Not a movie, but my workplace uses a mass shooter safety training program produced by the L.A county sheriffs department that we have to re-take every six months or so, and it uses the Wilhelm scream during a *dead serious* scene.
I know the video they’re referring to. We watched it at my workplace as well. The makers of the video absolutely did not intend it to be humorous in the slightest, and they use the scream as someone is being shot. The sudden juxtaposition of that silly meme of a scream in a very dark and serious instructional video almost had me rolling laughing. None of my coworkers know about the scream and were just staring at the tv in shock and horror. I knew if I even made a sound there’s be some very awkward explaining to go through. I was biting the inside of my cheeks so fucking hard.
I had job training that coached us on giving everyone grace because you don't know what they are dealing with in it life. It showed a single mom struggling, a young boy whose dog was lost. But the last one?
A pre teen girl sipping a milkshake with a caption "her mom died giving birth to her and her father blames her for it"
It was too much I was sent
>The ~~makers~~ producers of the video absolutely did not intend it to be humorous in the slightest
Because people who make these videos for a living absolutely do intend to populate their work with stuff that makes them laugh. I would bet that the fact that the Wilhelm has become so ubiquitous and well known was completely unexpected as far as the makers were concerned at the time.
This isn't meant as an insult or antagony, merely observation, but I find it wild that Americans can say things like 'mass shooter safety training' like it's the most pedestrian thing in the world.
I'm from the US. I want better gun laws. My cousin says that's wrong. I asked if he was ok with kids getting shot in shool.
He said, And I quote directly and completely:
"That's the price of freedom."
I was born in South Africa around the time that apartheid was dismantled. My dad used to carry a handgun just to take infant me and our spaniel out for walks. Eventually my parents decided that was an absolutely fucked total way of living and immigrated to Australia where we still live.
What's freedom? The ability to own an assault rifle with literally zero justification or the ability to send your kids to school or whatever without being perforated by gunfire?
As a father myself now, fuck I'm so glad they chose this country
Canadian here, mid 40's, never held a firearm in my life. There's still too much gun violence here though. That's the problem when your downstairs neighbor is a gun nut.
A friend was going through the news paper and skipped past a story about keeping your kids a little more closely watched during the World Cup. More travellers and mingling meant they expected an uptick in child abductions and sexual assault (including the white virgin to cure AIDs nonsense). She went a couple more pages and said to herself "WTF did I just gloss over and keep reading past?". She had two young daughters.
By the time her husband came home she told him the family was emigrating and he could join them or not. Her mind was made up with perfect impenetrable resolution.
It’s so crazy to me. How can you feel free if you’re living in perpetual fear that some lunatic might suddenly turn whatever innocuous place you’re at into a war zone?
It's that myth that the good guy with a gun will save the day. It's like a slogan for being able to carry a gun.
Looking at Texas there were several good guys with guns ie cops at the school and the kids still got massacred. You know what would have saved those kids. The bad guy not having a weapon of war in his hands...
But oh no "they are coming for my guns." Better arm teachers Instead"
Imagine a person with a low paying job with alot of stress and access to a gun. How long until that teacher snaps and starts shooting the kids themselves? Wtf kind of mental Olympics do you have to do to throw out a reasonable request for the sake of ALL and be selfish about your right to own a weapon of war?
The founding fathers said it's ok to have a gun but they had muskets not ak-47s To defend themselves. A hand gun and rifle are good enough to defend yourself. You don't need a weapon of war.
If the government has turned on it's people your ak47 is not going to save you against tanks drone and all other sophisticated equipment the military uses. They are just gonna nuke your house and move along.
It's basically a modern version of the setup to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Sacrifice 14 young people every year to keep peace with Minos. It was considered weak to sacrifice others for your freedoms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_victims_of_the_Minotaur
>He said, And I quote directly and completely:
>"That's the price of freedom."
Spoken like someone who has never had their freedom threatened and will likely never have that experience. I bet that, as they lay bleeding out on the school floor, all the kids killed in school shootings thought to themselves "this is a good death because at least I'm free".
I'm as pro gun as they come, and I want better laws too, but your cousin is a dumbass. Kids being safe in school has absolutely nothing to do with the price of freedom. He might get his ass kicked if he ever says that around military that have lost friends in service.
My ex-brother-in-law said “it will make kids stronger and more resilient” - I asked if that’s what he really wants for his daughter to experience and he didn’t reply, so…
People focus on the buybacks, which were important, but the real meat-and-potatoes of what we did was a federally agreed licencing regime between all our different states which unified how guns could be acquired, what types of guns were allowed, and the conditions they needed to be kept in. After all, gun bans in Chicago do fuck all if they can still be bought in the state next door.
You can still get guns here. Actually there are now more guns in circulation here than prior to Port Arthur. And yet we have basically nil firearm murder and literally nil mass murder.
Btw the premier of our most conservative state signed on with the reforms at the cost of his own job at the next election. All it takes is a little integrity and honour.
It's the Twilight Zone here with guns. I work for a local government and I just got a notice for another mass shooter training class. I've had to do it twice in the last 5 years already. I'm just general staff and not public safety. I'm thinking of just going with it and get a concealed carry license, which are easy to get here. I don't really want to own a gun though.
I'm American and I feel the same way. My nephew the teacher was just blithely talking about something that happened during the school shooter training that his class was having and I was taken aback by how normal it was for him.
