Charter Entertainment

Credits

Descriptions by
Reactor37654

Captures by
Eric S.

Video captures courtesy of
DudeThatLogo

Background

Charter Entertainment was a genre and low-budget division of Embassy Home Entertainment. In 1986, The Coca-Cola Company sold Embassy Home Entertainment to Nelson Holdings International. NHI later shut down Charter when Nelson Entertainment reissued a number of Embassy/Charter releases.

Logo (February 26, 1986-1988)

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Visuals: On a black background, the camera goes through 9 bars which are in various shades of green, blue, and purple. As the bars spin around (like in the first Vidmark Entertainment logo), a 3D steel gray "CHARTER" appears from the bottom of the screen and covers the top seven of the bars as they stop moving. A steel gray rounded rectangle with a black border appears and the gray dissolves to reveal "ENTERTAINMENT" in the same color. The rounded rectangle turns deep cerise afterwards. The logo shines a little.

Technique: CGI.

Audio: A warm synthesized six note piece, which is a piece of stock music titled "Music, Billboard #2" from Sound Ideas Series 1000 sound library, ending with a synth strumming sound when "ENTERTAINMENT" appears. The same stock music piece was used for the logos for Evrika Film, My Way Film Company, Hanna-Barbera Poland and Tokyo Movie Shinsha, and it can also be heard in the video game Worms Armageddon as a victory fanfare.

Audio Variant: On some tapes, the music fades out early.

Availability: Seen on tapes by this company from the era, such as The Terrornauts, The Quest (1986), Kiss of the Spider Woman, Crimewave, Bombs Away, Keeping Track, God Told Me To, Ghost Fever, Cross Country, Came a Hot Friday, I Was a Teenage Zombie, Slaughterhouse, Rolling Vengeance, Fair Game (not to be confused with the 1995 film of the same name), Toby McTeague, Hot Rod, and The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, among others. They can be recognized by a huge Charter logo at the top of most of their tape covers (though 1988 reprints of certain tapes and later releases from Charter only have a small print logo on the bottom of the cover). It was also seen on the 1985 U.S. re-cut of The Plague Dogs. It also appeared at the end of TCM broadcasts of Git! and J.C., as well as getTV's print of The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World, Disney Channel's print of Toby McTeague, and the Kino Lorber DVD of Pray TV.

Legacy: This is a favorite of many due to its animation and music.