You’ve heard it. You might not think that you’ve heard it, but you have, countless times in fact. A piercing, despair-ridden wail so aurally disturbing that you instinctively glance up, even if you weren’t watching, to try to glimpse what unspeakable horror just befall the character whose demise it was assigned to signify.

Though named for its first on screen use, the 1953 film Charge at Feather River where a character named Private Wilhelm takes an arrow to the leg and screams in agony, the origin of the scream dates back two years previously. The scream was originally recorded for the 1951 film Distant Drums with Gary Cooper and slated as “man being bitten by alligator” but was never used. A post-production sound effects actor, who some believe to be none other than Sheb Wooley of “Purple People Eater” fame, made several attempts that the supervisor deemed unsatisfactory. The now infamous scream was delivered on the third attempt in response to the prompt “No, no, not an ‘Ow’ - a real scream of pain.”

The effect has been used dozens of times in countless films over the years - forwards, backwards, in homage and parody, and remains one of the most beloved and distinctive pieces of movie trivia in existence. So in honor of Wilhelm we present our very own top five Wilhelm screams.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
While it’s hard to believe that anyone watching can discern any sound amidst the constant, glass shattering torture emanating from the mouth of the future Mrs. Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Wilhelm pops up several times. But it’s the one at the end during the climactic cliff-dangling showdown between Indy and the despicable Mula Ram that we’re singling out. After Indy knocks the deranged cult leader down into water below he meets his fate at the hands of a hungry pack of alligators and we believe this to be the only time the scream has actually been used as was originally intended.

Batman Returns
Absolutely nobody likes clowns. Clowns are evil. Practically everybody has a long-repressed trauma stemming from a friend’s birthday party or a trip to the circus that in their mind makes Stephen King’s IT seem like a positively pleasant way to spend a few days. Everything clowns do is wrong; the way they look, the way they move, and that nightmarish maniacal way they cackle as they torture that poor tube balloon. So thank you Batman for letting us live vicariously through you just that little bit more than usual by giving that clown what was coming to him, and thank you Wilhelm for allowing us to know that it really hurt!

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
In the long annals of intergalactic soldiery, putting his endless appeal at costume parties aside, the Imperial Stormtrooper does not exactly have the best reputation; highly-gullible, easily outwitted and largely unable to hit the broadside of an elephant with a day-glow orange bull’s-eye painted on it (they even walk into blast doors for Christ’s sake). So when midway through the first movie one of their number reacts to being shot and then falling off a rather hazardous looking platform with a scream in two parts, of which Wilhelm is the second, that reveals them to be not only a bit crap but also more than a little girly, they really are forever condemned to mockery.

Them!
Men do not like getting hit in the balls, and for good reason. As any man can tell you, what Mel Gibson cooked up for The Passion of The Christ is nothing compared to the pain a man can inflict on himself if he sits down too fast onto a hard plastic chair. So in 1954, years before the scream began to be used self-consciously, when sound supervisor Francis J. Schied needed something that not only conveyed the blood curdling terror of being eaten alive by a giant ant, but also the excruciating agony of having your fragile bits crushed by its pincers, he turned to Wilhelm.

Howard The Duck
Oscar winning sound editor Ben Burtt is widely recognized as the champion of the Wilhelm scream and perhaps the man most directly responsible for bringing it to a mainstream audience having used it dozens of times while working with Lucasfilm. Burtt obviously had a great affinity with the effect and understood both the finality and the totality of the scream. The Wilhelm scream is often quite literally the last word. After all, when your relaxing day of hunting and fishing on the glades with your buddies is brought to a soaking-wet halt by a giant duck erratically piloting a hand glider in your direction there really is only one appropriate reaction.

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