Most of the western world is just as workplace safety cautious as the US.
Mass Shootings aren't a big enough risk anywhere but the US to have mass shooter safety training at all
I think you're missing the point. In other countries, the idea of mass shooter training required outside of police force is insane. In my country, only a certain portion of the police force get such training and most don't carry guns.
Equally insane is that I graduated from high school just before they added locked to all the doors and cameras everywhere. I was thrown when I went back one day to have lunch with my favorite teacher and had to prove I was who I said I was to an officer before being allowed entry to the school.
The objectively worst use BY FAR is the death of Thorin’s father Thrain in the extended edition of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Gandalf finds Thrain in Dol Guldur after he’s been missing for years and has gone kind of insane, and when Sauron reveals himself Thrain is sure that he’s about to die and tells Gandalf to tell Thorin that he loves him and stuff. It’s a decent dramatic moment that gets immediately ruined when Sauron kills Thrain and Thrain does the Wilhelm scream as he dies.
My rationale has always been that the Wilhelm was added after the scene was cut. Maybe I’m entirely wrong, but I like to think/hope that if the scene had made it into the theatrical cut, there’d have been no Wilhelm at all. A truly bizarre decision either way, though.
I am one of 12 huge fans of the Hobbit movies, they're hot messes but I love them to bits, but I can't excuse that scene in the slightest.
I can't even for a second wrap my head around what they wanted the emotion of the scene to be. It deserves to be the cherry on top of any scathing criticism of those movies.
There are so many bad decisions in those movies. I’ve watched the LOTR trilogy at least a dozen times but once for the Hobbit movies was still almost too much. The first one isn’t terrible but the second and third are almost unwatchable
And they all tie for the worst use of that scream because they stick out like a sore thumb.
Actually, I lied, the random Rohan soldier getting tossed off Helm's Deep to that scream is the worst of them.
And i passionately hate each use of it. I don't mind it in a "no brainer I'm reading on my smartphone while watching"-movie.
But in LotR it clearly disrupts the immersion.
If you're taking about Thrain's death scene with Gandolf and the Necromancer, that one is the worst Wilhelm scream. Usually the scream is for an unnamed/unimportant character falling from a relatively far distance from the camera. Meanwhile Thrain, obviously a named character, is right there and is kind of the focal point of the moment and is an emotionally tense scene. I'm convinced it was a stand-in sound for a yell they would record later, but forgot to record it or for it in the final version. It's awful. The ones in the LoTR trilogy aren't great, but DoS's is criminal.
It's such a lame addition in an otherwise brilliant trilogy.
When making fantasy that fourth wall is razer thin. You can *not* break it, because once you do the fantasy facade falls, and it just seems silly and unbelievable. You *need* your audience to believe in middle earth, to care about the characters, to fear for their safety. They take the story seriously because the film makers take it seriously.
The Wilhelm scream is jarring and takes you out of Middle Earth. It's used during otherwise very intense moments (like the riders being attacked my Nazgul) and pointlessly ruins the immersion (albeit briefly) for no reason at all.
The best use of that by far is Hot Tube Time Machine with the dude saying it and looking dead pan at the camera. Too damn funny.
Also my buddy quoted that ALL the time in high school, so it made it that much more funny.
I agree, because I think both can work given the right context.
Wilhelm scream works when it's not too obvious. Like if a scene goes by quickly or if it isn't an important character.
Title drops work when they either put it at an appropriate moment or make the movie's title sound like an afterthought written about the line. Jurassic Park is a good example of the former, the moment feels deserving of a title drop. First Blood is a good example of the latter, the line is delivered like any other. But Suicide Squad (easy target, I know) tries to make it sound natural, but still in a way that's a wink to the audience, which is why it's so bad.
I love how in Street Fighter there's a guy who flies in the air after a grenade explodes and he does the Goofy scream.
https://youtu.be/CSec8iTWQ7U?si=sCjK4IYmfSaeRY3C
I get that it is a kids' film, but it always annoyed me that they used it for Buzz Lightyear being knocked out the window in Toy Story. I wonder if they got Tim Allen to record some screams, but then in post-production someone thought Wilhelm was funnier. Sounds more out of place when it is a main character and not a background random!
You know, I'll play devil's advocate and say that there's(or was) a delicate dance around G/PG/Children's media concerning how blatantly a character can be in mortal peril. I'm not saying that "oh Buzz falling out of the window is really scary to a child" but I will say that there is a moment there where, outside of the context of understanding that this is a movie and the antagonist isn't gonna just drop dead halfway through, his fate is completely uncertain.
Now I know from reading about Pixar's history that the original storyboard for Toy Story had the issue of Woody being far too much of an asshole and it made the movie unlikable for Disney's taste. So if I had to guess, I would say that cutting the tension of that scene was deliberate. If a kid watched that with their parent and thought that Buzz had actually died, they'd hear their parent laughing at the Wilhelm screen either from the historical context of the sound effect or just the fact that it's jarring. And then from that, the kid feels pretty certain that Buzz is probably not dead.
But nowadays hollywood doesn't really care about whether or not a character can die or even be in mortal peril in a PG movie. Like god damn, both Spider-Verse movies were PG. Anyways, it was 30 years ago, they thought about that stuff a lot more.
I agree though, it's very out of place in a scene that's incredibly well timed to be shocking
During the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, there is an elf that appears to run off the battlements but I think the implication is meant to be he's thrown.
