When it comes to pure, unadulterated post-production fun, not much beats adding effects during sound design and mix sessions. And whether the production is a movie, TV show, commercial or promo, every post facility has, among its thousands of laugh, glass-break and lion growl sounds, its own short list of really distinctive effects. At NBC, two of my favorites are “Celebrity Gunshot”, an enormously loud and clear gun blast lifted from the 1984 mini-series, Celebrity and “Sitting On A Wet Kitty”, which sounds remarkably like its name.

And then there’s The Wilhelm Scream. This legendary sound effect has now appeared in something like 200 different movies, TV shows, games and rides…and counting.

It was first recorded for the 1951 Gary Cooper movie Distant Drums by Sheb Wooley, an actor and musician best remembered for his 1958 hit “The Purple People Eater.” It was used in Drums as the last gasp of a man being eaten by an alligator, but the sound was named after the character of Private Wilhelm, who is shot in the leg with an arrow in the 1953 western, The Charge at Feather River.

The sound effect was then archived as part of the Warner Bros sound effects library. It was used and re-used in many of the studio’s productions throughout the fifties and sixties, including Them!, Land of the Pharaohs, The Sea Chase, Sergeant Rutledge, PT-109, Swiss Family Robinson and The Green Berets.

The Wilhelm Effect was used so much that, in the 1970s, it came to the attention of University of Southern California cinema student and effects fan Ben Burtt.  When Burtt was later hired to do sound effects for Star Wars, he found the Distant Drums scream and adopted it, including it in all the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, as well as More American Graffiti and Willow.

Since then, The Wilhelm Scream has appeared in films as diverse as Poltergeist, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Batman Returns, Toy Story, The Fifth Element, Hercules, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tim Burton’s version of Planet of the Apes, Madagascar, Superman Returns, Sin City and Kill Bill.

Although it has never been available in any commercial sound effects library, The Wilhelm Scream has made the rounds throughout the sound community, passed along by editors and mixers who appreciate its history. Some directors have also become fans of The Wilhelm Scream and ask for it by name, like Peter Jackson, who used it in both The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Return of the King.

Wilhelm has also had a presence known on television shows like The X-Files, Angel and Family Guy and theme park rides like The Star Trek Adventure at Universal Studios, and The Batman Adventure at Warner Bros. Movie World. Gamers have encountered The Wilhelm Scream many times in a large number of Star Wars games.

So what does The Wilhelm Scream sound like? Thought you’d never ask. There are lots of samples to be found here in cyberspace, but one of my favorites is The Wilhelm Scream Compilation, two minutes and fifty-eight seconds of Sheb Wooley’s second greatest hit…