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.
(1985-1988?)
Nickname: "The Color Bars"
Logo: On a black background, we go through 9 bars which are in various shades of green, blue, and purple. As the bars spin around (like in the first Vidmark logo), a 3-D steel gray "CHARTER" in Haettenschweiler font, 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 before fading to black.
FX/SFX: CGI.
Music/Sounds: A stock music piece "Music, Billboard #2" [A warm synthesized six note piece] from Sound Ideas Series 1000 sound library, ending with a synth strumming sound when "ENTERTAINMENT" appears.
Music Trivia: The same stock music piece was used for the logos for Hanna-Barbera Poland and Tokyo Movie Shinsha, and it can also be heard in the video game Worms Armageddon as a victory fanfare.
Music/Sounds Variants:Sometimes, on some tapes, the music may sometimes fade 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, Toby McTeague, Hot Rod, The 2nd Best Secret Agent and I've Heard the Mermaids Singing, among others. You can recognize them by a huge Charter logo at the top of most of their tape covers. It was also seen on the 1985 U.S. re-cut of The Plague Dogs, however, the DVD releases of the film from Trinity Home Entertainment and Phase 4 Films delete this logo. It made unexpected appearances at the end of TCM broadcasts of Git! and J.C., as well as The Disney Channel's print of Toby McTeague.