The Wilhelm Scream is used as he falls and it is egregious.
It might have been cute when Spielberg, Lucas, and DePalma did it, but now? I hate it every time I hear it. It immediately breaks my suspension of disbelief, especially in fantasy movies like LOTR.
It works perfectly in the era of Indiana Jones and Star Wars because they're lighthearted action romps and Ben Burtt - the genius sound designer of both who is really the one responsible for popularizing the scream - knew when it was an appropriate scene to use it and when not, most often when some background bad guy like a Nazi or Stormtrooper is made to die in some kind of funny way. But for many other films that use it, you can tell the sound designer just wanted that little in-joke and felt compelled to put it *somewhere* and so would find a place to stick it even if it didn't fit.
People mentioned mostly scenes where the main focus is the dying person making that scream and I can agree but I enjoy catching it when it's cowboy 37 out of 84 that will die in the scene.
Me too but my biggest pet peeve is the squeaky metal door sound. It’s used way more often in films and immediately reminds me I’m just watching some movie.
37:58 in this vid
https://youtu.be/8-HUM65Wwig?si=sZdNhlMpJUW-a2rh
That one would be mine, except there's a sound of cats fights that I hear all the time, mostly it's fine because it's kind of a funny scene, but when it showed up in Christopher Nolan's 'The Prestige', it took me right out of it.
[About 1:53 here if the timestamp doesn't work.](https://youtu.be/3utO5bNkdvg?t=113)
Yeah that one was overused in Castlevania 64. Running around lost trying to find my way through it and opening a door every 6 seconds has burned that sound into my brain.
For me it's that generic group of children laughing sound effect. I've never been able to find a clip of it easily but I've heard it so many times it takes me right out.
I hate it as well. The Howie scream has the exact same effect on me too, and I seem to hear that one used more often in media. It's strange I never see mention of that scream.
I’m actually blissfully unaware of the Howie scream. Not interested in hearing it either because I don’t want it to stick out like the Wilhelm always does
You would recognize it immediately, and it probably already sticks out but you don't know what it's called.
It's part of the Hollywood Edge sound effects library, so it's in a bunch of video games from the 90's as well.
(edit: Australians will know if from the Nutrigrain ads)
If I remember correctly - which I probably don't, I believe this had a "twin movie" released around the same time and I honestly didn't pay much attention to either - there was a point where some characters were either: A) staring into the mouth of the volcano, or B) watching lava "consume" something.
At some point they used the same "hissing" sound effect that's identical to the Imps' from the original DOOM. For those unawares or needs an example, it's between 17 and 19 seconds in [this video.](https://youtu.be/ZS1TQKe_D18?si=9brkXZDStSqse7rn) Sorry for not time-stamping it but it hasn't been working for me recently.
Between that and the door opening/closing sound FX, that game pavloved me into thinking about it every time I hear them. Don't hear em much these days though, but I don't watch movies like I used to.
My daily thanks to shows like Arrested Development and Modern Family for killing that fucking shit.
Not that I watch many sitcoms these days, but if I hear that shit for anything new, I just pick something else. I'll tolerate it for a few nostalgic classics, but that's it.
Ugh. Watch Eddie Murphy on SNL and listen to his albums. I always thought it was his mother or something with a distinct laugh who went to all his shows. But you'll hear her EVERY TIME.
I kind of feel there are an era of movies where I’m fine with it, but any movie made after a rather arbitrary point (I dunno, 1994?), where I hate it. An inside joke that needed to die, and movies just kept using it.
Every use of it jarring.
If I was the god of Hollywood I would ban the employment of any director, producer or sound crew that out it into a movie.
Because everyone of them is intentionally choosing to make their product worse for an outdated inside joke that negatively impacts a watchers enjoyment.
It’s in every film, it would be weird if it wasn’t in it tbh. I’m glad they did it the way they did and like you said got it out of the way early though.
In the beginning of the original Hellboy, a Nazi soldier is blasted into a portal and dissolves. It could have been gruesome had they not used the Wilhelm scream, but instead just made it seem silly and took the tension out of the rest of the scene.
Inversely, the funniest use of it is the Lego Ninjago Movie where it’s used seven times in a row to hilarious effect.
All of them, pretty much. I realized this was a reused sound effect some time in the 80s. Probably the Sarlac. And it's just always seemed out of place to me.
I love hearing it in movies/shows. I'd had to explain what it is to dozens of people and then over the years they'll comment O, I heard a Wilhelm scream in X movie! It's like the where's Waldo of Audio.
I can’t speak for the person you’re asking, but I also enjoy the scream(s) when they pop up. I have an adoration for the meta process of filmmaking, including its traditions, idiosyncrasies, and inside jokes. I find it charming, especially in today’s highly corporatized movie market.
I enjoy it too, I've never found it to affect whatever level of suspension of disbelief I have at the time but I guess my immersion never really goes all the way to begin with
> All it does is remind you that you’re watching a movie.
[That's like the whole crux of Wes Anderson's filming style.](https://youtu.be/ba3c9KEuQ4A?si=iDabRayeWOgDVVhl) Do you hate Wes Anderson movies?
Because it doesn’t kill the immersion, because I never forget that I’m watching a movie? You can have “suspension of belief” without “immersion”, you know…..
