Sasquatch Maximus
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 10th, 2007
Many may tire of viewing this footage during this, its 40th year. But it remains my favorite Bigfoot film, for every time I look at it, I ponder the wonder of a hominoid that may be there, right before our eyes.
What are your top three reasons for considering this the best piece of evidence for Bigfoot existence?
And if a skeptic, what are your top three reasons for feeling the opposite?
So, what was someone saying about the gluteus maximus looking stranger than the mammary glands?
Will new attention to this film reveal new insights in 2007?
- Similar Phenomena:
What convinces me most is the moving musculature of the creature (the pectoral muscles and the pathology in the creatures thigh come to mind) which sort of rules out the furry costume hypothesis. Everything else-the circumstances under which this video was shot, the natural reaction displayed by the creature as it turns to keep an eye on its photographers, and the fact that its obviously a female. Wouldnt a faker naturally want their subject to be a more impressive, more dangerous male of the species (theres a reason that “Mighty Joe Young” wasnt “Mighty JANE Young”).
1. Dr. Meldrum’s close-up presentation of the right foot at the ‘05 Texas Bigfoot Conference where you can see the toes splay open independantly from the foot.
2. Dr. Krantz’ shoulder-width analysis.
3. It just looks real.
I think to myself as you are about to, man, this was in the sixties! Do you remember anything in any film or for that matter the entire existence back then that would replicate this in such a manor as to puzzle the brightest of people today? Today we watch hilarious sasquatch commercials on tv, and still never have we seen such a spectacle of a sasquatch as this. Our minds can’t imagine such a being actually existing without everyone realizing that this in fact is as real as you and I. We need to have CNN take a break from their entertainment news and devote an hour to tell this to everyone, let them talk about it, and declare it a holiday.
I concur with Bob K. I’ll do the numbers
1- Seeming inability even now to make a suit that looks that good. They’re all much shaggier, with much longer hair. Patty has close lying body hair. On a costume that tends to show seams and joints easily, so a costume needs longer hair to cover the connections and seams.
2- Easy movement. Bulky hairy suits tend to make one move more clumsily, from what I’ve seen.
3- Behavior.
The P-G film looks better every day. Now that we’re bombarded with clumsy YouTube fakes of all sorts, it’s getting hard to lump the P-G film in with them. Aside from that, the P-G film carries its own weird internal proof: if the figure were a fake, why would the fakers make it female? Why would they have it turn its head to look at the camera, when that would tend to show the costume to its worst advantage? And why can’t any of the so-called “Bigfoot costumes” we see today even come close to appearing as lifelike as the figure in the P-G film?
Given unlimited money, P & G could perhaps have faked the figure in the film — if Rick Baker had been practicing his art back then. But they certainly didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with such a convincing fake back in 1967. We old-timers have all seen the gorilla costumes and monster suits in high-dollar movies and TV shows of that era, and they don’t look anything like the P-G figure.
Until recently, I had been skeptical of the P-G film, as I am of most things along these lines. But on viewing the stabilized images, I think that whatever the figure is, it’s not an actor in a suit. Them’s my sediments!
There is no reason at least in my mind why someone would produce a fake suit which has breasts. The only thing that really bothered me about this particular beastie is the soles of the feet. Something just doesn’t seem quite right about them, but then I’ve never seen the soles of a Sas.
I think the soles of the feet are reflecting the sunlight present that day and also primates do have lighter colored soles to their feet as well as the palms of their hands. The color could also be contributed to the debris from the ground that is stuck to them. I think the film is genuine. A half decent recreation can’t even be produced 40 years on. The figure is massive and you can see the muscles flexing under the hair and the arms are also much longer than a humans.
I have always thought the film was genuine. But until recently I had not noticed the way the hair on Patty’s right leg moves when her foot hits the ground. Watch the hair shake and shimmer from her ankle up to the top of her thigh. A costume would not exhibit this little tidbit of motion. Only hair attached to skin over muscle would react this way. Also it gives some idea to the force of the foot striking the ground, as it would take a pretty good impact to make the muscles and skin move that high up on her thigh. Put on some shorts and make some long jogging steps and watch your leg muscles bounce and move, then look at Patty’s right leg as it moves. Pretty convincing.
I’m in the odd position of not really believing in Bigfoot, but at the same time having a real difficulty explaining a film like this.
All the actual expert analysis of it that I’ve read indicated that it was shot at 18fps, and that a human could not mimic the movement of the creature filmed at this that rate.
The questions regarding it’s unique appearance (hair-covered breasts and a female bearing a pronounced crest) aren’t very strong, as other pendulous breasted animals (humans and chimps) evolved in a similar environment far different from the pacific northwest. Evolutionary biology seems to indicate that the shape of the breast is what matters, and hair clear does not obscure that. There is also nothing innate to the purpose of a sagittal crest that would require it to be more pronounced in the male than the female, that just seems to be the way sexual dimorphism worked out in other primates. All it indicates is that if Bigfoot exists, it likely feeds on something that requires a great deal of biting force.
Also, I don’t personally believe that it could be a person in that suit. Even a stout human would have a difficult time filling out that suit without padding, and the creature in that picture displays an ease of limb movement that precludes padding. Padding would occupy the neck and arm-pit, making it difficult to swing it’s arms without exaggeration. It would also fill the space between it’s thighs, giving it a bow-legged or waddling gate.
Real because
1 it’s a female
2 muscle movement
3 gant
4 arm length
5 filmed until out of sight (not stopped while still in vision like some fakes)
6 foot casts to go with film
7 Bobs account not wavering
I could go on but you get the picture, or you’ve got THE picture.
I am not 100% convinced that this footage is real, however it still enthralls me and never fails to instill a sense of wonder in me. This was done by men without a whole lot of money, back in the sixties and to me it still looks far more like a real animal than anything modern special effects are able to produce. No matter how good a suit is, it always seems like just a good suit. This footage is different. To me it moves fluidly and shows enough striking details in the hair, musculature, and breasts to be quite compelling to those who see it the first time or a hundred times, even in this jaded age of snazzy special effects and hoaxed videos. And this was done on the fly, seemingly in one take, by men who could most likely not afford to pull this off back in the sixties even if the technology was available. And no, I do not believe the costumes to from Planet of the Apes to be on par with what we see here. Watch those movies, then watch this. They are quite different in my opinion.
I am not convinced that Bigfoot is necessarily real, and I am perfectly willing to accept skeptical theories. However, this video leaves a lot to be explained and that hasn’t been done to a satisfactory degree for me. I don’t think the PG footage will ever be accepted as concrete proof, but it is amazing footage nonetheless whether that is of a hairy hominid or evidence of striking suit making abilities that have yet to be replicated or explained. This footage still makes me wonder, what if?
For me the top 3 points for validity are:
1. The head turning. Any mask would interfere with movement and show it in either the head or shoulder/back padding or an unnatural neck crease in the costume, or prevent the head from turning that much of an angle at all.
2. The mere fact that the head turns and looks at all. Anyone who wore a Halloween mask as a kid remembers how hard it is to see where you’re going, even before it got dark. Anyone wearing a mask and costume like that would be slowly ambling along with their head pointed straight down, gingerly picking their way over rocks, branches and debris to keep from faceplanting every 3 or 4 steps, much less actually turning and looking behind as they’re walking!
3. The leg muscle tremors displayed with each step. Any padding or costume wouldn’t transfer motion the way a natural muscle/skin combination would.
I have to laugh (And cringe. And roll my eyes. Simultaneously.) every time I hear about the Planet of the Apes theory. If anyone stops and looks at those movies they NEVER WORE ANY APE COSTUMES! They all wore uniforms and leather!
