Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1316380
60 I M PS E . O R G "M an gettin' bit by an alligator and he screams," is the slate heard on the master recording. Then someone quiets the crowd. "All right, quiet! Quiet!... Okay, go ahead…!" The actor screams twice. "HUAAHHH…! AAAAHHHHHH…!" The director at the session is not satisfied. "The first ones you did up here were much better," he says. Another short scream is heard. "OWWWW!!!" "No no—not an 'ow!' A real scream, of pain!" "AaahhhAAAAAHHHHH!!!" "That's the one," the director says. He does two more screams, very similar to the previous, but each slightly descending in tone. Some crowd chatter is heard, and the recording ends. The fifth scream was used for the soldier killed by the alligator—but the fourth, fifth, and sixth screams were also used earlier in the film when three natives are shot, one after another, during a raid on a fort. After the film was completed, these screams were archived into the studio's sound effects library—and would be destined to become notorious in the film sound community, because of a few people … myself, I must shamefully admit, being one of the most guilty. When I was growing up in the '70s, before films were streaming online … before cable or satellite TV … before DVDs … even before VCRs … we had audio cassette recorders. I had a huge collection of movie soundtracks. Not just the music, which I collected too—but I'd listen to the actual movies. I listened to movies way more than I actually watched them. And by listening multiple times, I began to recognize that a lot of the same sound effects were being used over and over. I also began to learn that each of the sounds were usually indigenous to a particular studio. I learned that Paramount used the same ricochet... Universal had a particular thunderclap… Disney had a distinctive car tire squeal and a dog whimper. But one sound I really took notice of was a certain scream that kept popping up in a bunch of Warner Bros. films. It appeared all the time in their Westerns and war movies… I heard it in The Green Berets (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969), a TV movie with Burt Reynolds called Impasse (1969) ... and even a few episodes of Maverick. Sometimes it would be heard more than once in the SAME MOVIE. One of my favorite films to listen to was the WB movie Them! (1954) about giant ants that invaded the sewers of Los Angeles. 10-year-old me laughed with glee upon realizing that the same scream is used for practically all the Army guys getting killed in the film—including one of the heroes The Story of BY STEVE LEE ONCE UPON A TIME ... SEVERAL ACTORS WERE ASSEMBLED ON A SOUND STAGE AT WARNER BROS. IN BURBANK TO RECORD INCIDENTAL VOCALS FOR THE FILM DISTANT DRUMS (1951). THE FILM, DIRECTED BY RAOUL WALSH AND STARRING GARY COOPER, TOLD THE STORY OF A GROUP OF SOLDIERS PROTECTING SETTLERS IN EARLY 19TH-CENTURY FLORIDA. ONE OF THE ACTORS IN ATTENDANCE WAS CHOSEN TO PERFORM SEVERAL SCREAMS THAT WERE USED MULTIPLE TIMES IN THIS FILM … AND, ULTIMATELY, IN HUNDREDS OF OTHER FILMS TO COME. F ROM TH E VAU LT O F TH E H O L LY WOO D SOU N D M U S E U M