What Is It?

[W. Gray]

This question is not related to Elk County and may not be as good as Charlie's geography hunt; however, I am betting many movie goers to the Howard and Moline theaters witnessed the answer a number of times.

I first saw and heard this movie effect in a 1951 Warner Brother's  Florida western.

I next saw it in a 1953 Warner Brothers 3D western movie that was set in California. The 1953 movie is significant in that this particular movie effect received its name from this production. In this movie, an army private was shot in the thigh with an Indian arrow.

Of course I did not then recognize it as being the same as in the 1951 movie. And, it was used by Indian and white man alike at least three times in this one 1953 western. No one seemed to notice.

Over the years, this movie effect has been featured in many westerns, easterns, Disney movies, cartoons, Indiana Jones movies, Batman movies, Star Wars movies, Toy Story movies, Lord of the Rings, and practically any movie featuring people being hurt. It has been used on the Simpsons Fox TV hit.  It has been used in a Buffalo Wild Wings commercial.

One of the stars of the hit television program Rawhide, 1959-1965, created the effect for United States Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers.

In all these films, good guys and bad guys use it and in some films several people whether friend or foe use it and it is all the same. But no one in the audience seems to realize that.

Everyone on this forum has more than likely seen and heard it several times but probably no one knows it is the exact same effect first used in 1951 and given a name in 1953.


What is it?

[Bullwinkle]

      I was thinking fake blood until you said you hear it as well.

[W. Gray]

Yes, you hear it as well as see it.

As an aside, when I was a kid, there was not a lot of fake blood in the movies. That was due to a 1934 movie code banning it as well as other stuff including sexual things. Movies were supposed to be wholesome family entertainment. That code even had married couples sleeping in twin beds.

And if there were one bed, one of the stars had to have one foot on the floor at all time or something like that. A bathroom could be shown but a commode could not be part of the scene. The sound of flushing was banned.

After the code, someone would get shot and there was no bullet hole or blood anywhere on the body.

In the 50's that started changing a little as the producers started defying the code. When someone was shot or hurt there was some blood shown then as years passed it got progressively worse. Nowadays, it is gore heaven.

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock used Bosco chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the movie Psycho, which at the time was the scariest movie I had ever seen in my life.

[ddurbin]

Waldo,
Would it be "the Wilhelm scream"?  If I'm right, I'll let you give a more in-depth explanation of it.

[W. Gray]

Although it was not known initially as the Wilhelm Scream, the scream was created in 1951 by Sheb Wooley aka Ben Colder.

A few years later he had the Purple People Eater hit song of the late fifties and was a star of Rawhide. Plus he had a long string of parody hits through the 90s. He created the scream for the Gary Cooper movie Distant Drums, which was filmed in the Florida Everglades with the Seminole Indians and the alligators as the bad guys. It was used several times in this movie.

The scream was used verbatim in another movie and then used again in Charge at Feather River, starring Guy Madison, then television's Wild Bill Hickok. In this movie, a Private Wilhelm was shot in the thigh with an arrow and the scream was dubbed into his voice. Later in the movie another soldier was shot and uttered the exact same scream. Then an Indian was killed and had the same scream. No one seemed to notice including us kids who were really too busy dodging the arrows and lances coming into the audience in this 3D movie.

Thereafter, whenever a producer needed a scream he called for the Wilhelm Scream.

The scream has been dubbed into over 200 movies.

Short demo with Charge at Feather River as the lead off:

Long demo with Distant Drums as the lead off.