I think there was one small scene in the first movie with the apes in a sauna, and the upper body appliances were laughable. Nothing even remotely resembling the PG film.
The only thing that makes me doubt it at the moment is how clean the fur is. It doesn’t have any visible leaves or sticks. Unless they take a shower every day.
1) Like the others said, if it was a fake people would make it have giant claws and teeth or whatever, and make it try to attack the filmers.
2) The costumes even now aren’t that good (maybe if you had billions o’ bucks, but I don’t think these people had much money).
3) If it was a fake someone might make it run away. but this thing just looks at the people and keeps on walking.
Most of this people have already said but they are my reasons.
As to the absence of debris in its fur, I’ve never yet seen a photo of a bear or an ape with visible material stuck in its hair. I own Bouviers des Flandres, very shaggy dogs, and though they live mostly outide in the woods they’ve never come in with more than a small leaf stuck in their coats. (Speaking of shaggy dogs, ever hear the one about the cross-eyed bear named Gladly?)
proriter: erm, sediments? Not quite sure what you mean there, b/c sediments are little bits of rock.
grafikman: uh, do you look drunk or something when you laugh, cringe, and roll your eyes, because that sounds like it would be a very funny looking expression.
Oh, and I almost forgot, here are my reasons for thinking this is a genuine video.
1) Nothing we have, not even the suit from the Messin’ With Sasquatch type beef jerky commercials, even looks half as real as this. Planet of the Apes my broken little toe!
2) Judging by modern hoax videos, wouldn’t a guy in a suit waddle into view and then, um, waddle away? (Sorry, waddle’s just fun to say)
3) Wouldn’t a hoaxer of that era, back when we thought gorillas were big, mean monster apes, make a video of a big, clawed, aggressive male roaring and beating its chest, rather than a female just walking by and acting in a manner that says, “Oh, would you look at that. People on horses!”
I think a large part of the skepticism about the PG film derives from Patterson’s somewhat derogatory biography (at least, what tends to be publicly known about him). He seems to “fit the profile” of someone desperate to capitalize on Bigfoot.
That said, the recent stabilization and enhancement of certain frames of the film have definitely curbed my prior skepticism, if only to a degree.
It is definitely a compelling film.
Three reasons why Patty is probably a hoax:
1. The incredible “luck” of Roger Patterson. He happened to be filming a documentary about bigfoot, with a rented camera no less, when he just happened to get an awesome shot of a bigfoot. How come none of the other bigfoot expeditions have had such luck?
2. David Daegling’s book Bigfoot Exposed points out that Patty’s heel is flat and sticks out beyond the rest of the foot. A piece of bone this thin would shatter when hitting the ground. This much more consistent with a fake foot from a monster costume than biology.
3. Chris Walas, academy award nominated SFX guru responsible for The Fly, noted on a bigfoot forum that the legs move freely while the creature’s hips and bottom remain stationary. Sure enough if you look at the little Patty clip at the top of this page you can see how the legs seem to moving separately from the hips and butt. Walas noted how this is textbook behavior from old school monster costumes…the legs being made from a thin flexible material while the body part is stiffer because of padding.
We’ll never know the truth about this film, but I think that those three reasons (plus many more) point toward it being a well produced hoax more so than an unknown North American hominid species.
One more thing…a lot of you posters are using the ol’ “hoaxers are too dumb” chestnut which despite MASSIVE evidence to contrary seems to still be in use.
Who says Roger Patterson wouldn’t have the brains to come up with a subtle walking bigfoot rather than an attacking brute? He knew that he shouldn’t overplay his hand. A raging, ,snarling, in-focus bigfoot would look even phonier than Patty. If you think that people in 1967 weren’t smart enough to figure this out, you are dead wrong.
YGOR427,
Your theory has one big flaw. No one in the entire WORLD has been able to produce this costume or make one that looks half this real in over 40 years!
I find problems with the film, as I stated in another thread. See Chris Murphy’s excellent book “Meet the Sasquatch”..which I consider a top book for everyone to read.
I draw your attention to pages 52-3.
Frames 307 323, 339, for the issue about the “stitching going down the middle of the back” and additionally see how the hair line goes around the buttocks area in 362 and 364 (on page 54). I cannot claim to be a primate zoologist, but I would like a primate zoologist attempt to explain these strange “stitching effects” down the back and around the buttocks as being natural. If it can be so proved, then all well and good.
I don’t want an advocate attempting to explain this, we need a scientist. To get the Sasquatch concept out of the realm of questionability, you have to have scientists make these judgement calls. Not advocates for or against. But they can be told what we observers see in the film. Usually it is observers that point out things first.
Does this mean the film is faked these things I have pointed out? Don’t know at this juncture.
But I would very much like to see definitive explanations (with decent parallel proxy-simulant data from real-world, primates in the wild. Super good photography of the backs of gorillas and chimps and orangs…see if they exhibit the patters of the “stitched line” down the back, and echo with shape and hair-growth as seen in this very odd and strange “buttocks” images of the creature in the P-G film as shown quite clearly in frames 339 and 343.
These issues that I mention here bother me greatly, and (at this juncture) tell me something is wrong. Even if you look at frame 323 and 339, you get a pretty good view of its buttocks, and it looks wrong.
Let’s get some decent similar-angled photography of other primates, and let’s compare.
If we can do that, and address these concerns, all the well and better.
Currently, I am not a “true believer” in this specific film. I question all things, including old data. One thing that this field lacks, is good illustrative representation.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a bipedal primate striding around in North America. It just means that to me at this juncture, this film isn’t evidence for it, if the issues I raise cannot be resolved completely.
titanium,
You are right about that but I would argue that nobody has ever put the effort into it. I’m guessing that most of the costumes made were for shows like “Sightings” that were biased toward acceptance of the film so of course their replicas looked crappy. On the other hand, skeptical programs like BS don’t think that it’s worth the effort.
This is just my interpretation of course but more importantly I think it’s a logical gap to assume that because nobody has duplicated the costume it automatically means that it is impossible for it to be a costume.
ygor427 has an interesting point about the mobility of the legs, but any quick look in the mirror while walking should prove that the same holds true for any of us. The hips and buttocks move much less that the legs under normal circumstances.
Personally, I’m strongly persuaded by the footage that what I am seeing is a real, non-Human animal, but unfortunately, the quality of the film, the circumstances of the encounter, and the character of the people involved will always leave enough questions open to give hardcore skeptics ample leeway.
Anyway, here are my three reasons-
1) Morphology- It has been said that Dr. Krantz’s original assessment that the shoulder width and chest structure fall outside of human norms is incorrect, but even if that is so, it would be an extraordinarily rare person who would exhibit both traits. The lack of a definable neck probably fits under this category as well, adding a likely 3rd trait and making such a person even rarer. If P-G faked it, they would had to have found such an individual, which means one of 2 things- they either knew of, or they went searching for someone with such a frame. If the former, surely someone would remember such a unique individual palling around with them. If the latter, how was such a search kept secret?
It may also be worth noting that we know what such unusually-framed people such as Andre the Giant look like in a BF suit, using FX technology of a decade later, and it’s well…less than convincing.
The morphological kicker though has to be the arm length, which Krantz is quite correct in saying that it falls outside of human norms. Even if you could find someone with arms that long, the elbow would not be placed at the same point. These arms clearly bend and flex and seem quite natural, so the bend is there and does bend, meaning that there cannot be a human arm hidden inside the structure, as it would in a suit or armature.
2) Musculature- Despite the deficiencies of the film, one can clearly see the rippling, flexing, and shuddering of muscles beneath the hair and skin, which, considering the state of the special effects art of the period, would have to mean that either it is a real animal, or a real man with said morphology in a very tight suit.
