Tybout: Wilhelm scream a film industry inside joke

From now through Oct. 31, channels like AMC and ABC Family will be hosting a tireless celebration of scary movies, from the legendary to the terrible. For viewers, this means a lot of fake blood, a lot of creative deaths and a lot of screams.

In fact, there’s one scream in particular — one recording — that will probably be used in excess. It’s a legend in its own right — a staple of any movie of peril. You’ve almost certainly heard it before — perhaps in “Tropic Thunder” or maybe in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” remake. It’s called the Wilhelm Scream, and it’s one of the biggest inside jokes in the film industry.

Like all great American legends, the Wilhelm Scream came from humble beginnings — specifically, an otherwise forgotten 1951 film called “Distant Drums.” The plot goes like this: Professional badass Quincy Wyatt (Gary Cooper) leads a small group of soldiers into the Everglades to quell some Seminole Indians, and, to make a long story short, a character gets dragged underwater by an alligator. And he screams like a girl.

You film fanatics know what I’m talking about: that convincing, if effeminate, yelp.

But the scream — recorded after the filming by an unknown voice actor — didn’t catch on overnight. In fact, it didn’t even have a name until 1953, when it was used again in “The Charge at Feather River.” The movie’s plot is almost disturbingly similar to “Distant Drums” — a couple of gung-ho soldiers charge into American Indian territory to rescue some damsels. Unfortunately, they pay a terrible price — the life of Private Wilhelm (Ralph Brooks), who is cut down by an arrow to the leg. The pre-recorded yelp he lets out is a disgrace to all movie cowboys.

After that, the scream appeared in countless largely forgotten Warner Bros. films, echoing through the silver screen like the ghost of all those dead extras. Then came “Star Wars.” If you own it, jump to the scene where Luke Skywalker is on the edge of some endless pit shooting down storm troopers on the other side. See if you can hear it now — that one luckless trooper crying out in both pain and girlish desperation as he tumbles into the abyss.

After that, Wilhelm became a fad.

I’m guessing many “Star Wars” fanatics are quite familiar with it — it’s in every movie in the series, including the new ones. And fans of “Indiana Jones” should also feel some sort of affinity. Remember that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where a Nazi is hurled off the back of a truck? Or the final scene in “The Temple of Doom” where a certain character gets eaten by, interestingly enough, an alligator? It’s all Wilhelm.

The scream owes its popularity mainly to “Star Wars” and “Indian Jones” sound designer Ben Burtt, who discovered the original sound clip while doing research, and he decided to make it a subtle signature of his — a proverbial graffiti-mark on the otherwise personality-less landscape of sound editing.

Burtt has since retired the scream, but the movies haven’t. The shrilly scream penetrates new films (like last year’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”) every year. There’s no exact count of how many films it’s been used in — there are many “Wilhelm” imposters — but one film historian’s website, Hollywoodlostandfound.net, tallies it at 149.

So the next time you’re at the movies — maybe during “Toy Story in 3-D,” when Buzz Lightyear gets knocked out a window by a lamp — you can nudge the date/friend/complete stranger sitting next to you and inform them they just heard a cinematic Easter egg. As long as someone knows the secret, Private Wilhelm didn’t die in vain.