[#1020] Screen Gems S from Hell with Videotaped Viacom V of Doom Music
Channel: ITB ITB
Date: 2018-08-09

[Requested by corbin TEAM ROCKET music]

Nicknames: "S from Hell", "The Spiral S", "The Filmstrip S", "The Creepy Screen Gems Logo", "The Spiral S from Hell", "Burning S", "Scream Gems", "Attack of the Killer S", "The Personification of All That Is Evil"

Logo: On a yellow background, two red parallelograms (or lines) come from the top and bottom of the screen, and the upper one is at a distance while the lower is closer. They fly towards each other, and the higher moves forward while the lower backs away. As they do so, they grow in length and wrap around a space where a red dot appears, forming a stylized "S". Under that, the words "SCREEN GEMS" zoom in.

Trivia: The "S" logo was designed and animated by Chermayeff & Geismar, a firm also responsible for the six-feathered NBC Peacock, the 1984 PBS logo, the Viacom "Wigga Wigga" logo, and the Chase Manhattan Bank logo, among other designs.

Variants:
- There's an in-credit logo that's shown on the short-lived series Adventures of the Seaspray with the text "in association with" and "Screen Gems" in the same font as the credits.
- Another in-credit version was shown on The Pierre Berton Show with the text "SCREEN GEMS Canada Production" in the same font as the credits.
- Starting in late 1972, the byline "A DIVISION OF COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC." zooms up with "SCREEN GEMS".
- When shown in black & white, the standard scheme appears to be a light gray screen and black "S" and words. When shown in color, the standard scheme appears to be a yellow screen, red "S", and black words. The words may or may not have actually been red at one time as well. On some prints of The Partridge Family, the "S" and the words were both black, attributed by some to film deterioration. However, when the Columbia byline was added, everything was changed to a light gray, and that color change appeared more natural. At the same time, other Screen Gems shows carried the normal color scheme (as did The Partridge Family when it was rerun on Hallmark Channel).
- Several shows in 1970 didn't have the name in bold.
- There is also a still variant of this logo with the phrase "DISTRIBUTED BY" in small print above "SCREEN GEMS".
- Another still variant with and without Columbia bylines respectively was seen on some shows like the first season of Police Story and Ghost Story (also known as Circle of Fear).
- Another variant has the byline appearing after the company logo/text animation stop. This variant was seen on early episodes of the miniseries QB VII.
- There is a variant where (possibly due to film deterioration), the screen is white and the "S" is bright. Seen on the pilot episode of Love on a Rooftop.
- Another variant is similar to the one above, but even brighter, making the "S" invisible and the words "SCREEN GEMS" barely visible. Seen on the Love on a Rooftop episode "The Six Dollar Surprise".
- Another variant like the ones above, contains the byline, has the "S" being partly invisible and the name and byline barely visible to see. This was spotted in a B&W print of The Paul Lynde Show episode "Togetherness".
- On a late '80s print of an episode of Occasional Wife, the animation and music of the logo was slightly faster than usual.
- A still version with a sky blue background was seen on S1 E5 of the short-lived series The Girl with Something Extra.
- Another still version with a pink background was seen on the pilot of the same show.
- On the Get TV airing of the TV special The Temptations Show, the logo strangely skips in the middle of its animation, speeding up the logo and music in the process.

FX/SFX: The parallelograms wrapping around the dot, and the name "SCREEN GEMS" zooming in. Very smooth animation, especially when compared to other logos of the time...

Cheesy Factor: ...though it looks rather rough when it's in low quality, and the effects are definitely a standard of the mid to late '60s and early '70s, but it's still very ahead of its time. The Canadian in-credit version looks poorly drawn, though.

Music/Sounds: The Videotaped Viacom V of Doom Music.

Availability: Pretty common.

Scare Factor: Depending on the variant:

Though, despite all of the different variants, this logo is less scary for those who are used to seeing it, and find it a good logo overall.

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