3) Gender- I debated on this one a bit, but ultimately it comes down on the positive side for me. Yes, we know P-G knew of female BF sightings, and were they hoaxers, they may very well have thought to make theirs a girl in order to make a hoax appear less likely. However, the logistics of pulling off a hoax of this nature lead me to suspect that they probably would’ve tabled that idea in favour of something simpler. It would be yet one more feature they would have to “get right” before they executed their hoax, and an added cost on what would had to have been a very expensive suit. This leads me to a 4th reason.
4) Cost and Effort- If this is a hoax, then the costume would have to have been quite costly to produce, and likely would also have required numerous test runs and revisions in order to perfect. The effort would have been quite substantial, and one would think they might have gotten more footage of it, had they put all this time and money into it. Yes, they got the money shot, but previous or subsequent shots of it mostly obscured by woods would have gone a long way in further validating their experience, and surely they were smart enough to have thought of that (If they were smart enough to execute the rest of it, that is). Also, surely, they would likewise have been smart enough that they’d never recoup the money necessary to invest in such a project, so where’s their motivation? Not money, surely.
In the end, if we accept that the P-G Film is a hoax, then we are left with the questions of who made the suit and what happened to it?
Ultimately, it just seems much more probable that this is a genuine, undiscovered, non-human animal than the idea of 2 cowboy investigators being closet super-geniuses undertaking a Herculean effort to hoax something they never really gained anything for except suspicion.
That should read-
“Also, surely, they would likewise have been smart enough TO KNOW that they’d never recoup the money necessary to invest in such a project, so where’s their motivation?”
Woops…
Many things have me leery of saying that the P/G footage is the real deal. However, I will try to stay true to the “top 3″ limit to be fair (and to save space).
1. I disagree with the claims that the breasts, etc. “prove” that the thing seen in the P/G footage is real. Let’s not forget that Patterson was familiar with a report of a female Bigfoot. The mistake people are making is that they assume that Patterson would have to have a suit made to look exactly the sketches depicting the creature described in the Roe sighting instead of cherry-picking details from various sightings to create his “own” Bigfoot. He was interested in Bigfoot sightings and would defintiely have a lot of material to work with.
The claim that one couldn’t make a realistic ape suit with 60’s technology is also something I don’t agree with. One of the costumes used in 1955’s HALF HUMAN (aka MONSTER SNOWMAN) quite realistic and, interestingly enough, was balding (such much for the idea that someone couldn’t come up with a random, realistic detail for a Bigfoot costume). However, certain circumstances make seeing this movie difficult (which also effects getting pictures of the particular costume I’m talking about)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY had some realistic-looking ape-men (albeit long-haired). I would like to see what would happen if someone made a long-haired suit, “gave it a trim,” and then tried filming it, though.
The idea that good-looking special effects can’t be done on a low budget is hilarious to me. A trip to the “Monster Page of Halloween Project Links” shows tons of great-looking effects than can be done on a low budget. And let’s not forget Hananuma Masakichi’s famous sculpture of himself.
2. Where’s the negative? Analysing the negative is the best way to see if any tampering was done to the film. Also shady is Patterson’s reselling of film rights as if he was the sole owner. How come none of the “owners” have the negative?
3. I see nothing special about “Patty”’s walk. In fact, it looks quite humanlike in the stabilizied footage. I know there are claims that a human being can’t duplicate that walking style, but Bob Heironimus proved otherwise. I’m not saying he was “Patty,” but I am saying that he showed that the “impossible” was possible. But when you’re working with estimates based off of (then) jittery footage, I can’t cast much blame. After all, knowledgable people have been fooled before, such as the “dermal ridges” on supposed Sasquatch footprints and the “Three-Toes” hoax in Florida.
I personally think Drs. Daegling and Schmitt’s analysis of the footage in a 1999 Skeptical Inquirer article, “Bigfoot’s Screen Test,” is the beginning and end to the argument. They conclude that for a number of technical issues “it is not possible to evaluate the identity of the film subject with any confidence.”
So unless some radically new photographic analysis technology is invented you can argue real vs. fake ad nauseum. But understand, either way, no “new insights” constitute any legitimate scientific proof pro or con. It’s only all personal conjecture. Sure lots of it sounds persuasive from both sides, but the bottom line there just isn’t enough detailed information in the negatives (think pixels), to ever definitively identify “Patty.”
As for the argument about recent TV Sasquatch costumes. Please ask about how incredibly cheap these producers are. Remember, they don’t give a rip about authenticity, just ratings and their own profits. I’m sure they asked designers to make those costumes for free.
Oh, for God’s sake, get some new evidence! It’s funny (and a little sad) how Bigfooters cling to this forty years later… I’m sure there will be Bigfoot conferences 40 years from now, and there will be yet more “new” analyses of the P/G film.
Few stop to wonder why, if it is authentic, a much better film hasn’t been shot since 1967.
My reasons for being skeptic about this film:
1. The break in the waistline is quite distinct, giving the impression that the subject is wearing a suit made of upper and lower parts. It looks like hairy pants.
2. Footprints gathered at the site just don’t look real.
3. The subject appears to retreat too casually for an animal that has never been sighted and filmed again since this incident.
Benjamin Radford responds:
“Few stop to wonder why, if it is authentic, a much better film hasn’t been shot since 1967.”
>You’ve answered your own question. Because it’s impossible to do, because it wasn’t hoaxed.
Ok, try to set any personal animosity aside and check out the FAQ on the BFRO site as to why there aren’t more pictures. Yes, I know skeptics and even some squatch believers think Moneymaker is a scheister but the points he brings forth are logical.
corrick is 100% dead-on accurate in their description of producers in the TV industry (and also in the movie biz). After all, isn’t it a little odd that a suit that was supposedly commissioned to look like “Patty” came out looking nothing like what was in the P/G footage seem odd? Either the people (person?) hired to create the suit were incompetant idiots or they were simple told to make a “realistic Bigfoot costume” (on the assumption that P/G supporters felt that a realistic-looking suit couldn’t be made).
And considering the BBC’s usual standard for Bigfoot-related costumes, well, one can see why they’d be so pleased with what they got.
On an unrelated note, I once read a reference to Roger Patterson planning on making a movie about cowboys who capture a Bigfoot-like creature before deciding to do a documentary. Now, this was long before I heard of Bob Heironimus and this wasn’t presented as “proof” that the P/G footage was a hoax. In fact, I believe it was presented in a “Good thing he abandoned that idea, or else he never would’ve gone to Bluff Creek” way. I haven’t been able to find any other references to this, so I’m tempted to write it off as a tall tale or mistake in my memory.
However, it was that story which planted the seeds of doubt that the footage was fake. After all, it’d be awfully convenient if Patterson was involved in a failed movie that would’ve required a Bigfoot costume and then shot footage involving Bigfoot? However, this would only work if the supposed “Bigfoot western” actually existed and got to a stage where a suit was designed. Has anyone ever heard that story before?
AtomicMrEmonster- Well, do you suggest that they had access to that site and all of those cool costumes back in the 60s? I am not a firm believer in this film, but I doubt the costume technology on a low budget was available back in those days to produce what we see in the film. Whatever could be done today, hasn’t been done to reproduce the film to a satisfactory degree, and even if it was, remember the costumes you mentioned weren’t available at affordable prices. I find it hilarious that people think it could have been that easy back in the 60s as it is claimed it would be today. As for the Space Oddessy costumes, they were costumes used on a relatively high budget motion picture, and they still don’t look as realistic to me as Patty does.
