The Wilhelm Scream
I thought this was a funny tidbit. This one soundbite has made its way into hundreds of films - sort of a pop culture icon in its own right, even if most people have not even noticed it.
What is the Wilhelm scream? From Sean Hutchinson at mentalfoss.com,
What do Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Toy Story, Reservoir Dogs, Titanic, Anchorman, 22 Jump Street , and more than 200 other films and TV shows have in common ? Not much besides the one and only Wilhelm Scream. The Wilhelm Scream is the holy grail of movie geek sound effects—a throwaway sound bite with inauspicious beginnings that was turned into the best movie in-joke ever when it was revived in the 1970s.
The origins of the scream, from Wikipedia,
The Wilhelm scream
The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect of a man screaming that has been used in 389 movies and countless television series (as of July 2018),beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums .The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.
Most likely voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley , the sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River , a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow.This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the third movie to use the effect.
The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke ) after it was used in the Star Wars series, the Indiana Jones series, Disney cartoons, and many other blockbuster films, as well as many television programs, cartoons, and video games.
This short, iconic sound has made its way into our movie-going experience. A running joke with filmmakers? Or a habit of adding it in? A superstition? Whatever the reason, I tend to think running joke, it has been a part of the movie-going experience for decades.
As many times as we may have heard this, is its time coming to an end? In Rogue One and The Last Jedi, they decided to not include the Scream after it was in every one of the previous Star Wars movies. Even if it slowly fades away, it will always remain a part of pop culture.
For those who cannot remember what the Wilhelm Scream sounds like, here is a compilation. From Indians Jones, Toy Story and even Gremlins.
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