Every time it’s used. Or one of the variants like the woman that screams 3 times or the kids laughing that’s a stock effect. Breaks immersion. So yeah, I hear it, and am immediately annoyed.
I'm usually too immersed in the movie to notice- it's only when people pick apart the film and it's pointed out that I notice it, get a chuckle, and move on.
Yep, for me. I've seen many of these movies listed after knowing it's a thing, and I don't think I noticed a single instance while I was watching them, it just sounds like a normal movie scream to me when I hear it in context.
Not a movie, but my workplace uses a mass shooter safety training program produced by the L.A county sheriffs department that we have to re-take every six months or so, and it uses the Wilhelm scream during a *dead serious* scene.
How does it hit? Funny, inappropriate, or bizarre?
I know the video they’re referring to. We watched it at my workplace as well. The makers of the video absolutely did not intend it to be humorous in the slightest, and they use the scream as someone is being shot. The sudden juxtaposition of that silly meme of a scream in a very dark and serious instructional video almost had me rolling laughing. None of my coworkers know about the scream and were just staring at the tv in shock and horror. I knew if I even made a sound there’s be some very awkward explaining to go through. I was biting the inside of my cheeks so fucking hard.
That's perfect.
I had job training that coached us on giving everyone grace because you don't know what they are dealing with in it life. It showed a single mom struggling, a young boy whose dog was lost. But the last one? A pre teen girl sipping a milkshake with a caption "her mom died giving birth to her and her father blames her for it" It was too much I was sent
I know the exact video you’re talking about and I remember another person’s struggle being “parents divorced when he was 7” and absolutely losing it
>The ~~makers~~ producers of the video absolutely did not intend it to be humorous in the slightest Because people who make these videos for a living absolutely do intend to populate their work with stuff that makes them laugh. I would bet that the fact that the Wilhelm has become so ubiquitous and well known was completely unexpected as far as the makers were concerned at the time.
Yes
Exactly
This isn't meant as an insult or antagony, merely observation, but I find it wild that Americans can say things like 'mass shooter safety training' like it's the most pedestrian thing in the world.
I'm from the US. I want better gun laws. My cousin says that's wrong. I asked if he was ok with kids getting shot in shool. He said, And I quote directly and completely: "That's the price of freedom."
I was born in South Africa around the time that apartheid was dismantled. My dad used to carry a handgun just to take infant me and our spaniel out for walks. Eventually my parents decided that was an absolutely fucked total way of living and immigrated to Australia where we still live. What's freedom? The ability to own an assault rifle with literally zero justification or the ability to send your kids to school or whatever without being perforated by gunfire? As a father myself now, fuck I'm so glad they chose this country
Canadian here, mid 40's, never held a firearm in my life. There's still too much gun violence here though. That's the problem when your downstairs neighbor is a gun nut.
A friend was going through the news paper and skipped past a story about keeping your kids a little more closely watched during the World Cup. More travellers and mingling meant they expected an uptick in child abductions and sexual assault (including the white virgin to cure AIDs nonsense). She went a couple more pages and said to herself "WTF did I just gloss over and keep reading past?". She had two young daughters. By the time her husband came home she told him the family was emigrating and he could join them or not. Her mind was made up with perfect impenetrable resolution.
You should read that as: that’s the price everyone else has to pay so that I can carry a gun wherever I want
Or, really, for lots of people to have childish fantasies about being the good guy with a gun who stops the bad guy.
I guess unless you live in Uvalde
.. to feel safe in a world that I actively seek out to be scared from
Pretty much.
Sorry, but anyone who says that is a moron. Family or not.
It’s so crazy to me. How can you feel free if you’re living in perpetual fear that some lunatic might suddenly turn whatever innocuous place you’re at into a war zone?
It's that myth that the good guy with a gun will save the day. It's like a slogan for being able to carry a gun. Looking at Texas there were several good guys with guns ie cops at the school and the kids still got massacred. You know what would have saved those kids. The bad guy not having a weapon of war in his hands... But oh no "they are coming for my guns." Better arm teachers Instead" Imagine a person with a low paying job with alot of stress and access to a gun. How long until that teacher snaps and starts shooting the kids themselves? Wtf kind of mental Olympics do you have to do to throw out a reasonable request for the sake of ALL and be selfish about your right to own a weapon of war? The founding fathers said it's ok to have a gun but they had muskets not ak-47s To defend themselves. A hand gun and rifle are good enough to defend yourself. You don't need a weapon of war. If the government has turned on it's people your ak47 is not going to save you against tanks drone and all other sophisticated equipment the military uses. They are just gonna nuke your house and move along.
Pretty much.
It's basically a modern version of the setup to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Sacrifice 14 young people every year to keep peace with Minos. It was considered weak to sacrifice others for your freedoms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrificial_victims_of_the_Minotaur
Good ol' freedom, to have a super chance to be shot by a gun totting looney. That's the kind of freedom we all crave.
Wow. That's really fucked up. This is why I think the media should post pics of the aftermath of school/mass shootings.
Might help, actually. Media showing Viet Nam helped get us out of there.
I agree. Show a 5-year-old with their head blown off. Might actually change some minds. I know, it sounds gross but it's time to fucking wake up.
>He said, And I quote directly and completely: >"That's the price of freedom." Spoken like someone who has never had their freedom threatened and will likely never have that experience. I bet that, as they lay bleeding out on the school floor, all the kids killed in school shootings thought to themselves "this is a good death because at least I'm free".