I do find the range of opinions on Patty’s walk to be interesting. Opinions run the gamut from wholly inhuman and amazing, to just a normal human walk. I personally think the walk is compelling simply because even if it is reproducible, it hasn’t been done to a satisfying degree, in full costume, over rough terrain, in a suit that looks as good as this one does. I saw the attempts to reproduce the walk and they were pretty laughable to me.
i always scream assumptions kill the investigators credibility, but in this case they help.
they help because hoaxers always seem to assume the same things. the assume that all Sasquatches are like patty. this helps identify hoaxers pretty quick. after that we can tell from the creature its self being as an obvious costume from the local fun shop or the staging of the encounter.
i think the Patterson film is the real deal. they way the right calf and lower leg flex extend and move together is something i have never seen since except in real animals. the body and how it interacts with its parts to move is also something i have never seen in any recreation or attempt to prove the footage a hoax.
finally when i see the film i still get goose bumps and that oh my [insert favorite or preferred divinity here] GOD feeling in the pit of my stomach. i dont believe IN the patty footage as that would mean i have to exercise faith to an extent to feel it is real.
i know it is real from so many little things and the fact it has been tested by so many debunkers none of who debunked it. i might add none of the debunkers ever produced a product that looked anything like patty. all of them provided a finished product that looked exactly like all the poor attempts at a hoax that we have seen so many times thru the years.
the patty film is real. i find it strange that a picture and the word of a scientist is all we need to prove other unknown or previously thought extinct animals exist but we need so much more for a Sasquatch.
mystery_man:
I highly doubt that they had access to the costumes for either movie. All I was saying was that realistic suits weren’t impossible with 60’s technology. I can’t definitely say whether or not they had access to the site, but a hoaxer would have to a fool not to try having practice runs using similar conditions, if not at the same site.
Heh. That reminds me of an incident at Halloweenforum.com that happened a few years back. Someone whose company specialized in lenticular portraits that seemed to change shape as you walked by dropped in and took offense to someone saying that the $100 price tag was too high (I think the line was called “Haunted Memories”). He claimed it was impossible to make the effect in such a way that could make a profit for an under $100 price tag. Another forumgoer proceeded to create a similar effect for the grand sum of $15.
In other words, it’s all about the talent. With the right person and materials, you can come up with expensive-looking effects for less than what you’d expect. If you’ve got someone with the skills to create a good-looking custom-job, you wouldn’t need a commercially-made suit. Come to think of it, weren’t there some special effects artists who said that the P/G footage looked fake to them?
It’s all a matter of perception. That thread I linked to regarding the movie Half Human has poster who says that the P/G footage looks like something out of a George Zucco movie (For those not in the know, that’s a bad thing). Personally, I find the masks in “2001″ to be more compelling than the “furry ninja mask” that Patty seems to be sporting. I’m sure that others will think I’m crazy for thinking that. Hell, I once suspected that footage of a frilled shark captured in Japan was part of a viral campaign, so maybe they’d have a point. Such is the nature of perception (and, yes, this would also apply to the special effects artists noted above).
And, as corrick noted, commercial filmmakers tend to not worry about creature effects looking 100% realistic. They only have to be “realistic enough” to satisfy the production company.
The P/G film always fascinated me when I was younger. But the older I get and the more and more I study and analyze it, it’s getting harder to be a optimist about the existence of Bigfoot.
I always notice nowadays what almost looks a fold appearing on the upper right thigh. Like the costume is buckling a bit.
Ever since seeing the stabilized footage I’ve been intrigued by the one second shot when Patty touches her thumb to another finger. It seems like such a delicate movement, something that couldn’t be accomplished with an artificial glove. Gloves always seem to be a neglected part of ‘cheap’ costumes, not much better than work gloves at a hardware store. If this is a complete one or two piece costume (and not a head, top, bottom, arms, hands stuck together), then the designer really paid attention to the hand portion, he gave it a lot of flexibility for the finger to bend so naturally. All this for a few hundred dollars? Nobody has ever disputed that Patterson was constantly poor, so he couldn’t have spent much on a hoax costume. If it was, he got the deal of the century.
jamesrav:
The moving hands? That easily could’ve been done using 60’s technology (keep in mind that the exposed strings in that link would be covered up if this method was used in a covered costume). I’d imagine that such a device could also work on jointed “arm extenders,” but I can’t say that for sure since I’ve never seen such a device in action. I don’t know if you could do such a
device for toes, though I will note that you’d have to be an idiot to think that you could film something with long, stiff arms and non-moving hands without anyone suspecting it of being a hoax (which would explain why a smart hoaxer would think of taking the extra effort
to do such a thing;the same would apply to stiff, non-moving feet).
The guy who faked the “Cardiff giant” had enough intelligence to fake pores and waited two years before uncovering the “giant.” I highly doubt he was the only one who was smart enough to do such things.
On a related note, I recently stumbled across some threads that show costumes with various aspects similar to stuff in the P/G footage for movies and tv shows made before (and during) the 60’s. You can see them here and here.
Granted, I feel that give a little too much credit to Bob Heironimus, but that doesn’t change them being right about the costumes or their bringing up interesting points about the “muscles” in the P/G footage. They also note that Patterson and Gimlin’s recollections have some inconsistencies in them (including Titmus’s notes) and that Heironimus is thrown out for inconsistencies while the other stuff isn’t.
However, I also know that Mr. Morris basically admitted to lying about making a certain type of costume (and got a friend to play along) in order to get cheap publicity for his company on page 37 (chapter 5) of the 1997 edition of “How to Operate a Financially Successful Haunted House” by Philip Morris and Dennis Phillips (a book I doubt most Morris debunkers or supporters have read). The fact that both Morris and Heironimus both described things like using football padding doesn’t mean that they were both in on it, it just means that they both know of ways to fake aspects of the P/G footage.
However, that doesn’t stop the people over there from making other interesting points.
MrAtomicEmonster- Well, perhaps the effects were available then, maybe some select few could pull off the amount of realism that we see in the PG footage. I won’t discount that, and I am still open to the possibility that this footage was staged. It is pretty telling, however that the footage has withstood 40 years of constant evaluation and scrutiny, some of it by experts from various fields, and yet it still stands the test of time. To this day, it is not definitely clear whether it is a hoax or not. How many movie effects can claim that? Of course you could say that movie costumes presented as the real deal in similar footage could have fooled some people, but I don’t know if they could for 40 years under the spotlight like this.
I tend to disagree that anything I’ve seen from that era of film looks anything like what we see in the PG footage. Maybe some special custom job could have been done, but that leaves the question of whether Patterson and Gimlin had the means to go about such an endeavor. And remember, whether costume specialists say the footage is fake or not, the fact remains that no one has reproduced the level of quality that we see in the film even in this day and age. If it is so easy and all it takes is the right talent, isn’t there some amount of benefit to be had by proving this footage can be done once and for all? Shouldn’t it be easy 40 years down the line, with all of the new technology? I hear a lot of excuses about why it hasn’t been done, but really, why doesn’t anyone do it? If Patterson and Gimlin could, surely someone could do it on a fraction of the budget? Being someone who does not embrace the footage as 100 percent real, I would love to see some evidence like that, yet it has failed to materialize except a laughable attempt to reproduce the walk under laboratory conditions. I look at all the determined hoaxes that turn out looking amazingly shoddy compared to the PG footage and I think it may not be as easy in practice as it is in theory.
I am not an advocate of this footage as you may be thinking, but I do expect to see a concrete example of how this could be pulled off with the budget these two had, with the resources available to them at the time and this has not been adequately demonstrated. No one has come forward and shown how possible it was for PG to do this to such great effect, so the talk of costume making abilities of the time seems as speculative to me as those who claim it must be real. That is intriguing to me. I look at all angles to this debate in as scientific a way as I can. I am not embracing this footage as real, but there are certainly very impressive qualities to it and the suit argument just doesn’t totally add up in some ways for me.
