Game Show Terrors

[Greggo]

I\'d turn the volume down during any B-E bonus round as a kid.  Even Play the Percentages.

[golden-road]

My terror was the Dragon from TTD\'90. Rapping made it worse.

[JMFabiano]

As mentioned on the other thread, that Time\'s Up/Tacky Buzzer used on the syndicated Hollywood Squares was at the top of my list.

 

 

 

And, while not really a Game Show specific, I give you \"The S From Hell\":

 

 

That creepy music and snakelike logo formation scared the crap out of me when I was little.  And I wasn\'t the only one if the \"S from Hell\" moniker can easily be googled on the internet.

 

Since we\'re extending this to closing logos (and I remember how well THAT went the last time...;-)), let me further nominate the Thames \"rising buildings\" and Colex Enterprises as ones that bothered me as well...because the jingles sounded like the above Screen Gems music.  And there was the AAP logo that used to appear before Popeye and Looney Tunes shorts back in the day. 

 

The other arch villian in the closing logo world is the \'70s and \'80s Viacom \"V of Doom\"...but that never bothered me, actually. 

 

Back to game shows, I\'ll reiterate mine:

- The TPIR losing horns (and any similar ones, like both Blockbusters Gold Run loss SFXs or the Classic Concentration bonus round loss)

- Someone mentioned Cliff Hangers...when I was really young I thought the \"yodely guy\" music was weird...

- Bankrupt slide whistle

- TTD dragon (and I turned the sound down on TJW too cause I thought the devil made a noise too...though I didn\'t like the Penny Ante sound as I likened it to a weed whacker starting for some reason...)

- The Stopper

- The Whew! opening, esp. the vampire\'s roar.  That haunted me from when I was 3 when the show aired until I found out about it on ATGS and got an episode. I didn\'t even know what it was called or anything until then...I just remembered that opening! 

- Yes, at first I feared the Whammy too. 

- The Davidson HS bonus game loss sound bothered me too for some reason.

 

/ObGameShow: a still version of the SFH was seen at the end of All About Faces.

[Steve Gavazzi]

 

The stinger from $1M Chance of a Lifetime.

Oh, Lord, yes. I probably haven\'t thought about it in 20 years, but now that you\'ve brought it up, that noise scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

[PYLdude]

The Double sound from the Challengers was bad for me...I got used to it, though. 

 

And Steve and Mitch, the stinger noise STILL scares me, and I didn\'t watch COAL as a kid. Only years later.

[jjman920]

Relating closing logos with game shows, I absolutely had to turn off Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? before the Buena Vista Television logo showed up. That music bothered me for some reason.

 

I found Beat the Clock to be nice soothing and calm television during the late night when I stayed up, but so help me if there was a big win because all of the noise from it, and most specifically a Bud Collyer outburst, would startle me something fierce. 

[Twentington]

Not directly from a game show, but for some reason, WNEM\'s logo used to scare me when I was about 5. And every night during Wheel of Fortune, they would chyron the lottery numbers onto the bottom of the screen, with said logo above it. I remember that I would run and hide whenever it came up. One time, when watching Wheel at a friend of my mom\'s, I made a pit stop and walked back out of the bathroom… straight into my mother\'s jacket, because she was shielding me from the logo that scared me. (I also remember that one day, they just did the lottery numbers on a full screen closer to the end of the show, sans logo, much to my relief.)


I still have no friggin\' clue how a little \"5\" inside a triangle would scare me.

[tvwxman]

The other arch villian in the closing logo world is the \'70s and \'80s Viacom \"V of Doom\"...but that never bothered me, actually. 

Lol! Yep. This.


I never watched the Dragon or the Devil. Ever. Hated the way they appeared so suddenly.  At the age of 5, I skipped \"Whew\"....

 

And, adding one to the list that hasn\'t been mentioned - as a toddler I could not watch \"Hurdles\" on TPIR - between the gun and the \'crash\' of the losing player - I was terrified at the age of 3.

[snowpeck]

Nothing game show related ever frightened me, but I was scared by local station sign-offs.  Not the actual sign-off message itself, or even the national anthem, but the impending color bars/tone combination or just the loud static. However, the national anthem films would send me running because I knew what was coming next.  Tests of the Emergency Broadcast System were a bit nerve-wracking as well, and again that was because of the loud noise. I had no idea about the cold war/nuclear bomb implications that were originally behind the EBS.

[MikeK]

I\'d often watch the showcase reveal on TPIR from a distance when I was little - the clangs, whoops and \"DOUBLE SHOWCASE WINNER\" flashing on the screen terrified me.

What Aaron said.  I remember one DSW from the early 80s with the clangs, the whoops, the graphics, and the background behind the prizes repeating from red to blue to purple.  Scared the bejeezus out of me.

[Chief-O]

I\'d often watch the showcase reveal on TPIR from a distance when I was little - the clangs, whoops and \"DOUBLE SHOWCASE WINNER\" flashing on the screen terrified me.

Same here.

[aaron sica]

 

And, adding one to the list that hasn\'t been mentioned - as a toddler I could not watch \"Hurdles\" on TPIR - between the gun and the \'crash\' of the losing player - I was terrified at the age of 3.

I couldn\'t remember what happened with a Hurdles loss so I searched YT for one and found one - was it the \"Crash!\" graphic and the zooming in and out of the camera? yeah, I\'d be terrified of that too.

[BrandonFG]

The other arch villian in the closing logo world is the \'70s and \'80s Viacom \"V of Doom\"...but that never bothered me, actually. 

Lol! Yep. This.


I never watched the Dragon or the Devil. Ever. Hated the way they appeared so suddenly.  At the age of 5, I skipped \"Whew\"....

 

And, adding one to the list that hasn\'t been mentioned - as a toddler I could not watch \"Hurdles\" on TPIR - between the gun and the \'crash\' of the losing player - I was terrified at the age of 3.

I loved the \"V of Doom\" as a kid, but I\'ve mentioned before that Lorimar-Telepictures sent me running into the next room. I still get an uneasy feeling about that one...damn flashy 80s graphics. I have vague memories of Chuck closing out Love Connection*, and wailing to turn the channel or hiding behind a chair because I knew what was up next. Cracked my mom and my grandfather up. :-P

 

Relating it to game shows, when I lived in Dallas, Chance of a Lifetime came on at 6 pm, right before Rafferty\'s Card Sharks. Needless to say, I wouldn\'t turn the TV to CS until about 6:32. ;-)

 

*Or any of the primetime soaps of the era

[Mike Tennant]

Count me among those who didn\'t care for the devil or the dragon, although I think the dragon was worse because of his roar.

 

I recall not being terribly fond of the Screen Gems logo, though I don\'t think it really creeped me out. Now, however, when I watch, say, Bewitched on DVD, I\'m disappointed when it doesn\'t appear at the end and instead I\'m treated to the (very loud) Sony logo instead.

[pianogeek]

. ETA: It never bothered me on USA, but the SANDY FRANK PRESENTS Scanimate graphics at the beginning of Face the Music creeped me out when it aired on the Family Channel. 

Yes!  Also the \"Sandy Frank Productions\" copyright line at the end of the credits, too.


Also when I was young, I close my eyes when I either saw the words \"In memory of\" or the birth year, death year and person\'s name in black background.


Also the Telepictures logo when it appeared at the end of Lets Make A Deal \'84-86.