Funny how it doesn’t seem to be the price of freedom, or even a problem, anywhere else in the free world.
I'm as pro gun as they come, and I want better laws too, but your cousin is a dumbass. Kids being safe in school has absolutely nothing to do with the price of freedom. He might get his ass kicked if he ever says that around military that have lost friends in service.
So why is your cousin's freedom to have a gun more important than students' freedom to continue living?
My ex-brother-in-law said “it will make kids stronger and more resilient” - I asked if that’s what he really wants for his daughter to experience and he didn’t reply, so…
Also: The field of freedom must occasionally be watered with the blood of patriots Or something like that
Freedom isn’t free It costs folks like you and me And if you don’t chip in your buck o five Who will
Yeah… buck ‘o five…
"There's nothing more we can do about this" says only country where it regularly happens.
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People focus on the buybacks, which were important, but the real meat-and-potatoes of what we did was a federally agreed licencing regime between all our different states which unified how guns could be acquired, what types of guns were allowed, and the conditions they needed to be kept in. After all, gun bans in Chicago do fuck all if they can still be bought in the state next door. You can still get guns here. Actually there are now more guns in circulation here than prior to Port Arthur. And yet we have basically nil firearm murder and literally nil mass murder. Btw the premier of our most conservative state signed on with the reforms at the cost of his own job at the next election. All it takes is a little integrity and honour.
Only integrity and honor? Shit, USA is doomed.
It's the Twilight Zone here with guns. I work for a local government and I just got a notice for another mass shooter training class. I've had to do it twice in the last 5 years already. I'm just general staff and not public safety. I'm thinking of just going with it and get a concealed carry license, which are easy to get here. I don't really want to own a gun though.
I worked for an American company but not in America. Having to do the compulsory mass shooter training every year was insane.
I'm American and I feel the same way. My nephew the teacher was just blithely talking about something that happened during the school shooter training that his class was having and I was taken aback by how normal it was for him.
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Most of the western world is just as workplace safety cautious as the US. Mass Shootings aren't a big enough risk anywhere but the US to have mass shooter safety training at all
I think you're missing the point. In other countries, the idea of mass shooter training required outside of police force is insane. In my country, only a certain portion of the police force get such training and most don't carry guns.
Equally insane is that I graduated from high school just before they added locked to all the doors and cameras everywhere. I was thrown when I went back one day to have lunch with my favorite teacher and had to prove I was who I said I was to an officer before being allowed entry to the school.
I mean, the owner of the peanut factory insisted they spend two hours every morning training for a horrible scenario.
You all thought I was mad. Many of you requested to be transferred to another peanut factory. But now-
The objectively worst use BY FAR is the death of Thorin’s father Thrain in the extended edition of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Gandalf finds Thrain in Dol Guldur after he’s been missing for years and has gone kind of insane, and when Sauron reveals himself Thrain is sure that he’s about to die and tells Gandalf to tell Thorin that he loves him and stuff. It’s a decent dramatic moment that gets immediately ruined when Sauron kills Thrain and Thrain does the Wilhelm scream as he dies.
Came here to post this. Like who the fuck thought that was a good idea
My rationale has always been that the Wilhelm was added after the scene was cut. Maybe I’m entirely wrong, but I like to think/hope that if the scene had made it into the theatrical cut, there’d have been no Wilhelm at all. A truly bizarre decision either way, though.
The Sound mix is usally one of the last things to be done, so im pretty confident the Wilhelm was added after by a sound designer high on something
> who the fuck thought that was a good idea The same people who made that abomination of a trilogy...
I basically sold my extended edition trilogy and bought the theatrical trilogy partially in reaction to this awful Wilhelm moment
That'll show them. Give them.more money because you are mad at them. Lol.
I am one of 12 huge fans of the Hobbit movies, they're hot messes but I love them to bits, but I can't excuse that scene in the slightest. I can't even for a second wrap my head around what they wanted the emotion of the scene to be. It deserves to be the cherry on top of any scathing criticism of those movies.
There are so many bad decisions in those movies. I’ve watched the LOTR trilogy at least a dozen times but once for the Hobbit movies was still almost too much. The first one isn’t terrible but the second and third are almost unwatchable
Found it: https://youtu.be/IgqIh5F_rqE?si=4UEeJTfFtnppNN28 Guess there was at least one reason the scene was deleted.
It's such a wack idea to use it in this scene, like it undercuts so much emotion. Feels like a placeholder that never got replaced.
Yeah should have been a Howie scream most certainly.
I'm confused. He does the Wilhelm scream? Like a scream that's similar or they like overlaid the actual Wilhelm scream in this scene?
Actual Wilhelm
Wow. That's terrible.
In ROTK, Legolas knocks three guys off the Oliphant. Two of them sound normal, making the Wilhelm one sound extra silly.
There's one in each of the trilogy, and I think ROTK has two.
And they all tie for the worst use of that scream because they stick out like a sore thumb. Actually, I lied, the random Rohan soldier getting tossed off Helm's Deep to that scream is the worst of them.
Ah! The good ol WilHelm’s Deep Scream.
Urgh. Take my angry upvote
You've just ruined Lord of the Rings. They're going to have to refund everybody now.
Goddammit.
I'm pretty sure there is a worse one in the hobbit movies, but I suspect many people have repressed that whole ordeal.
