Originally posted on 5.27.14: I’ve never been a fan of that “plink plink plink plink plink pink plink plink” Twilight Zone theme, which replaced Bernard Herrmann‘s music after the first ’59-to-’60 season.
Herrmann’s original score is wonderfully solemn and vaguely creepy, and much more affecting in a moody-undercurrent way than anything that followed. The fact that Marius Constant‘s plunk-plink-bongos score is one of the most universally-recognizable music cues of the past century doesn’t mean jack-squat. There’s nothing lower than being a widely recognized music cue. Herrmann’s score is for the connoisseurs club — no chumps allowed.
