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Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / The Wilhelm Scream

The Wilhelm Scream

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Remember that weird noise that a guy made falling into the tentacle pit in Return Of The Jedi? Maybe it sounded familiar. A few years ago I told my wife that every action-ish movie I saw seemed to squeeze that exact same sound sample in somewhere.

Finally, proof! You’ll be surprised to learn how long this has been going on.

Reader Interactions

38Comments

  2. 2.

    SGEW

    No, no! Don’t tell everyone about the Scream! How will we film nerds find our secret jollies when we watch the latest action flick if everyone knows about it?

    I had a friend in film school who could do a dead-accurate Wilhelm Scream, whenever he wanted to. It wore real thin, real soon.

  3. 3.

    4tehlulz

    Since this is the place where I first heard the term, “Alt-A“:

    Standard & Poor’s said on Friday that it may downgrade 1,887 classes of mortgage securities backed by so-called Alt-A home loans. …

    Oh shi-

  4. 4.

    SGEW

    Oh shi-

    No, no, no. It’s “aaaaaaAAAAaah!” with an hysterical lilt about 2/3 of the way in. Then you get swallowed by the crocodile (or 1,887 different classes of mortgage securities, whatever).

  5. 5.

    Jon H

    NPR’s “On The Media” had a good segment about the Wilhelm back in 2001.

    Transcript at the link above, and there’s a link on the page that will load a realaudio stream of the segment.

  6. 6.

    borehole

    Geez, dude, you just found out about the Wilhelm? That’s been common knowledge* for years.

    *among the sort of obscurist weirdos who know things like this instead of having lives/sex

  7. 7.

    TheFountainHead

    Haha, wow. I had no idea. Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest though. everyone who works in movies likes to plant their own Easter Eggs if they can.

  8. 8.

    Jon H

    The funniest part in the On The Media bit is where a sound guy talks about trying to slip the Wilhelm into movies without it being pulled by the director.

  9. 9.

    Keith

    Now that the cat’s out of the bag, George Lucas is going to move on to his backup plan: “The Clinton Cackle”, which in a bizarre temporal mystery, first debuted in the flying monkey scene from “The Wizard of Oz” and gained regular usage during the HBO series “Tales From The Crypt”.

  10. 10.

    Rheinhard

    Wow, neat!

    This really reminds me of a weird little story by Harlan Ellison called “Laugh Track”, wherein a guy recongizes his aunt’s laughter coming out of canned laugh tracks on all kinds of bad TV sitcoms. She was taped as part of a studio audience years ago and her laugh keeps getting recycled, becoming more and more threadbare. Eventually the guy realized that a part of his aunt’s effervescent spirit is trapped in some kind of weird Hell where she is forced to laugh at unfunny recycled jokes. To free her, he sets himself on a quest that leads him to the Phantom Sweetener, a technician who works in the secret underbelly of network programming.

    One wonders if poor Wilhelm (or whoever the original screamer was) is trapped in a purgatory of his own…

  11. 11.

    John S.

    OT, but totally hysterical:

    Obama Has to Win Every Contest – or Hillary Wins

    Hillary Clinton’s top aides have laid out a challenge, with their expectations-setting memo and a follow-up conference call: If Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee, he shouldn’t lose any more states. Ever.

    “If you are acting like the nominee — if you are, essentially, declaring the race over — you ought to be able to win the contests that are coming up,” Howard Wolfson told reporters during the call (which lasted more than an hour; I hung up about 65 minutes in, after Wolfson admitted he had accidentally disconnected himself and asked whether he had missed anything). “If you don’t, it says something profound about Democrats’ unease.”

    For Obama to lose any one state to Clinton on Tuesday would show he hasn’t locked up the nomination after all, Wolfson argued. “If he can’t put Senator Clinton away here, even though he acts like he’s the front-runner, portrays himself as the front-runner, the campaign portrays itself as the inevitable, anointed nominee, there’s a problem,” he said. “And the problem is that people want Senator Clinton to continue in this race.”

    Bwahahahahaha!

  12. 12.

    crack

    OT, but totally hysterical:

    OT- Yes.
    Hysterical- not really.

    And it’s being discussed all over the place why thread jack this?

  13. 13.

    SGEW

    I hung up about 65 minutes in, after Wolfson admitted he had accidentally disconnected himself and asked whether he had missed anything

    You know, it’s not even funny anymore. Sure, the first time the clowns fall down and hurt themselves, it’s funny. After watching them for an hour or so, as they writhe around in the ring, repeatedly hitting themselves on the heads with lead pipes and soiling their baggy pantaloons, not so much.

    Oh, the humanity!

  14. 14.

    borehole

    Crack, it’s because BJ commenters try to sneak a snippet of Clinton’s staff being obtuse dickheads into every possible thread. We call it “the Hillwhelm.”

