What Is the Wilhelm Scream?

So what is this odd scream? And why would a death yell find its way into so many different movies? We spoke with Mike Miller, a film editor based in Ventora, California. He explained the Wilhelm Scream is nineteen fifties a d R or automated dialogue replacement recording for a B movie about a jungle safari. The recording was for a man

getting eaten by an alligator. The movie that Miller is referring to is Distant Drums, starring Gary Cooper as a U. S. Army captain who fights seminoles and gun smugglers in Florida's Everglades. This wasn't one of Cooper's best on screen efforts, but it did service the genesis of the now iconic scream, which happens as an unfortunate soldier is dragged underwater by a hungry gator. To capture the scream, the film's producers asked various cast members to offer up their most terrifying shrieks.

They reportedly recorded six screams, but it was the fourth that apparently most accurately captured the horror of being eaten alive by a ferocious reptile, and that's the one that made the final cut of the movie. Though no one is one certain who performed it, it's generally attributed to actor and singer Chev Wooley, But the movie and the

scream didn't initially make much of a mark. In three though, a film titled The Charge at Feather River featured a scene in which a horse mounted soldier is shot in the thigh with an arrow. The character's name Private Wilhelm, and yes, the filmmakers dubbed in the scream from two years previous to express the character's agony. These kinds of reused and recycled sound effects are common in Hollywood. It saves time and money as studios crank out film after film.

But even after the second movie appearance, the scream wouldn't have its brush with destiny for more than two more decades. Then along came Luke Skywalker and Company. Miller said, Ben Bert, the audio sound designer for the original Star Wars, was rummaging around for replacement audio when he was working on Star Wars and found the audio recordings of the voice actors screams and used one in Star Wars. He named

the one he picked Wilhelm. Ever since then, sound designers and film have used the audio file as a calling card. Every Star Wars film up through the Force Awakens has used the scream, but Bert's on earthing of Private Wilhelm's painful yell has reverberated throughout countless other famous flicks. The list includes Toy Story, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, Reservoir Dogs, Avengers, Infinity War, Venom, More, American Graffiti,

and Willow, just to name a few. In Indiana, Jones and the Temple of Doom, the joke goes even further, deploying the scream as a character is torn to shreds by an alligator. All of them use the exact same recording, albeit tweaked by sound engineers, that was tucked away in the Warner Brothers archive so many years ago. There are numerous compilations online compressing dozens of instances of the scream

into easy to view clips. It would be difficult to account for every use of the scream, but higher estimates guests that the blood curdling shriek has been used in as many as four hundred movies. Others placed the number it just over two d, still an amazingly long run for a single sound effect that originated seven decades ago. And of course, the scream is not limited to the big screen. It's also wormed its way into television, shows, video games, and other media. Once you know to look

for it, you'll hear it everywhere. Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler clang Or. More on this and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio or more podcasts. My heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,