A second round of Cinefamily’s favorite opening logos from the secret history of fly-by-night ’80s VHS companies. Below are a few ol’ standbys, and a few headscratchers:
EMBASSY HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Short ‘n sweet, one of the all-time classics. The first time I was aware of the Embassy logo, with its perplexing-yet-soothing faux trumpet-and-flutes fanfare, was from the very first time I watched the VHS release of This Is Spinal Tap, back when I was a kid. Somebody should set this one to a beat, and have an MC spit rhymes all over it.
HERMES VIDEO
We caught this one rather recently; it’s on the opening of the sleazy ’80s NYC-shot mondo film Mondo Sexualis USA. Hermes was a Greek VHS label; the copy of Mondo Sexualis USA we obtained has Greek subtitles running through the whole thing — although I’m not sure why the phrase “Home Entertainment” is in English. The theme song is aces — reminds me of Vangelis. Everyone in the office is a big fan of the echoey “handclap in space” that drops every few seconds.
PARAGON VIDEO
Another sweet favorite. The first time I paid any attention to Paragon was when I viewed the infamous 1980 Golan-Globus musical The Apple for the first time, before its DVD release by MGM. Beyond that, the company was truly rad, releasing gobs and gobs of total schlock: an epic amount of horror titles, and a ridiculous amount of the covers were hand-illustrated! Check out a great gallery of Paragon cover art here.
INDEPENDENT UNITED DISTRIBUTORS
This must be a joke. There’s no way on earth that this company’s name was picked by a group of adults who weren’t aware of what they were doing. It’s been a long time since I ripped the footage of this logo from whatever tape it came from, so I can’t remember what movie it was, but a cursory search turned up that “IUD” released stuff like Gator Bait, Futz!, Beverly and Ferd Sebastian’s On The Air Live With Captain Midnight, and a 1972 film curiously titled The Broad Coalition (retitled on video as That Man Is Pregnant! Come to think of it, that’s probably the tape I found the logo on.)
Way more logos to come…stay tuned…
