that gave you the creeps as a child? The “bowling for AIDS” ad doesn’t count, we were all collectively petrified by that.
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So many film and television logos STILL scare the bejesus out of me. Why do they all have such fucking terrifying music? Even when they lighten it up, there’s usually still a deep, ominous and droning bass sound that rattles the bones. Putting intros like this on home videos was really not a great idea, you start to regret putting it on at night, when you’re home alone, and a feeling of sickly dread is the last thing you need…
You may be interested in this: Closing Logos Wiki
I wasted a good few hours on that site, remembering the ends of tv shows that terrified me as a child of the 80s.
I never realised that they’re ALL creepy until you just pointed it out. The fact that that website rates each logo by “scare factor” speaks volumes…
Love that they describe the Village Roadshow logo as the “V of doom”, that’s exactly what it is!
See also: Justice’s music video for DVNO, which cleverly recreates TV logo animations from the 80s, without the eerie music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etWi1bOotd0
The smoking ads from the 80′s where as a girl puts a cigarette to her mouth, a metal hook slowly forms out the butt.
Though unfortunately this didn’t stop me smoking
a girl i went to music school with confessed to me that she had been terrified by the original Sale of the Century theme music, and was still creeped out by it even at the age of 17.