Corrick made a good comment along the lines of this footage has gone all this time and really all it ends up doing is stirring up debate ad nauseam with no real clear answers in the end, as it has for the past 40 years. I think both sides of the argument are at kind of a stalemate here with this one and the trail is somewhat cold. All of this debate and scrutiny has not shed much light on this footage and so it remains somewhat of a curiosity.
I think Ben Radford is right in that we are kind of beating a dead horse here, and we need new evidence. We need at least something of comparable realism with which to compare and yet that sort of footage has not been forthcoming. But I will be honest, with every hoax we see pass by us, the PG footage looks better and better whether it is genuine or not.
“Few stop to wonder why, if it is authentic, a much better film hasn’t been shot since 1967.”
>You’ve answered your own question. Because it’s impossible to do, because it wasn’t hoaxed.
Huh? This doesn’t make sense. There aren’t better Bigfoot films since 1967 because it wasn’t hoaxed? I wasn’t assuming the film is hoaxed… the question remains: Video and film cameras have gotten cheaper, lighter, and more broadly used than any other time in history. If Bigfoot are really out there, why is the best footage 40 years old?
We’ll never solve this. One person sees it and thinks, “guy in a suit” and another person sees the same thing and thinks, “that can’t be a guy in a suit.” I LOVE the Patterson film and always will for that very reason. If it’s real, obviously it proves the existence of Bigfoot. If it’s fake, it’s the best hoax ever perpetrated, hands down. Piltdown Man’s got nothing on the Patterson Film. Forty years later and we still can’t figure it out, because even if it IS a guy in a suit, it’s played so well and so subtlely that we’re swept up by it, skeptic or no. I’m a skeptic and doubt Bigfoot’s existence, and I see many reasons for suspecting that Patterson faked this film. But I can’t help myself from looking at it after all these years and thinking, “maybe…. just maybe”… I’ve said it before and will say it again–Patterson deserves to go down in history either way. As for my reasons why it’s fake/real:Fake: The thing has breasts. Only human females display permanent breasts. An odd characteristic for a Bigfoot species to share with us… though perhaps no odder than walking upright.Fake: The feet. Look like stiff-bottomed shoes to me, when you see the underside of them.Fake: Patterson’s outrageous luck, as someone pointed out earlier. He set out to film a Bigfoot documentary, and found the real thing? Uhhhhh… that’s outlandish.Fake: that the prints found on-site did not match the apparent size of the animal in the film.Real: It’s one damn good suit. Where is this wonderful suit, if it existed? Why hasn’t it turned up? Why can’t anybody seem to make a decent facsimile of it? (At least at a cost that Patterson could have afforded).Real: the mise-en-scene of the whole thing. If Patterson faked this then he missed his calling; he should have been a cinematographer or a film director. The wonderful choreography of it, from the shaking of the camera at the start, to the pan following the subject–smoothed a bit but still clearly held by a shaking, upset hand… it’s brilliant. Could have been faked, sure… but what a job he made of it, if he did.Real: That Patterson went to his death without confession, and Bob Gimlin seems destined to do the same.Real: well… there’s nothing logical or scientific about this, it’s purely subjective—but when I look at that thing in the film, I get an odd feeling that I’m looking at a real animal, not a man in a suit. If it’s fake, that again says something to me about the suit, the guy who wore it, and Patterson as a “director”: that all three were in major top form that day.
# 1. It just looks like a real animal that lives in the forest to me. It doesn’t scream “human”, like most films do. Instinct, common sense or gut feeling tells me this. Not very scientific, eh?
# 2. It has not been disproven.
# 3. I watch the footage a lot, study the frames, and try real hard to debunk the film. I always end up back at reason # 1. If it ever is efficiently proven to be a fake, so much for my instinct, common sense and gut feelings. Until then…
It looks just right, the movements are so natural.
And its just what mny BF accounts describe, the creature just strides away.
A couple of points often brought up by skeptics that I find curious seems to have a kind of ‘have your cake and eat it too’ flavor. One one hand they point to the lack of good photos/films since P/G as evidence there’s nothing there, and then they also point out P/G’s incredible luck as being suspicious.
That could be interpreted to mean that bf hunters are screwed either way: If you don’t get a pic, then it’s not there. If you do get a pic then you’re a phony. Bad quality pic means hoax, good quality pic means hoax. (P/G being the ‘good quality’ sample)
I think the moral of all this (if you’ll pardon the phrase) is that no picture, movie, or video is ever going to be acceptable to the wider world as real evidence. If it’s an old pic, unless it’s mind bogglingly clear and detailed (meaning better than the P/G), then there will always be ambiguities and doubts about it. If it’s recent there will again always be doubts because of the image manipulation technology we have.
The P/G footage has good points and it has problems. I seriously doubt it will ever be truly resolved one way or the other.
That’s true but your butt and thighs always look like there connected. They don’t look like Patty. If they do, you need to go to a doctor ASAP.
All this talk about the muscles makes me think about that other piece of great ape cinema King Kong. In the classic scene where Kong is on top of the empire state building it looks as if Kong’s fur is being blown around by the wind. It’s one of the best looking shots in the movie and was a total mistake. It was caused by the animators fingers pressing in the fur as they manipulated the model. To me, Patty’s muscles look like a similar happy accident. It looks like light and shadow playing with the fur in the folds in the costume.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that the Patty footage is NOT a person in a suit….
If you think that a somewhat shady man filming a super elusive sasquatch while he is shooting a sasquatch documentary with a rented camera (it’s almost as if he knew when he was going to need it) isn’t somewhat suspicious I’ve got some magic beans for sale. It could justifiably be argued that Patterson was in fact in the right place at the right time but to me personally it’s a little suspicious.
The birds of paradise are elusive. They made a documentary about them a few years ago. It was tough filming and it took days to get a glimpse of the birds. Planet Earth filmed the birds later. It was just as tough and the birds were just as elusive but they filmed them. You could tell that some of them were the same species. Shouldn’t bigfoot be in the same boat? After forty years and an explosion of video cameras, shouldn’t people have gotten footage just as good if not better of the same species? This isn’t proof of bigfoot’s non-existence but it does raise some interesting questions.
Roger Patterson is in a peculiar place. The believers remember him as a moronic cowboy who couldn’t have possibly had the brains to construct such a genius work of hoaxing. The skeptics remember him as a charlatan and faker. He just can’t win.
You’re assuming that it wasn’t destroyed after filming was completed. Even if it wasn’t destroyed intentionally, there’s always the possibility that it decayed into an unrecognizable mess.
Try asking a fan of Japanese monster movies about the condition of the suits used for the 50’s and 60’s. If I remember correctly, only the head of the suit used for 1967’s KING KONG ESCAPES is intact, and it’s showing signs of decay. This was a costume stored at professional movie studio under optimum conditions and might’ve changed hands with a private collector. The head of a Godzilla suit from GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER might also exist in this form as well, but my memory is hazy.
The only thing left of the Jabba the Hutt puppet from 1983’s RETURN OF THE JEDI are the eyes; the rest of the puppet melted/rotted/etc into a mess. If you doubt that, either check out the next STAR WARS effects tour or try contacting the people involved in the puppet’s creation. Remember, these were props stored under professional conditions. I highly doubt that a hoaxer would have access to such facilities.
Here’s the problem with that: Even if someone did do that, the response would be that they had all this time and a movie to work from, unlike the original hoaxer (Nevermind that the originator of a hoax can start from the ground up). The recreation would be ignored, money would be wasted, and we’d be back at square one. There’s also the matter of duplicating the exact conditions that the film was shot under. Hasn’t Bluff Creek changed over the decades?