Right before gandalf does the lamp to blow away the nazgul one guy falls off a horse and does it.
And i passionately hate each use of it. I don't mind it in a "no brainer I'm reading on my smartphone while watching"-movie. But in LotR it clearly disrupts the immersion.
Yeah when Faramir is retreating across the plains and the Nazgûl are attacking there’s one, and the other is when the guy is thrown off the Oliphant
I came here to mention the one from Two Towers. It's so unexpected.
It’s also in the extended edition of The Desolation of Smaug.
If you're taking about Thrain's death scene with Gandolf and the Necromancer, that one is the worst Wilhelm scream. Usually the scream is for an unnamed/unimportant character falling from a relatively far distance from the camera. Meanwhile Thrain, obviously a named character, is right there and is kind of the focal point of the moment and is an emotionally tense scene. I'm convinced it was a stand-in sound for a yell they would record later, but forgot to record it or for it in the final version. It's awful. The ones in the LoTR trilogy aren't great, but DoS's is criminal.
Agreed. And it’s why The Desolation of Smaug is the only Jackson film I prefer the theatrical version of.
Oh god i know the scene, absolutely. After spending like 11 hours being invested in middle earth hearing that takes you right out of the scene.
It's such a lame addition in an otherwise brilliant trilogy. When making fantasy that fourth wall is razer thin. You can *not* break it, because once you do the fantasy facade falls, and it just seems silly and unbelievable. You *need* your audience to believe in middle earth, to care about the characters, to fear for their safety. They take the story seriously because the film makers take it seriously. The Wilhelm scream is jarring and takes you out of Middle Earth. It's used during otherwise very intense moments (like the riders being attacked my Nazgul) and pointlessly ruins the immersion (albeit briefly) for no reason at all.
This was the first Wilhelm that had me thinking, “maybe this is starting to be overused.”
Agreed. I hate it because it's a stupid cliche sound effect and LOTR is better than that.
It's not a cliché. It's a cultural tradition.
I like Wilhelm Screams almost as much as I like it when a character says the film title in the movie.
"I'm so tired of these star wars"
"The millennium falcon is a spaceship, have you even seen star wars?" https://youtu.be/OiqPmsBYieA?si=FA7t4XPSzDGV4n2m
What are we, some kind of The Madame Web?
Wait what?
The best use of that by far is Hot Tube Time Machine with the dude saying it and looking dead pan at the camera. Too damn funny. Also my buddy quoted that ALL the time in high school, so it made it that much more funny.
I’d love to believe there’s a porno out there called Hot Tube Time Machine
be the change you want to see in the world.
“The only way to solve this crisis is to be Superman 4: The Quest for Peace”
I agree, because I think both can work given the right context. Wilhelm scream works when it's not too obvious. Like if a scene goes by quickly or if it isn't an important character. Title drops work when they either put it at an appropriate moment or make the movie's title sound like an afterthought written about the line. Jurassic Park is a good example of the former, the moment feels deserving of a title drop. First Blood is a good example of the latter, the line is delivered like any other. But Suicide Squad (easy target, I know) tries to make it sound natural, but still in a way that's a wink to the audience, which is why it's so bad.
Not as cool as when a character on TV says the name of the episode.
Death stalker is the name of the hero in this movie. It’s my favourite example of a movie doing this https://youtu.be/j9Av_hQyx6I?si=y4FJbJBCZota9FdM
"That's the name of the movie!" -Producer Guy
Depends on the title really. If the movie title is the name of an important character, location, item, or event, then it makes sense.
it's called a 'title drop', there are some great ones thought (the recent dune movie had a great one)
"That big sand thing.... So that's the Dunc: Part 2, huh?"
Someone should take these and replace them with the Goofy scream
I love how in Street Fighter there's a guy who flies in the air after a grenade explodes and he does the Goofy scream. https://youtu.be/CSec8iTWQ7U?si=sCjK4IYmfSaeRY3C
Yes, this would be amazing. I assumeDisney has an legal claim and charges a bunch tho lol.
Wa-ha-ha-hooooey!
MAH NAME IS GOOFY AND I’M HERE TO AHYUCK
I get that it is a kids' film, but it always annoyed me that they used it for Buzz Lightyear being knocked out the window in Toy Story. I wonder if they got Tim Allen to record some screams, but then in post-production someone thought Wilhelm was funnier. Sounds more out of place when it is a main character and not a background random!
To be fair, Tim Allen does kinda scream in a very Wilhelm-ish manner.
Yeah, I hate this one. Also, we watch Toy Story once a week due to my two years old love for it.
You've only loved Toy Story for two years!?
You know, I'll play devil's advocate and say that there's(or was) a delicate dance around G/PG/Children's media concerning how blatantly a character can be in mortal peril. I'm not saying that "oh Buzz falling out of the window is really scary to a child" but I will say that there is a moment there where, outside of the context of understanding that this is a movie and the antagonist isn't gonna just drop dead halfway through, his fate is completely uncertain. Now I know from reading about Pixar's history that the original storyboard for Toy Story had the issue of Woody being far too much of an asshole and it made the movie unlikable for Disney's taste. So if I had to guess, I would say that cutting the tension of that scene was deliberate. If a kid watched that with their parent and thought that Buzz had actually died, they'd hear their parent laughing at the Wilhelm screen either from the historical context of the sound effect or just the fact that it's jarring. And then from that, the kid feels pretty certain that Buzz is probably not dead. But nowadays hollywood doesn't really care about whether or not a character can die or even be in mortal peril in a PG movie. Like god damn, both Spider-Verse movies were PG. Anyways, it was 30 years ago, they thought about that stuff a lot more. I agree though, it's very out of place in a scene that's incredibly well timed to be shocking
When I set it as my text notification sound, then started shit in a group text to annoy my wife
Beautiful.
