10 Movies That Ruined Awesome Cinematic Tricks

There are few cinematic staples more unforgettable than the Wilhelm scream - a distinctive sound effect of a man screaming that's been "sneakily" placed in films for literally decades as a running joke among sound editors.

The scream has been most prominently featured in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, and ultimately became noticeable enough that even more casual-minded moviegoers cottoned onto it. At that point, the jig was up.

And so, depending on who you ask, the Wilhelm scream included during the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is either the best or worst of the lot.

During the battle, a Rohan soldier is struck by an Uruk-hai and falls from a wall, accompanied by the comically out-of-place scream. Some see it as an hilarious breaking of the tension, while others view it as an immersion-obliterating blight on an otherwise amazing scene.

Either way, it feels like the Wilhelm scream basically peaked at this point: it had already reached mass audience awareness by the film's release in 2002, and since then few instances of the scream have proven so memorable.

As such it's little surprise that filmmakers have scaled back their use of the scream in recent years, due to the feeling that its ubiquity has made it feel played-out. It's no more the sly in-joke it once was.

Peter Jackson had the last good word on it, and it's been downhill ever since.