It’s the famous 8-mm (?) silent footage taken in California, around 1967. Female (pendulous breasts obvious in the footage) Bigfoot running through the creekbed. Camera flailing about as horse threw Patterson, the filmer.
When I first saw this thirty years ago on one of those ubiquitous mid-70s Bigfoot/Yeti/Loch Ness Monster/Noah’s Ark “documentaries,” it scared the hell out of me. The film also included a reenactment where a Bigfoot stuck its arm through a woman’s living room window. Nightmare time for this ten-year-old.
I’ve heard that on his deathbed Patterson swore to his film’s authenticity.
Then years later I read that the other gentleman who was with Roger Patterson that day said Patterson repeatedly urged him to go riding with him to the very spot where the film was shot.
As I grow older, grumpier, and more skeptical, I no longer believe, deathbed affirmation or not.
Hell, I even heard once that make-up genius John Chambers (original “Planet of The Apes”) may have made the costume, but I think this was just a silly urban legend.
Have there been any super-duper post-2000 computer analysis done? Are there any dead giveaways that scream HOAX!?
Mods, I put this here as it concerned a “film” which has been in many television documentaries, though I know it probably fits as well in IMHO.
I assume you’re talking about the clip where the “Bigfoot” is walking away and then looks back over its right shoulder at the camera.
I say bullshit.
I caught a part of a special on the (not really)Sci-Fi Channel, where a anthropologist swears the “Bigfoot” is real. He goes on to comment about how the “Bigfoot” moves authentically. How the hell would he know if it’s the first one ever seen?
I say the “Bigfoot” is a guy in a suit and walks like a guy in a suit.
Have you seen the movie Elf? There is a spoof of the Bigfoot film of footage of Will Farrel in him Elf outfit walking through Central Park. He does the walk and the look back over the shoulder.
Because those thighs look proportionally too long to be human. I haven’t done the measurements to prove my hypothesis but at first glance that thing doesn’t have human proportions.
Well, since this is Cafe Society and not Great Debates:
I think the Patterson Bigfoot film stinks. The set design is practically non-existent, the directing was totally shoddy, and what is with the lighting here? And the camera movements! Please! I know there was a trend among filmmakers to shoot chase scenes “through the eyes of the killer” in the 1980s, and to have the camera jostle up-and-down to make it look like you were running after the victim, but that trend was supposed to have died out when filmmakers realized that it only gave their audience motion-sickness. And here, in this film where there’s no killer, it just plain seems wrong.
Gotta admit, the costuming was pretty decent, though. If a bit out-of-period.
You guys are some of the same dudes that say there ain’t no Santa, aren’t ya? Then answer me this: Where do all the presents come from if not from Santa?
Did you see how fast that Bigfoot was walkin’ in the Patterson film? How do you explain that, huh? No human could walk that fast and look over his shoulder at the same time.
I don’t care what you say, that’s a real Bigfoot if I ever saw one!
But it is not poorly made. You can see where the hip hinges with the pelvis much better than in the usual gorilla costume, which are designed to cover up what they cannot get away with showing without tipping their hand. It’s really quite interesting from an anatomical viewpoint and looks nothing at all like what Chambers did for the Planet of the Apes movies.
The “creature” seems too nonchalant regarding Patterson’s presence. This supposed race of creatures has evaded humankind so effectively, it seems ridiculous that a specimen would just be traipsing about.
They eventually tracked down and captured the beast. Not knowing what else to do, they cleaned him up and shipped him around to various showbiz agents. After a few false starts, a career was launched.
Skeptical Inquirer had an excellent article on the Patterson film a few months ago (more recently than the link above, unless it was a reprint). The only thing I remember was that the person in the suit had a glass eye. (I was browsing thru it in the bookstore, and didn’t purchase it.)
Well, it’s a good thing that other people have tested that hypothesis and found it lacking. Pretty much every real expert who has examined the video has found that the body and gait were all well within human proportions.