  15. 15.

    mark

    No, no, no. It’s “aaaaaaAAAAaah!” with an hysterical lilt about 2/3 of the way in.

    Oh, complaints are next door; it’s screaming lessons in here.

  17. 17.

    Zuzu

    Geez, dude, you just found out about the Wilhelm? That’s been common knowledge* for years.

    *among the sort of obscurist weirdos who know things like this instead of having lives/sex

    Yep, seems to be a real indicator.

    Did I mention I also knew about it?

  18. 18.

    Billy K

    You’ll be surprised to learn how long this has been going on.

    Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t know this by now. I guess I’m playing the “older than the internets” card, even though my “friends” tell me it makes me sound like a prick.

  19. 19.

    Neal

    This really reminds me of a weird little story by Harlan Ellison called “Laugh Track”, wherein a guy recongizes his aunt’s laughter coming out of canned laugh tracks on all kinds of bad TV sitcoms. She was taped as part of a studio audience years ago and her laugh keeps getting recycled, becoming more and more threadbare. Eventually the guy realized that a part of his aunt’s effervescent spirit is trapped in some kind of weird Hell where she is forced to laugh at unfunny recycled jokes. To free her, he sets himself on a quest that leads him to the Phantom Sweetener, a technician who works in the secret underbelly of network programming.

    I have a lot of Ellison on the shelf. I’ve read “Laugh Track”. Great story. Harlan’s such a weird old coot.

  20. 20.

    John S.

    And it’s being discussed all over the place why thread jack this?

    Because there is no thread for it here – yet (cough,cough).

  21. 21.

    Bobzim

    A friend of the family when I was a kid made good (one of the few West Virginians in the film industry not because they look “inbred or deformed”)and got a job at Skywalker Ranch as an accountant. While they were doing post-production sound for “Backdraft”, they realized that they needed a lady’s scream during the scene where Billy Baldwin “rescues” the mannequin. For some reason none of their canned screams would do, so they went office to office having employees scream for them and she won.

    Now every time that movie is shown on cable, I get to tell that story to the amazement of nobody. Next time I’ll tell the story of my brother-in-law playing violin as an extra in “Blown Away”.

  22. 22.

    Ninerdave

    I saw a report years back that traced a ricochet sound effect from I think it was the 50s all the way up to the 90s.

    Think your stereotypical ricochet sound…and that’s it.

  23. 23.

    RSA

    Thanks for the links, Tim F. Very cool. I wonder if there’s a single red-tailed hawk scream that’s appeared as often in scifi movies and westerns, or whether all of those sound alike?

  24. 24.

    Punchy

    That link is “prohibited, catagorized as nudity”.

    Thanks. For like the 18th time, a BJ link has taken me to what my IT guy calls prOn. I smell a pink slip.

  26. 26.

    Funkula

    I really wish I could unhear of the Wilhelm scream. It takes me right out of whatever I’m watching every time I hear it now.

  27. 27.

    jcricket

    Geez, dude, you just found out about the Wilhelm? That’s been common knowledge* for years.

    I know – john’s really late to the party of lame know-it-alls that bother to remember shit like this but can’t seem to remember important dates like their anniversary. Did I say that out loud?

    John, it’s like your welcome to the Democratic party. Long overdue.

  28. 28.

    srv

    After Ninerdave’s comment, I was going to link to one of the crappy band Ricochet’s videos but found this better one instead. Holy Shit!!

    Luckiest guy evah.

  32. 32.

    Jake

    That’s brilliant, it was even used in the Star Wars Holiday Special.

    Come to think of it, the SWHS would be semi-tolerable if you replaced the entire script with WSs.

  33. 33.

    tBone

    Geez, dude, you just found out about the Wilhelm? That’s been common knowledge* for years.

    *among the sort of obscurist weirdos who know things like this instead of having lives/sex

    No shit, Tim. Turn in your geek card immediately. And stop having sex. It interferes with the trivia-gathering portion of the brain.

  34. 34.

    Bobzim

    srv Says:

    After Ninerdave’s comment, I was going to link to one of the crappy band Ricochet’s videos but found this better one instead. Holy Shit!!

    Luckiest guy evah.

    They didn’t show him cleaning the shit out of his pants, but you know it was there.

  36. 36.

    AkaDad

    I know the Scream. I make it every time I open up a thread and find lukasiak and his blizzard of phony numbers.

    That’s eerily similar to the scream that hookers make, when they see me naked.

  37. 37.

    Bob Smith

    Dr. Davis telephone please, Dr. Davis, telephone please. Dr. Blair, Dr. Blair. Dr. Jay Hamilton, Dr. Jay Hamilton.

  38. 38.

    Birdzilla

    The WILHELM SCREAM has been used in several movies not only from that aleins being eaten by the saloc in RETURN OF THE JEDI but from the storm troper that fell into the death star canyon when luke shot him

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