However, a Bigfoot specimen wouldn’t be subject to such criticism. This is why many people are skeptical of Bigfoot’s existence: there’s no studied Bigfoot specimen, be it a corpse or a captured live animal.
ygor, save your magic beans. Of course there are questions. There will always be questions. I’m sorry if you got the impression I’m uncritically accepting of everything that gets filmed. Or doesn’t. In my opinion, Sturgeon’s Law applies here as much as anywhere else: 90% of everything is crud. I think he was being optimistic, and it’s closer to 99.98%, but that’s me. However, I do see a possibility (not a certainty) that the P/G footage might, just might, be in that .02 percent.
I agree. I would love for the P/G film to be in that tiny percentage but sadly I don’t think it is.
mystery_man:
The closest example I can think of is when the director of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST supposedly had to go to court in order to prove that he didn’t actually film people being killed. I’ve also heard that he had to have the actors make a television appearance. The special features on the American DVD might go into more detail about that. Come to think of it, weren’t there also people who thought that THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is real?
Anyway, the biggest problem with this comparison is that since we’re being presented with such great special effects in a movie that we know to be fictional, we (usually) have no reason to believe that what we’re seeing is real. This is especially true when you factor in “making-of” TV specials, books, DVD special features, etc. What’s more likely to happen is for people to misunderstand how the effects were done. That’s why you can find people who might think that all the dinosaur effects in JURASSIC PARK were computer-generated (they were a a combination of anamatronics and CGI) or that all of the shots of the T-1000 in TERMINATOR II: JUDGMENT DAY are computer-generated (some shots involved latex “appliances” and others are actually quick shots of an actor in a shiny foil suit). Watching/listening to the special features on the special edition DVDs of those titles should confirm this.
I do agree that better evidence is needed and that if this is a hoax (like I suspect), then whoever was responsible for the suit did a pretty damn good job.
Atomic:Good point about the suit, except for one thing: yes, after 40 years I wouldn’t expect much to be left of the suit either… but why didn’t it turn up prior to this, when some substantial reminder of it may have survived? It’s actually been more than forty years since the original Godzilla suits were built… but how long did it take them to deteriorate, is the question? But all that’s neither here nor there, really… because yes, perhaps the answer is that the Patterson suit was destroyed soon after the film was made. I’m not sure anyone would want to flush money down the drain like that, but then again, considering the hubbub the film created almost immediately, it’d perhaps be the sensible thing to do.Your other point about the suit, I think, isn’t quite as well taken. If we assume that Patterson could afford to have a suit built that looked pretty decent on camera, then the same thing should be do-able today. You say the expense wouldn’t be worth it, but surely if a nearly-always-broke former rodeo clown like Patterson could lay out the cash, then logically somebody with greater resources could accomplish it easily. I certainly wouldn’t ignore a recreation that looked as good on camera as Patterson’s “suit” does… it’d only prove to me that it could be done, assuming the person or persons in question didn’t have to lay out gazillions to do it. And that would be another nail in the coffin for the Patterson film. And yet the only recreation I’ve ever seen was, I think, a BBC-sponsored documentary where the suit clearly looked fake. As I said, I’m a skeptic. I’d like to see somebody do this, and if Patterson on his own could afford it back in ‘67, some group or individual should be able to afford it now while spending only a modest amount in today’s money. I mean, come on… Hollywood blows more on one daily buffet lunch for an average film set than it should cost to recreate this suit, and yet no one does it. I’d hardly call it a waste. Let’s see it done and then we’ll judge. May not convince the die-hard Bigfoot fanatics, but it’d prove something to the skeptical, such as myself. As for the Bluff Creek setting–who cares if that’s exact? It’s how the SUIT looks onscreen that matters, and that wouldn’t really require exact duplication of the setting itself. As for a Bigfoot specimen, I totally agree, although the fact that a corpse has never been found doesn’t bother me much. I’ve lived in the country most of my life and have never seen a dead animal in the wild. Nature disposes of such things very quickly and very efficiently, and it’s a vast amount of territory we’re talking about out there.
rbhess:
You seem to be assuming he spent it all at once. If this was a custom job, you could’ve taken as long as he pleased and spent money on the suit in small “chunks.” He certainly had enough money to rent expensive camera equipment and to buy 16mm film. Come to think of it, didn’t Patterson make his own saddles? He must’ve had at least some experience with building/modeling materials that could be applied to making a costume if he did.
The only other recreation attempt that I know of was supposedly done in 2004 for a TV station involving Bob Heironimus and a Philip Morris-made costume. I’ve heard claims that Greg Long and Jal Korff were involved as well. I found what seem to be clips from it here and here. Here’s a still comparison that I found. It’s certainly better than the BBC’s attempt, but it does have its problems. The seeming lack of muscle movement seems to mean that the recreators were under the impression that the person in the suit didn’t have muscle-padding and that the muscles seen were the result of muscles showing through a tight suit. Unfortunately, Mr. Heironimus wasn’t in the same shape that he was when he claimed to have been in the suit and they didn’t think of getting someone of a similar build to be in the suit so they could test that. There’s also the lack of arm extenders. And since this was supposedly down for a TV station, we run into the issue of a budget again. There’s also the fact that it’s being presented as a recreation, so the viewer already knows it’s fake, which could lead to a subconscious bias.
A recreation backed by a TV station or movie studio is going to most likely run into the budgetary snags mentioned by corrick and myself. Skeptics won’t do it because a fear of losing money on a recreation that gets poo-pooed and possibly because they don’t know what materials to work with. There’s also the issue of what materials to use: Horse hide? Dynel? Spandex? One of the various types of rubber? Foam? Cloth? Would it be a one piece costume? Multiple pieces? The original hoaxer had the advantage of knowing what materials and style they wanted to work with; a recreator doesn’t. This means testing different suits made from different materials and using different styles, and that costs more money. You might even have to use different actors with different body types for the costumes if you want to be 100% sure about whether what’s seen in the P/G footage can be duplicated or not. Now if someone who wants a recreation decides to take all of that into account and raises the money to do so, then you’re in business. I agree that someone should do this, but I also feel the need to point out why it probably isn’t being done.
Well, there’s the matter of lighting conditions and a similar terrain for the person in the suit to walk on. There’s also the matters of using 16mm film in a camera like the one Patterson used. Film and videotape yield very different results.
But specimens of animals in your area were studied, documented, captured, and/or killed before. That’s why they’re accepted as existing. Bigfoot hasn’t, and that’s why people are skeptical.
Who says there isn’t a better motion picture of Sasquatch?
There is…and it’s on the DVD “Sasquatch” Legend Meets Science”…the 1994 video taken by Freeman.
It’s there. That looks real. Much more so than the 16mm P-G film. But it’s done with video, and it looks muddy.
That doesn’t look faked to me.
The fact that we’re even discussing the legitimacy of this footage blows my mind. I don’t know, lets create a suit with breasts and a pulled right quad muscle and find somebody that’s even more ripped than Ferrigno or Schwarzenegger to wear it. Wow, that way you’ll be able to see all the muscles in the back and legs at work. C’mon people, look at it. It’s real! Some country bumpkin like Ray Walton or whatever his name was isn’t going to know the anatomy of a muscular human let alone an ape. I feel like an idiot even having to defending this video.
I’m surprised that Roger Patterson even knew which end of the camera to point at bigfoot.
So if Patterson was such a dunce, then I guess it was Gimlin who was the mastermind behind the alleged hoaxing? Cause surely someone as dim as Patterson supposedly was could never come up with that good of a suit, not to mention the plan to carry everything off so amazingly well.
