Unlike his contemporary Miklós Rózsa, who in the latter part of his career selected the projects he worked on with great care, Herrmann became less and less particular in his final years. Just as his famous first collaborator Orson Welles was prostituting his talent during the late Sixties in movies like Casino Royale and I'll Never Forget What's Isname, so Herrmann seemed to be slumming it. Had it not been for the last hurrah of Obsession and Taxi Driver, his career might have ended in a depressing muddle of low-rent horror films. The first of these was Twisted Nerve, a grubby English thriller about a disturbed young man (Hywel Bennett) with a disturbing infatuation for a young girl (Hayley Mills). The film's suspect use of mental illness to explain away criminal actions provoked outrage and the film makers were forced to add a narrated disclaimer at the start of the film:
"Ladies and gentlemen, because of the controversy already aroused, the producers of this film wish to re-emphasize what is already stated in the film, that there is no established scientific connection between Mongolism and psychotic or criminal behavior."
Defenders of the movie will tell you that it is in the grand British tradition of that other misunderstood masterpiece Peeping Tom when, in reality, it's simply a precursor to the brutish nasty Seventies exploitation films of Pete Walker such as Frightmare and Schizo.
Herrmann struck on the novel idea of orchestrating the main theme for solo whistler accompanied by a queasy vibraphone and a brutal climax of horns. This whistling theme had a second life in Taranatino's Kill Bill Volume 1 (Track 4 on the soundtrack, which I'm playing a loop right now), and on the back of that became a hip ringtone. A limited release of the score - coupled with The Bride Wore Black - was brought out by Kritzerland, but all 1,200 copies have been sold.
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