Visuals: Over a blue (or dark blue) background is the 1979 Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment logo, only it is in black and white and there is also now a black box under "THORN EMI" that says "VIDEO".
Technique: A still graphic.
Audio: None.
Availability: This logo was most likely intended as a placeholder logo.
- It can be found on the earliest Thorn EMI Video releases, such as their first fourteen releases (The Tubes Video, April Wine Live in London, I Am a Dancer, Can't Stop the Music, Times Square, Death on the Nile, The Cruel Sea, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, The Best of Benny Hill, Scars of Dracula, Sophia Loren: Her Own Story, S.O.S. Titanic, The Royal Wedding, and Queen: Greatest Flix), Heartland, and The Mirror Crack'd.
- Prior to the debut of the second logo, Thorn EMI's releases in the UK usually did not use any logo at all (even under their prior name of EMI Videogram) and just started with the opening credits or scenes of the film instead.
Visuals: Over a black background, a blue circle of light zooms up into the screen, spins around, and turns into a rainbow. It then splits into two light circles, which spin and shrink into a shape that looks like an upside down "T" with pointed ends, most likely representing a thorn. A white box with a blue aura is drawn around the shape, and it backs away. As this happens, a white box with the words "THORN EMI" appears under that box, which has since turned blue, and when that backs away a white box surrounds that, the bottom of which contains the word "VIDEO".
Variants:
- A silent short version starting with the thorn zooming out exists, which is seen on some Australian VHS trailers, with an announcer talking over it.
- On the 1983 UK trailer reel, the finished logo is seen with thunder striking around the logo, causing the screen to flash white. The sound of thunder is also heard followed by Star Games playing, as well as an announcer saying "Some of the new blockbusters from Thorn-EMI Video!"
Technique: Oxberry effects designed by Laurie Calvert of Filmfex in London.
Audio: A light, synthesized tune that ends in the beating of a drum and a synth fade-out.
Availability:
- Thorn EMI distributed releases from Thames Video, Orion Pictures, Hemdale Film Corporation, Regency Enterprises, Producers Sales Organization, Dino de Laurentiis Company, The Saul Zaentz Company, and Carolco Pictures, in addition to films from EMI themselves.
- Several releases that have this logo are Xtro, The Evil Dead, The Terminator, Intolerance (1916), Corrupt (also known as Copkiller) and First Blood; one of the first was The Burning.
- TV shows with this logo include Ready, Steady, Go!: Volume One, the first few collections of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and Danger Mouse.
- This logo can also be found on various pre-cert releases in the UK, such as First Blood, A Passage to India, certain copies of The Wicker Man and the later pre-cert release of Watership Down (although the very first release from 1982 has no logo at all).
- At least in the UK, this began usage in early 1983.
- This logo can also be found on some Japanese Laserdisc, Betamax and VHS releases of the time distributed by Tohokushinsha Home Video, such as The Osterman Weekend and Dune, with the final release to contain it (at least on print) being The Hills Have Eyes Part 2.
- This logo is also seen on the 1983 UK pre-cert VHS releases of Paddington's 9th Anywhen TV Show and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and the 1984 UK pre-cert VHS release of Roland Rat Superstar in Rat on the Road: Volume 1, respectively, as well as old French VHS releases of Inspector Gadget.