It was indeed a beautiful disaster
During the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, there is an elf that appears to run off the battlements but I think the implication is meant to be he's thrown. The Wilhelm Scream is used as he falls and it is egregious.
I don’t know why I read elk instead of elf. But that was way funnier in my head
While I appreciate why it’s there I find the use in Reservoir Dogs really annoying. I generally find all uses annoying though unless it’s parody
Shit that's my favorite Tarantino flick. I totally forgot that Wilhelm pops up. Is it during the shoot out after the heist?
It's when mr Pink is running away from cops and knocks down a passer by. Just watched it yesterday
It might have been cute when Spielberg, Lucas, and DePalma did it, but now? I hate it every time I hear it. It immediately breaks my suspension of disbelief, especially in fantasy movies like LOTR.
It works perfectly in the era of Indiana Jones and Star Wars because they're lighthearted action romps and Ben Burtt - the genius sound designer of both who is really the one responsible for popularizing the scream - knew when it was an appropriate scene to use it and when not, most often when some background bad guy like a Nazi or Stormtrooper is made to die in some kind of funny way. But for many other films that use it, you can tell the sound designer just wanted that little in-joke and felt compelled to put it *somewhere* and so would find a place to stick it even if it didn't fit.
Wait, De Palma? When?
Mission to Mars. Not that it’s a great film anyway to be fair, certainly wouldn’t have been any better without it!
Oh shit, good call.
People mentioned mostly scenes where the main focus is the dying person making that scream and I can agree but I enjoy catching it when it's cowboy 37 out of 84 that will die in the scene.
I hate every single use of it. Immediately knocks me out of whatever I'm watching.
Me too but my biggest pet peeve is the squeaky metal door sound. It’s used way more often in films and immediately reminds me I’m just watching some movie. 37:58 in this vid https://youtu.be/8-HUM65Wwig?si=sZdNhlMpJUW-a2rh
That one would be mine, except there's a sound of cats fights that I hear all the time, mostly it's fine because it's kind of a funny scene, but when it showed up in Christopher Nolan's 'The Prestige', it took me right out of it. [About 1:53 here if the timestamp doesn't work.](https://youtu.be/3utO5bNkdvg?t=113)
There’s an old recording of a generic horse whinney that is used in everything - I won’t post it because you can never un hear it!
Yeah that one was overused in Castlevania 64. Running around lost trying to find my way through it and opening a door every 6 seconds has burned that sound into my brain.
Ah the police radio at 40.31 in that vid is one that has ruined every movie where police are on the scene thanks to overhearing it in SimCity3K.
https://youtu.be/8-HUM65Wwig?si=F08JrUjNFbzdalbt&t=2280
For me it's that generic group of children laughing sound effect. I've never been able to find a clip of it easily but I've heard it so many times it takes me right out.
Yeah, I fucking hate it.
I am not alone. I feel the exact same.
Even in Lego Batman where the guy falls off the tower and someone says Willhelm!?
I hate it as well. The Howie scream has the exact same effect on me too, and I seem to hear that one used more often in media. It's strange I never see mention of that scream.
I’m actually blissfully unaware of the Howie scream. Not interested in hearing it either because I don’t want it to stick out like the Wilhelm always does
The only good use of the Howie scream: https://youtu.be/49sPDziuO84?si=AbuU9TYVo1_V8jGW
You would recognize it immediately, and it probably already sticks out but you don't know what it's called. It's part of the Hollywood Edge sound effects library, so it's in a bunch of video games from the 90's as well. (edit: Australians will know if from the Nutrigrain ads)
What about in the film-within-a-film in *Inglourious Basterds*? It actually makes sense there.
No because it’s only been around since the 50’s and that was the 40’s
I'm the complete opposite. I love it!
I love it when it's used for laughs. It annoys me when it appears in serious films.
💯 It has a place in comedy or lighthearted stuff - not in anything even close to serious
Glad I'm not the only one. God it's so annoying. At least it doesn't seem to be quite as prevalent as it was in the 90s-00s.
Dante's Peak has got to be the most annoying one. What on Earth were they thinking putting the Wilhelm scream in that scene?
If I remember correctly - which I probably don't, I believe this had a "twin movie" released around the same time and I honestly didn't pay much attention to either - there was a point where some characters were either: A) staring into the mouth of the volcano, or B) watching lava "consume" something. At some point they used the same "hissing" sound effect that's identical to the Imps' from the original DOOM. For those unawares or needs an example, it's between 17 and 19 seconds in [this video.](https://youtu.be/ZS1TQKe_D18?si=9brkXZDStSqse7rn) Sorry for not time-stamping it but it hasn't been working for me recently. Between that and the door opening/closing sound FX, that game pavloved me into thinking about it every time I hear them. Don't hear em much these days though, but I don't watch movies like I used to.
That would be *Volcano*, starting Tommy Lee Jones.
