The Most Famous Movie Scream Ever!

If you've ever watched a science fiction, action, or horror movie, you've heard it. It's the most famous movie scream ever, more famous than "KHAAAAN!" or "THIS IS SPARTA!" It's The Wilhelm Scream.

You probably know it as the Star Wars scream, because George Lucas' sound editor Ben Burrt is hooked on it (Left: Return of the Wilhelm in Return of the Jedi).

I started paying attention to it when it popped up in Lord of the Rings: "Waaaaitaminute. Did that elf falling off Helm's Deep just scream like a Star Wars extra?"

i knew it was a canned scream, a stock sound effect being recycled by movie sound editors. I had a hunch there was story behind it.

There was. Thanks to TV Tropes, a fun site for wasting oodles of time, I finally learned its origin: The Wilhelm Scream. If you're a movie buff, you probably already know about it.

Despite its nickname, The Wilhelm Scream did not originally come from Wilhelm of The Charge at Feather River (although he was the first to repeat it). Instead, it first screamed by an Unknown Wilhelm in an old Hollywood western, Distant Drums (1951).

Yes, that's Gary Cooper carrying an apparently water-soluble female lead. The no-name soldier gets no star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but his (dubbed) scream will live forever.

(Warning: His fate, like that of most Unknown Wilhelms, is not a happy one.)

Who Was Wilhelm, If He Wasn't Wilhelm?

According to Star Wars IV: A New Hope sound editor Ben Burrt, who first nicknamed it the Wilhelm Scream, it is likely the voice of the inimitable Sheb Wooley. Burrt found the original Warner Bros. studio recording of it, and other takes, which you'll hear below.

If it is indeed Sheb Wooley's voice, he has provided two treasures of pop culture: the other is his hit song, "Purple People Eater."

-- Source: "Sound Effects - The Wilhelm Scream" on Hollywood Lost & Found

Alas, poor Wilhelm, we know him well. Actually, we don't, but he started the fine tradition of emitting this scream while being shot and/or falling off of something. This mashup begins with the Wilhelm scene from The Charge at Feather River which gave its name to the meme.

It's surprising how often the scream gets repeated several times a movie. They missed one of the biggies, though: I seem to recall Han Solo himself letting out a mighty Wilhelm right before jumping down the trash compactor chute in Star Wars Ep IV.

You'd think there wouldn't be that much to say about a scream, but it's a piece of Hollywood history. Here Steve Lee of HollywoodLostandFound.net discusses it. Skip to 2:35 for the original studio recording of the scream, with a few tries before our Unknown Wilhelm nails it on the fourth take. (The other takes also pop up in films, but not quite as often.)

It's a Stock Movie Scream Sound Effect... Is It Available?

Only a few movie studios have a master copy, including Skywalker Sound (surprise, surprise), but lesser copies of the stock sound are ubiquitous. The Internet Archive has the Wilhelm Scream available in a variety of formats: