Shades of Love (film series)

Lore & Background

The Shades of Love film series was produced by L/A House Productions, which paid $400,000 to make each movie, while the series had a budget of $1 million per episode. The films were distributed on home video in the United States by Lorimar Home Video (formerly Karl/Lorimar Home Video) and aired on television on Astral's First Choice cable channel in Canada. Novelization tie-ins were published by Cloverdale Press. The series was aimed at female audiences who purchased romance novels, and each title incorporated a popular love song into its soundtrack.

Reader's Guide

The Shades of Love series represents a niche but notable effort in the 1980s to create a romance-film franchise that mirrored the romance-novel market. By pairing established male stars with lesser-known Canadian actresses, the series sought to appeal directly to a female demographic. The inclusion of well-known love songs on the soundtracks—some released on vinyl and cassette—and the later repackaging of titles as 'A Double Feature Romance' indicate a marketing strategy that treated the films as collectible products. The series also featured classical music and holiday songs, such as 'Joy to the World' in Echoes In Crimson and 'Good King Wenceslas' in Midnight Magic, as well as allusions to films like Duck Soup and It's a Wonderful Life. Though not widely remembered today, the series is a documented example of cross-media romance branding in Canadian television and home video.

Did You Know?

• The series had a budget of $1 million per episode, but each movie cost $400,000 to make.
• A soundtrack on vinyl and cassette featured songs from many films, including 'Tonight, I Celebrate My Love' by Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack.
• In Echoes In Crimson, the character Grant mentions the film Duck Soup, does a Groucho Marx impersonation, and reads lines from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
• Several songs featured in the films, such as 'Cruisin'' by Smokey Robinson and 'When a Man Loves a Woman' covered by Luba, were not included on the soundtrack release.