Wilhelm Scream makes it into “Iron Man 2,” says director Jon Favreau
“Iron Man 2″ director Jon Favreau (pictured below) sent out an interesting Tweet earlier this week: “Spoiler for sound geeks: The Wilhelm Scream is in.”
As the L.A. Times’ Hero Complex blog reports, that Tweet means “Iron Man 2″ will open in theaters May 7 featuring one of the most storied sound effects in Hollywood – a single-second, high-pitched shriek from the 1950s known to sound supervisors as “The Wilhelm Scream.”
Several movie fans I know (including Mr. BAM) refer to it as the “George Lucas Scream.” That’s because legendary sound supervisor Ben Burtt, who created the sound effects for “Star Wars” and won Oscars for his work on “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” began using the scream as a kind of signature sound. Other sound specialists started working it into their projects as an inside joke.
Hollywood historian and sound editor Steve Lee writes about the origins of the scream at http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/wilhelm. With the inclusion of “Iron Man 2,” Lee counts at least 150 movies that have used the famous yowl.
The Wilhelm Scream is first heard in the 1951 movie “Distant Drums” starring Gary Cooper, chronicles Lee. The sound is used when a soldier is bitten by an alligator while wading through the Florida Everglades.
It was next used two years later in a movie called “The Charge at Feather River,” the film that gave the sound its famous name. A character named Private Wilhelm lets out the shriek when an arrow strikes him in the leg.
Favreau noted on Twitter that he also used the Wilhelm Scream in the first “Iron Man” movie.
Check out this YouTube video compiling some of the cinematic uses for the Wilhelm Scream:
- BAM
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BTW, Wilhelm scream is credited to Erick, Oklahoma’s Sheb Wooley, who is most famously known for the 1958 No.1 hit “The Purple People Eater”.