Atomic, thanks for all the related sites, a person could spend hours and hours becoming a PG expert. The Bob H. re-creation ’still’ shot next to Patty is interesting, since it presumably should be a very good match given they have the ‘original’ to work with. And despite the similarity, for some reason it makes me almost giggle; yet a glance over to the similarly posed, stern demeanor (and rock hard physique ) of Patty to this day gets my pulse going. Is that explained simply by knowing that the Bob H shot is faked, and the other might not be? Or does the Bob H shot kinda look like a padded, chubby, giant muppet character, whereas Patty looks like an animal?
“you’d have to be an idiot to think that you could film something with long, stiff arms and non-moving hands without anyone suspecting it of being a hoax”
In hindsight that’s obvious, but it sounds like Patterson and the ‘expedition’ and everything involved was kind of thrown together. He somehow manages to pull off something seemingly way beyond the scope of his limited (financial and intellectual) abilities?
Apparently, many of you did not read my previous post. With today’s technology, given the quality of the original photographic negatives and the lack of documented physical reference points there is ZERO chance of anyone ever definitively “proving” whether the Patterson film was real or a hoax.
To paraphrase an alleged quote from Sir Francis Bacon (see wikipedia), “I’ve found that what most people think is true is very much the same as what they wish were true.” Today we refer to this as confirmation bias.
People who want to believe in Bigfoot will always “see” things in the film that convince them the film is “real.” Likewise, skeptics will always see the same film and spot a hoax.
Debate over the legitimacy of the film is a total waste, imho. Very loud, but still just background noise.
ygor427 talks about the suspicious ‘luck’ Patterson had. I don’t think he is aware that Patterson had the camera for months and was actually in Washington State searching for sasquatch prior to moving onto northern California in October ‘67.
Patterson and Gimlin were in northern California for about 3 weeks and were camped in the Bluff Creek area for about a week before getting the shot. They rode out daily on horseback up creeks and streams. They didn’t just ’stumble’ across the subject at the first attempt. They spent considerable time in a condensed area diligently looking. An independent observer confirmed that Patterson and Gimlin’s horse tracks were ‘everywhere’ along the many feeder creeks and streams in the area.
How many researchers have the time to do what Patterson and Gimlin did in ‘67 and how many of them actually manage to do what Patterson and Gimlin did? Most have full time jobs and cannot spent time out in the wilderness as Patterson and Gimlin did. In late ‘67 their search for sasquatch was almost a full time event. Compare that the researchers today. Who exactly is doing today what Patterson did in ‘67???
The fact that Patterson used horses might also have been the vital ingredient in his success.
Bottom line is Patterson himself never ever claimed to come across another sasquatch nor even it’s tracks post ‘67. That’s not indicative of a hoaxer or a con artist. Patterson was still searching and even got almost duped into falling for the Bossburg shenanigans as well as a scam involving the Yeti in the Himalayas. His sincerity almost got him suckered.
All of Patterson’s behaviour and sincerity towards the sasquatch question in the years after the ‘67 footage point to Patterson being on the level.
Actions speak louder than words, and all the finger pointing aimed at Patterson cannot wish that away.
Benjamin Radford wrote:
Oh for God’s sake, get a new whine for a change. You’re like a broken record.
You clicked into this thread didn’t you? If you’re so fed up with talk about the P/G footage then why come into this thread in the first place? Did somebody put a gun to your head?
Like all scoftics, your near obsession with the sasquatch subject is ridiculous. Find something else to whine about.
Few scoftics stop to wonder why, if it is a hoax, somebody else hasn’t managed to come anywhere near equaling it, much less bettering it, since 1967, even though gazillions of them have tried.
Funny that hey?
I guess there is the possibility that patty could be a fake. I just don’t think it is if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck than its probably a duck. I’ve never seen footage that made me think I’m looking at the real thing other than this. There is no doubt in my mind that bigfoot is out there. I think it just doesn’t want anything to do with us and who can blame it? I’m sure that one day some guy will get just the right picture or video that they need to confirm that bigfoot is real. Until than we just have to have faith.
My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, but while the legs look very real, I can make out the impact shudder in the thighs, the torso, especially the stuffed panties complete with pantie-lines(!) don’t seem real.
I don’t know what to make of it.
I know that they didn’t just show up and film a bigfoot but the fact that it took them 3 weeks to do what nobody else has done in 40 years is a little fishy.
Apparently you only need three weeks to film a mysterious sasquatch. I’m sure they could build up vacation time or go during the summer.
And why would horses help you find Sasquatch? Is riding on a large, loud animal the best way to find an infamously shy creature? I would think probably not.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt folks.
Ygor, you can get a lot closer to deer on a horse than you can on foot. Even a tractor is better than on foot. Personal experience.
Horses are herbivores, thus smell safe, four-legged, and help cover up the presence of the people riding them. A horse is not a threat. A two-legged human, or an ATV, -is-.
Then you get these guys on TV wearing headlamps, making all kinds of noise, looking only at a very small spot for one night, using vehicles with combustion engines, and they wonder why they don’t see anything.
They’d have died of hunger a hundred and fifty years ago, on the frontier. They’d be lucky to hit a deer with a car, let alone find an uncatalogued animal.
So it is being argued that perhaps Patterson and Gimiln were clever, connected enough, and had the know how to put together an amazing suit. The problem with this to me is that 40 years have gone by, and I feel Patterson and Gimlin would not be the only ones that would be this determined, resourceful, and skillful to make such a realistic hoax or suit. If such an outstanding costume was made, surely in 40 years these two are not the only ones that could have resources to pull this sorts of thing off. It has been argued on other threads how determined and resourceful some modern day hoaxers are, and yet we have no other footage of this clarity and sheer staying power in 40 years. Why is this? To say that the lack of such new footage is because of lack of means or lack of determination is to directly contradict some of the skeptical arguments on this and other threads, which is that it is doable and that there are doggedly determined hoaxers out there.
So are we to believe that there has been no one out there in 40 years with the will or the means by which to execute a hoax of this scale? Obviously, as has been pointed out by MrAtomicEmonster and some others, a suit like this is not unfeasible and indeed it seems a custom job should be quite easy to put together in this day and age, by someone with the right know how. So where are the attempts, if it is that easy, not prohibitively expensive, and there are plenty of clever hoaxers out there? So it is argued that the suit making skills were available in the 60s, yet no one able to fully outdo the PG footage or come close. Do Patterson and Gimlin outdo them all? I find that hard to swallow.
What about hoaxers willingness to try? I also am very skeptical that a lack of will is keeping anyone from doing it. The 40 years of debate surrounding this should make this a prime challenge for any would be hoaxer, to outdo the PG footage. Wouldn’t that be exactly the kind of attention they crave? I would think that someone out there must have the means and the will to pull off something like this and indeed they would get a lot of coverage if they could, yet no one tries. Is this to be attributed to lack of caring? This seems a bit ridiculous to me. Remember the obvious popularity of hoaxing footage that shows no sign of abating, and I think there is at least as much desire to pull a hoax like that off today as there was 40 years ago.
I feel it is absurd to think that only Patterson and Gimlin, in 40 years, are the only ones with the know how and desire to make this sort of spectacular hoax. It seems to me that there are committed hoaxers out there, the means to make great suits, yet we are still waiting for footage of this quality. I feel it may just not be as easy to pull of this type of phenomenal suit and hoax as it seems to some.
mystery-man, well said. I could go on, but you said it better than I probably could.
My apologies for the question, the answer to which is undoubtedly obvious, but how/where can I access the new, enhanced version of the P-G film?
“Apparently you only need three weeks to film a mysterious sasquatch. I’m sure they could build up vacation time or go during the summer.”
Would four weeks have been a more convincing search window? Or maybe five?
If the sasquatch is indeed real and if the sasquatch is indeed just a flesh and blood animal, then you might well see one the moment you step out of your car. Or you might never see one, ever.