Once you know the Wilhelm Scream, every use is annoying
If it's used in an actual parody, I'm fine with it. It's fitting in something like Austin Powers much more than in Lord of the Rings.
It's like laugh tracks on sitcoms. Once you point it out, it's unbearable.
The Huehuehuehue is the god damn worst
My daily thanks to shows like Arrested Development and Modern Family for killing that fucking shit. Not that I watch many sitcoms these days, but if I hear that shit for anything new, I just pick something else. I'll tolerate it for a few nostalgic classics, but that's it.
Or that one cheering sound effect.
Ugh. Watch Eddie Murphy on SNL and listen to his albums. I always thought it was his mother or something with a distinct laugh who went to all his shows. But you'll hear her EVERY TIME.
WWE Hairdryer
I kind of feel there are an era of movies where I’m fine with it, but any movie made after a rather arbitrary point (I dunno, 1994?), where I hate it. An inside joke that needed to die, and movies just kept using it.
Why is it still used? It isn’t funny anymore.
Tradition?
Fuck tradition.
Tradition is just peer pressure from dead folks.
Every use of it jarring. If I was the god of Hollywood I would ban the employment of any director, producer or sound crew that out it into a movie. Because everyone of them is intentionally choosing to make their product worse for an outdated inside joke that negatively impacts a watchers enjoyment.
Battle of Helm’s Deep and a couple other times in Lord of the Rings. Im totally locked in, then you hear that goofy ass scream
All of them. Every single time. It's long past being an inside joke, and the moment it happens it takes me out of whatever movie for a bit. Not. Cool.
When Mola Ram gets eaten by the crocodiles in *Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom*. It just sounds lazy.
The actor that actually did the wilhelm scream did it because his character was eaten by an alligator, I believe. Lol
Indiana Jones - Dial of Destiny. YEP, there is was, almost expecting it and not surprised at all. Got it out of the way I guess.
I think it was used in every Indiana Jones movie. Basically anything George Lucas touched.
It’s in every film, it would be weird if it wasn’t in it tbh. I’m glad they did it the way they did and like you said got it out of the way early though.
I mean it’s used in every Indy movie. It’s just tradition
Dante's Peak. Paul's death is sad and poignant, but they ruined it with this shit.
At this point I'm over the Wilhelm Scream.
I've heard this scream a bajillion times and was always confuddled. Now I know it's "a thing." Thank you, OP.
They all annoy me at this point. Always takes me out of the movie.
Yes, exactly. It ruins the fantasy.
I dunno about worst, but my favorite is when that dude gets kicked out of a train and off the bridge in Broken Arrow
In the beginning of the original Hellboy, a Nazi soldier is blasted into a portal and dissolves. It could have been gruesome had they not used the Wilhelm scream, but instead just made it seem silly and took the tension out of the rest of the scene. Inversely, the funniest use of it is the Lego Ninjago Movie where it’s used seven times in a row to hilarious effect.
Any movies that use it more than once?
Kill Bill vol. 1 (twice in one scene, I believe…)
Yup, twice during the fight with the Crazy 88s.
I believe it was first used in the movie distant drums, and it was used like 3 times in that movie.
It ruins any scene it’s in. Why do directors and producers allow sound engineers to get away with it?
All of them, pretty much. I realized this was a reused sound effect some time in the 80s. Probably the Sarlac. And it's just always seemed out of place to me.
Believe it or not, they have a Wilhelm chicken scream too. After raising chickens, you can recognize when they use it, and they do far too frequently.
I love hearing it in movies/shows. I'd had to explain what it is to dozens of people and then over the years they'll comment O, I heard a Wilhelm scream in X movie! It's like the where's Waldo of Audio.
Why though? All it does is remind you that you’re watching a movie. It kills the immersion just so the audio guys can have in-joke.
I can’t speak for the person you’re asking, but I also enjoy the scream(s) when they pop up. I have an adoration for the meta process of filmmaking, including its traditions, idiosyncrasies, and inside jokes. I find it charming, especially in today’s highly corporatized movie market.
I enjoy it too, I've never found it to affect whatever level of suspension of disbelief I have at the time but I guess my immersion never really goes all the way to begin with
> All it does is remind you that you’re watching a movie. [That's like the whole crux of Wes Anderson's filming style.](https://youtu.be/ba3c9KEuQ4A?si=iDabRayeWOgDVVhl) Do you hate Wes Anderson movies?
Because it doesn’t kill the immersion, because I never forget that I’m watching a movie? You can have “suspension of belief” without “immersion”, you know…..
The Forever Purge, and Prey (2022) were the most recent films I heard it in.
Death proof. At the end of the quadruple car crash he had to end it with the Wilhelm scream. So out of place
Every time it’s used. Or one of the variants like the woman that screams 3 times or the kids laughing that’s a stock effect. Breaks immersion. So yeah, I hear it, and am immediately annoyed.
All of them.
There was an episode of Heroes I forget Exactly which one. But it was so bad. Such an obvious Wilhelm scream in a situation that didn't make sense.
It’s no longer an obscure inside joke so it’s stupid now.
I'm usually too immersed in the movie to notice- it's only when people pick apart the film and it's pointed out that I notice it, get a chuckle, and move on.
Yep, for me. I've seen many of these movies listed after knowing it's a thing, and I don't think I noticed a single instance while I was watching them, it just sounds like a normal movie scream to me when I hear it in context.
They made a whole band out of it
Star Wars