- It’s Alive
A la même époque, je découvre à la télé lors d’une séance nocturne un film d’horreur daté dont Herrmann fit la musique : « It’s Alive » (1974). Le film lui même me laisse perplexe (par sa qualité générale) quand à la musique mis à part le générique, je la remarquais peu et finalement le tout reste une grande déception. Pour la séquelle « It’s Alive II » (1978), Laurie Johnson un ami d’Herrmann réutilisera, réarrangera et réenregistrera les thèmes d’Herrmann.
Steven C smith décrit :
It was a collaboration Herrmann genuinely enjoyed; what glaring weaknesses existed in the film were more than compensated by Cohen’s enthusiasm for Herrmann’s music and the working freedom the film offered. Unfortunately, the score itself is Herrmann’s most self-derivative. As in Sisters, Herrmann experiments with electronic sounds to evoke a sense of the abnormal and horrific; the odd blend of bass guitar and viola also enhance Herrmann’s trademark use of low woodwinds and brass (no strings are used; instead Herrmann enlarges his usual brass instrumentation to give a sense of weight and power). Yet the music is tediously repetitive and overscaled for the low-budget film it accompanies. Herrmann’s title prelude is the most effective sequence, with thick clusters of brass and Moog counterbalancing a melancholy viola solo and quietly pulsating bass. Equally memorable in the film (for camp, not musical, reasons) is the infant’s bloody murder of a Carnation milkman in the back of his delivery trucka scene whose cue Herrmanndrolly titled “The Milkman Goeth.”Herrmann’s own favorite moment in It’s Alive comes at the film’s conclusion, as police drive the parents (John Ryan and Sharon Farrell) from their baby’s last slaughter site, only to learn that an identical infant has been born in Seattleand, Herrmann would whisper with glee, “you know it’s going to happen all over again!”