Upon its release in 1973, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist was shrouded in controversy for a number of reasons surroundings its contents and subject matter. In the original trailer, which some have gone on to call the “banned trailer”, a score by composer Lalo Schifrin could be heard having been commissioned by the director for the film.
As the Dangerous Minds blog reports, Friedkin had been so displeased with the partial score produced by Schifrin that he threw it out of the studio window. Now, the full and rejected score by Schifrin for the film has been shared and you can check it out in the video embed above.
Stories of audiences being made actively sick upon seeing the original trailer have been told time and time again with flashing images and unsettling sounds combining to displace numerous viewers. “The people who saw the trailer reacted against the film, because the scenes were heavy and frightening, so most of them went to the toilet to vomit,” said Schifrin. “The trailer was terrific, but the mix of those frightening scenes and my music, which was also a very difficult and heavy score, scared the audiences away.” In a similar turn of events, Coil’s proposed soundtrack for the Hellraiser movie was rejected because it was considered too scary and not commercial enough for use in the film.
