There are few sound effects as instantly recognizable or as widely used as the Wilhelm Scream, which has appeared hundreds of times in movies, TV shows, video games, and just about everywhere else. Movie franchises like war of stars, Indiana Jonesand some of Quentin Tarantino best movies have used the “screaming guy” sound in one way or another over the years, so much so that it’s become a part of pop culture.
While the sound effect is awfully familiar, the story behind the Wilhelm Scream isn’t necessarily known to everyone. That being said, we’ve put together a brief but comprehensive history of the Wilhelm Scream, plus a few random facts about how it ended up in your favorite movie. Let’s fall down this rabbit hole and explore the all time great Hollywood sound effect.
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)
The origin of the Wilhelm cry
Like all Hollywood legends, the Wilhelm Scream story had to start somewhere, and that place and time was the title of the 1951 Gary Cooper film Removed drumsso the film historian Steve Lee on his Hollywood lost and found to blog. According to Lee, Raoul Walsh’s film about a group of settlers in 19th-century Florida needed the perfect sound effect of a screaming man to be used in a scene where one of the characters is being dragged underwater by an alligator. A total of six screams were recorded, with the fifth recording being the one we know today as the Wilhelm scream. But that’s not what it was called…
Two years later the sound effect was used in another film, The Charge at Feather River, where it was used in a scene where a character named Private Wilhelm (Ralph Brooke) was shot in the leg by an arrow. As Lee points out, the sound effect was used two more times in the film, but for some reason the Wilhelm Scream name stuck.
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)
The Wilhelm Scream became a popular sound effect in westerns and b-horror films
In the years following the release of The Charge at Feather Riverthe Wilhelm Scream became one of Warner Bros.’ most prolific sound effects, popping up in all sorts of westerns B horror movies and just about anything else that required a painful and terrifying scream from a male character.
The Netflix Documentary of 2019, Attack on Hollywood stereotypes spent a few minutes breaking down the Wilhelm Scream phenomenon, pointing out that the most popular sound effect was when a character was being shot, pushed, or “obliterated by large plastic ants.” However, it would not be until two decades later that the Wilhelm Scream became the stuff of legend with a small film called The Scream of Wilhelm war of stars.
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(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
We owe the popularity of “Wilhelm Scream” to the “Inside Joke” of a sound engineer
If you want to know how the Wilhelm Scream became so popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s, look no further than Academy Award-winning sound engineer Ben Burtt, who began sneaking the sound effect into his films as an inside joke. or really an Easter egg for his fellow audio engineers to find.
When speaking to the Washington Post In 2019, Burtt explained that after being hired Create sound effects for Star Wars: A New Hope, he decided to use the Wilhelm Scream for the scene where a stormtrooper is shot and falls into a rift inside the Death Star. After telling a friend, Richard Anderson, Burtt began adding the sound to more films, and his friends got involved too:
We just called each other, ‘Hey, I put one in here. Can you find it?’ This went on for years and nobody said anything.
Burtt and Anderson then added the sound effect Hunter of the lost treasurea film that earned the two friends an Oscar for sound effects editing.
(Image credit: Disney/Pixar)
Over the years, the Wilhelm Scream has been featured in everything from Toy Story to The Lord of the Rings
Since becoming a popular sound effect in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, the Wilhelm Scream has appeared in hundreds of films, television shows, and other forms of entertainment. In a 2018 insider video about the phenomenon and how it came about, Jonathan Kuntz, a professor of film history at UCLA, pointed out just a few of the films that have since used it, including The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, toy storyand Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 feature film directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs.
Although Lucasfilm tried to eliminate the Wilhelm scream by not including it in the 2017 version Star Wars: The Last Jedithe classic sound effect was one of the war of stars Tropics found in Boba Fett’s book finalwhich feels like a callback to the scene in Return of the Jedi where one of Jabba the Hutt’s guards falls into the Sarlacc pit. But maybe that has more to do with Jon Favreau’s story of using the sound effect, as seen in a 2010 tweet around iron man 2.
(Image credit: Universal Pictures)
Although not in the public domain, the Wilhelm Scream is considered a “fair game”
Although technically the property of Warner Bros. Studios and not in the public domain, the Wilhelm Scream has been used hundreds of times over the years by films not released by the studio. Much of this has to do with the sound effect being considered “fair game,” as pointed out by Steve Lee on the Kennedy Center podcast. Telling stories with sound, in 2019 in which he said:
It’s an old effect; It’s been around for a long time, and it’s considered fair game because it’s one of those old, classic stocky effects, similar to the Thunderclap in the original 1931 Frankenstein.
While some may consider the Wilhelm Scream “fair game,” changes made to US copyright law in the decades since it was first enacted in 1972 make it possible for sound effects created in the 1950s to be used for a few more decades out of the public domain at least.
Well, now you not only know the Wilhelm Scream, you also know the long, storied, and random history of the legendary sound effect. Now that it’s being used as often as ever, there’s a good chance you’ll hear it in at least one of the upcoming releases on the Film program 2023.
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