So my ranting was in error on Herrmann's Oscar. Somehow I never once heard that mentioned. Maybe because his later scores which did not get Oscars so overshadowed this earlier one. What was it for?
I did hear the It's Alive score when that film came out. The music of course is great, much better than the film. Though the film is not all bad. It is a low budget but fairly imaginative grotesquerie by Larry Cohen. You have to like rude, low budget horror films to like it though. (The birth of that baby did NOT go smoothly.) But I read some quotes by Herrmann in which he was not happy to be working on it.
The worst film he scored that I've seen, though it was a good production by a prominent director (de Palma) is "Obsession." It is like "Vertigo" with every mistake possible, instead of none as in the original.
But it is the single most remarkable example that I know of film music transcending the film. Every note of this score is pure inspiration and beauty of the most haunting and intense kind, not heard since "Vertigo."
Since Evan steadfastly refuses to answer me, I will posit an answer myself to writing for bad films - the composer must somehow find a source of inspiration that comes from somewhere else, or from only tiny parts of the film he is scoring combined with something else. As here, in "Obsession." Herrmann was obviously harking back somewhat to "Vertigo" though he was clearly affected by at least the locations in Italy and the American South which played a prominent part in "Obsession." That, combined with his superlative technical skill, allowed him to create music that was as good as it could be for the film but also, in his interior artistic isolation, to create a beautiful piece of music in itself.
I did hear the It's Alive score when that film came out. The music of course is great, much better than the film. Though the film is not all bad. It is a low budget but fairly imaginative grotesquerie by Larry Cohen. You have to like rude, low budget horror films to like it though. (The birth of that baby did NOT go smoothly.) But I read some quotes by Herrmann in which he was not happy to be working on it.
The worst film he scored that I've seen, though it was a good production by a prominent director (de Palma) is "Obsession." It is like "Vertigo" with every mistake possible, instead of none as in the original.
But it is the single most remarkable example that I know of film music transcending the film. Every note of this score is pure inspiration and beauty of the most haunting and intense kind, not heard since "Vertigo."
Since Evan steadfastly refuses to answer me, I will posit an answer myself to writing for bad films - the composer must somehow find a source of inspiration that comes from somewhere else, or from only tiny parts of the film he is scoring combined with something else. As here, in "Obsession." Herrmann was obviously harking back somewhat to "Vertigo" though he was clearly affected by at least the locations in Italy and the American South which played a prominent part in "Obsession." That, combined with his superlative technical skill, allowed him to create music that was as good as it could be for the film but also, in his interior artistic isolation, to create a beautiful piece of music in itself.