Seven Keys Films

Background

Seven Keys Films is an Australian film distributor that was formed in 1969 by Andrew Gaty. It initially had a contract with Hoyts, along with Filmways Australasian Distributors, 20th Century-Fox/Columbia Pictures and United Artists, and quickly became the largest Australian independent distributor. It also had an operation in the UK. In the 1980s, the company set up its own home video subsidiary Seven Keys Video. The company was sold in 1985 to the Perry Corporation, and three years later, the company itself went bust after losing money.

Logo (1970-1988)

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Visuals: On a black background, a series of 4 stripes, colored green, blue, yellow, and red, fly across the screen from left to right. Another series fades in and fly from the bottom left to the upper right, followed by another from the bottom right to the top left. 2 series of stripes and appear on each side of the screen and converge at 2 different points, with the camera zooming out to show the lines forming a "7<". "SEVEN KEYS" is also revealed below, and then "PRESENTS" appears below.

Variant: There is one variant where "PRESENTS" is absent from the logo.

Technique: Cel animation.

Audio: A violin stinger (similar to the one in the 1989 PBS logo) with some theremin-like sounds going "bowwww-whoooop-bowwww" as the lines move, ending with a synth stinger.

Audio Variant: Later releases were silent, or had the movie's theme playing over it.

Availability: It appears on film prints of several movies in Australia and New Zealand, like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Night of the Living Dead, The Care Bears Movie and Sisters, among others. It also acts as a de-facto home video logo for early Seven Keys Video tapes like Fire and Ice.