Atlantic Releasing Corporation

By Eric Hartman And Sean Beard

1st Logo
(1981-1985)

Nicknames: "AR", "The Lights"

Logo: Starting on a black background, a string of flashing white lights forms, creating a shape with blue rays of light extending beyond the white lights. When it looks like an A is about to be made, the lights make a right turn to a semi-oval part. In the same trail, the lights go back up and make a more accurate R. When the shape completes, it flashes as a a whole, then the shape straightens out into a horizontal line. The line flashes and all the lights split to the top & bottom of the screen. This reveals the text:

ATLANTIC RELEASING CORPORATION
PRESENTS

SFX: The forming of the "AR" shape, which looks pretty good, but....

Cheesy Factor: The text shown at the end really, really looks awful. It's something about the glow or font, but it really looks dated.

Music: None

Availability: I would guess uncommon, it seems to be kept well on most releases, but their most famous release, "Teen Wolf" conflicts a bit. The print shown by TBS/TNT has this logo, but when spotted on a tape off HBO, it had the 2nd logo. (Another note, the TBS/TNT print ends, yes ends, with an animated Paramount (CGI) logo of the Paramount Communications era, weird.)

Scare Factor: Low, this logo has some nice animation and should'nt creep too many out.

2nd Logo
(1986-1988)

Nicknames: "Gold Star", "Streaking Star"

Logo: We see a golden, shiny triangle zoom out. Once the triangle is fully developed, a star shape inside the triangle pushes out, with lots of shining behind it. The star moves to the right and reveals the word "Atlantic" on a sky-gradiant background. The star keeps moving, leaving a shiny trail behind (that crosses paths with the other letters) until it reaches the "i" and places itself on top of it. The trail then becomes more transparent, and the text "RELEASING CORPORATION" appears with a laser effect below a line between it and "Atlantic". The entire logo then shines.

An early variation exsists, the animation is the same, but there is a byline added. It fades in after the "RELEASING CORPORATION" is lasered in. The byline is very hard to read, as it is in gold, but we think it reads:

A Division Of
Atlantic(maybe) Entertainment Group

SFX: Excellent animation, one of the best efforts from the 80s, the sound effects fit in quite well, and the whole logo looks super cool when complete, but......

Cheesy Factor: Especially with the byline variation, the gold text is difficult to read.

Music/Sound: No music, wind sounds start it off, then an explosion/rocket-type noise is made when the star advances, with a laser noise for when the other text appears.

Availability: Uncommon, usually saved on most Atlantic releases of the era, usually preceeded by the Paramount logo. Paramount began releasing the company's films to TV in 1986, eventually buying the company's assets after its 1988 bankruptcy (Atlantic Releasing had earlier licensed to Paramount the US television and home video rights to its library in 1985).

However, there is another conflict of interest. MGM has released both Teen Wolf movies and Valley Girl on DVD. We are not sure why or how MGM got a hold of these titles. Prints of Atlantic movies do exist with the Viacom-era Paramount logo preceeding, so this transaction is recent. On the Teen Wolf DVD, Teen Wolf Too has the Gold Star logo kept, with the MGM ID preceeding. The original Teen Wolf does not keep it's Atlantic "AR" logo, just the current MGM.

Update: Thanks to Sean Beard, we can have this whole MGM-Atlantic saga put to rest:

Island Alive bought Atlantic Releasing's library in 1988 (though Paramount retained TV and, until recently, home video rights). Island Alive sold out to PolyGram within two years (that company was originally Island Pictures, a movie subdivision of Island Records and Alive Films, an "art-house" film production/distribution company; the two companies merged in 1987).

The Island Alive (which became a subdivision of PFE, like Working Title and Propaganda Films) holdings, along with the pre-March 1996 PolyGram Filmed Entertainent library ended up at MGM.

Scare Factor: Low, the sound might get to some, but this is another fine logo from Atlantic, one wonders what they would have if they were still around today.