There are countless reports of chance sightings of sasquatch. If sasquatch is real, wouldn’t we expect dedicated searchers to also have some success now and then?
Odds and ends:
It doesn’t bother me that Patterson got so lucky. Someone had to, if the thing was really out there.
On the other hand, it should remembered that that Heuvelmans and Napier both rejected the film.
And the lack of anything nearly as good over the next 40 years bothers me a lot. Ten years, okay, even twenty, but at what point do we say, “This is one hell of a long run of bad luck?”
The thing doesn’t look “quite right” as a living creature to my amateur eyes, but then a duck-billed platypus doesn’t either.
We should be careful about the enhancements. Again, I’m not an expert, but I wonder how much of the data is generated by the enhancement programs and techniques “filling in” the missing details on a figure that was 1.8mm high on the original film. No program or technique can show data that did not exist on the film: it can only approximate or conjecture.
It will always puzzle me why the Patty suit on X-Creatures was so bad. No one will ever convince me that was a sincere attempt to recreate the image in the P-G film.
Bottom line: this film is not going to convince 99% of the relevant scientific and conservationist community that sasquatch is out there. This means that, whether it’s real or not, its value as evidence - “value” meaning the extent to which it affects the world’s thinking - is limited. If Patterson suceeded, his success needs to be replicated, probably more than once. Only then would this film be seen as a turning point in primatology.
rayrich:
Of course he can; he could’ve reading books and magazines on anatomy, animals, and bodybuilding. He also could’ve looked at himself in a mirror. Hell, this guy studied real gorillas when he made a gorilla costume. More muscled? Why would they have to be more muscled? A pulled muscle? “Patty” is pretty freakin’ mobile for something that’s supposed to have a pulled muscle.
Lyndon:
That could be so. However, his selling the total ownership rights to the footage to various parties does point at him being a con artist.
Patterson was still searching and even got almost duped into falling for the Bossburg shenanigans as well as a scam involving the Yeti in the Himalayas. His sincerity almost got him suckered.
All that proves is that he actually believed in Bigfoot’s existence. Could a believer not try to make a realistic hoax in order to get more believers (not unlike a holy man who fakes miracles for his congregation)?
jamesrav:
I thought the suit Bob H wore was decent, but not perfect. The blurry, seemingly “scanned picture from a newspaper” quality of the picture also makes it hard to compare details to “Patty.” There’s also the problem of the fact that the recreators missed obvious details like the length of the arms, so them neglecting to do muscular details isn’t out of the question. There’s also the fact that Bob H is an older, out-of-shape man, whereas he claimed to have been in shape when he supposedly faked it. I don’t think it was him, but it raises a good point: How can you expect an effect done with a fit, young man to be compared with someone who isn’t either of those things?
If this had been shot in the 60’s using film similar to the P/G footage and it wasn’t revealed to be a hoax, would people say this is real or fake? Would it be argued that this clearly represented an older member of the same species seen in the P/G footage? Sadly we’ll never know.
Thrown together? You call something spanning the course of three weeks “thrown together?” He apparently the camera for months, too. Sounds like he had plenty of time for experimentation.
He could’ve done what Halloween enthusiasts do: Use talent and goods obtained cheaply/for free to create something amazing. A poverty-stricken Japanese artist managed to create a realistic statue of himself using wood and body hair, so it’s hardly out of the question for Patterson to create something realistic on a low budget. Is it out of the question to wonder if a rodeo cowboy would have experience working with leather/saddle-makling? Look what material can be used to make a gorilla-type costume. That link also shows that “arm extenders with moving hands” technology existed in the 40’s!
mystery_man:
I only say Patterson. Considering how Gimlin got screwed over by Patterson over the rights, he’d have more than enough motivation to expose Patterson in order to get revenge (Unless Patterson had some sort of dirt on him). I suppose that Patterson could’ve had someone else help him make the costume, though.
It’s not a lack of resources, it’s the lack of someone thinking to put those resources together. Toho made a great-looking suit for use in HALF HUMAN, but made suits that didn’t look anywhere near as good for KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and KING KONG ESCAPES years later. People from the same movie studio couldn’t match the level of well-made, furred costumes despite having the same resources and special effects department as they did when they did HALF HUMAN.
The fact that the people behind two recreation attempts neglected to replicate obvious (like the length of the arms) also demonstrates my point. I’m also willing to admit that other hoaxers might not be quite as clever as I gave them credit for. Granted, they were pretty clever in their set-up, but they used a manufactured costume. Now imagine if the hoaxers never came forward like they did in this case: “There’s no way someone in a costume could’ve fooled so many people at once! How do you explain the smell? Etc., etc.”
You also seem to be forgetting that alleged photographic evidence shouldn’t be judged by itself; the area shown in the film should be checked for physical evidence as well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there heavy rain the night the footage was shot? And yet Bob Titmus comes back several days later and finds prints that P/G supposedly didn’t know about (the ones leading up to a ledge that “Patty” supposedly watched them from) and thus couldn’t have covered up to protect them from the rain? How is that possible? Also, couldn’t that rain have covered up/destroyed tracks left by someone taking off the suit and leaving the area? This also raises several good questions about the physical evidence at the site. If those questions are correct, then the footage isn’t very credible. In fact, that whole thread raises lots of interesting points about Bigfoot and the P/G footage. It’s an incredibly long read, but it’s worth it (and I say this despite not having read the whole thing).
MatteBille- If sasquatch is really out there and this PG footage is real, then maybe some of the other lesser quality films could have been genuine too and in that case we have been unlucky only in that clear footage hasn’t been produced yet. If this is a hoax, then like I said in my earlier post, it doesn’t settle well with me that no one in 40 years has made a decent attempt to outdo it.
So we have here either a real creature that is extremely elusive and has been captured only fleetingly on film, with hoaxes mixed in to confuse matters, or we have a grandaddy hoax that no one is willing or able to outdo in a believable manner. Both possibilities raise problems with me.
On the one hand, I don’t see any evidence for a lack of willingness to hoax and in fact see some amount of ingenuity in some proven hoaxes, yet nothing is as clear or well done as the PG footage. Hoaxers have been at it for as long as this footage has been around, so where are the spectacular pieces of footage like this, especially when the suit technology is available as some have claimed? If this was a hoax, then I would have expected at least several successful hoaxes approaching this quality by resourceful, determined hoaxers over the years. That has not happened, and so saying that Patterson and Gimlin are the only ones in 40 years to pull this off is a less than satisfactory explanation for me. If this is a hoax, surely those two were not the only ones capable of perpetuating this sort of thing. I think a serious debunker should go out, make something of comparable quality, then try to pass it off as the real thing and see what happens. When everyone was convinced to the level of the PG footage, they could come forward and then explain how it was done. This could offer valuable insights and I’d be interested in what came of such an experiment.
On the other hand, if this is a real creature out there, then that leaves the glaring lack of any additional clear footage in 40 years, especially with the ever growing availability and portability of cameras since then. I do feel some of the blurrier films could possibly be real, but I would expect that if this creature is really out there, then at least something approaching PG would have been documented by now. Just as I say that it is suspicious that PG could be the only ones able to pull off this sort of hoax, I also find it suspicious that only they were ever able to get footage of this apparent quality. So I remain at somewhat of an impasse on this one.
I agree with MatteBille that this footage is not going to prove anything one way or another and it seems both camps just become further entrenched in their arguments. In the end, we need additional video evidence of this quality with which to compare, we need more data. I think the PG footage has become more of an oddity than anything else and it will remain that way until something new along these lines comes forward.
rayrich:
I goofed up and forgot to provide the URL for a link in my response to your post. Here is the link to notes by someone who studied gorillas while he was making a gorilla suit. Here’s the artic