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To be honest, I’m a bit surprised at the response and level of blind belief in this thing here. Are you for the idea of a Moon Landing Hoax? Are you wary of Vampire attack? Fearful of what creature a full moon may present? Have you ever posted a viewpoint contrary to such beliefs?

This is a discussion on the film and having looked through the evidence and followed the money, I have to say ‘fake’. That is not to say that somewhere out there such a thing doesn’t exist, I’m just of the opinion a bunch of desperate cowboys actually promoting Bigfoot as their potential moneyspinner got a clip bang on cue. It just doesn’t hold up.

As a Fortean, of course I have an interest but also, as a Fortean, I have an interest in how the human mind can delude itself. I was never fooled by The Cumberland Spaceman. The Surgeon’s Photo looked wrong to me from the outset. Yet people believed in these pictures, held them up as proof and couldn’t get over their original self-imposed visual interpretation and belief they’d conjured around them enough to see them with fresh eyes in a new light.

As Howard Devoto sang...

My mind
It ain't so open
That anything
Could crawl right in
Belief is a powerful thing. Those who have livelihoods or are otherwise emotionally invested in Bigfoot cannot readily let it go (nor can they fairly weigh the opposing position - same with any subject area). This is why I think Dahinden was my favorite 'footer, he seemed to be cognizant of this.
 
That’s Suchet in the Henderson’s movie, that is.
If arm extentions where used then the lower arms would be too long in comparison with the upper arms and the elbows would be in the wrong place. The soles of the feet look pale gray but so do the bottoms of the feet of of gorillas. The midriff would look stiff due to heavy muscles and the lack of a neck. I've worked closely with all the great apes and this thing reminds me most of a gorilla in its muscularity, bulk and head shape. It is clearly not a gorilla but i don't think it's human. For the record no other bigfoot footage has looked anything like this good. All the others look like someone fannying about in a monkey costume. The P/G footage looks like something else.

It looks like a man in a suit. It walks like a stroppy teenager in a suit. The midriff is consistent with a 2-piece suit. Bob said he wore the suit. No big feet on the big feet. They look like white sports shoes. The suit was reputedly sold to Patterson. Patterson had sourced investment from various sources to make a Bigfoot movie. His interest in the subject was influenced by Wallace. Wallace hoaxed his way all across the area and on his death, his family said he hoaxed his whole Bigfoot thing. Patterson owed not only on the camera he rented (and defaulted on the return) but the return of investment to various investors in the Bigfoot movie spiel he was in the process of promoting and making.
Re-enactments have been done at the location making sure the lenses and the trees match up in the moving footage, putting the alleged Female Bigfoot at an approximate height of about 6’5” - which is a tall guy with a topping head mask on.

I really can’t spell this out for you any more. If there are any hair or DNA samples from this area. I think we need to have them analysed. And that isn’t too hard a process to get right. Especially as a lot of Bigfoot samples have already turned out to be deer or bear fur.
 
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This can't be answered accurately but roughly di you think you'd regard it in the same way if had been released recently?
Late to reply - sorry, very busy week - but no, I wouldn't, as a similar piece of footage released now would merely fit within a whole gallery of fantastical images to which we're entirely used, and as we've said dozens of times on here this is why (sadly) photographic "proof" is, if taken in isolation, invalid as conclusive proof of anything. Its historical context is what marks it out, see also the Turin Shroud which any decent print shop could knock up in a couple of hours now, but in the Middle Ages that kind of technology and technique wasn't dreamed of.

I won't go deep as many others already have since you asked, but a couple of points: Morris never managed to replicate the costume he claims to have made, even when offered six figures by National Geographic to do so, John Chambers stated he would find it nigh-impossible to replicate even with studio money and facilities, Napier stated the gait (film-speed depending) wasn't human, and above all in the half century since no amount of analysis or scrutiny has yet spotted the zipper. Yes, there are problems with the wider story, especially Patterson's background and the timeline. It's certainly not cut and dried.

Personally, I've watched it hundreds of times, researched it deeply, spoken to many experts on both sides of the argument - and on that basis I still don't know. Which is fine: Forteanism allows you to both not know and to change your mind. As I have said repeatedly though, the actual filmed object is in a way moot - the whole saga is itself Fortean for the reasons we have discussed at length on here, and for what it has come to culturally represent.
 
Philip Morris on the costume...
He recognised his costume straight away but kept quiet..
https://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/2008/11/bigfoot_hoax.html
So how did they find an 8 foot tall person to wear this costume in the remote wilderness ? Also why did they attack the local construction site ? And why the ape tits? I mean, most guys at the time were a bit homophobic about dressing up as a female anything. The problem with the hoax as an answer is that it opens up a whole new can of worms regarding the incident, and also doesn't seem all that plausible. I wonder how many people want to take credit for a hoax they didn't commit? Think of the notoriety and the book deals...
 
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That’s Suchet in the Henderson’s movie, that is.


It looks like a man in a suit. It walks like a stroppy teenager in a suit. The midriff is consistent with a 2-piece suit. Bob said he wore the suit. No big feet on the big feet. They look like white sports shoes. The suit was reputedly sold to Patterson. Patterson had sourced investment from various sources to make a Bigfoot movie. His interest in the subject was influenced by Wallace. Wallace hoaxed his way all across the area and on his death, his family said he hoaxed his whole Bigfoot thing. Patterson owed not only on the camera he rented (and defaulted on the return) but the return of investment to various investors in the Bigfoot movie spiel he was in the process of promoting and making.
Re-enactments have been done at the location making sure the lenses and the trees match up in the moving footage, putting the alleged Female Bigfoot at an approximate height of about 6’5” - which is a tall guy with a topping head mask on.

I really can’t spell this out for you any more. If there are any hair or DNA samples from this area. I think we need to have them analysed. And that isn’t too hard a process to get right. Especially as a lot of Bigfoot samples have already turned out to be deer or bear fur.

It looks nothing like a man in a costume and it moves nothing like a man. As i mentioned before, a human forehead couldn't fit into that thing's profile. Gorillas have pale soles to their feet. I've worked with apes, closely and this looks like an ape not a man in an ape suit.
 

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So how did they find an 8 foot tall person to wear this costume in the remote wilderness ? Also why did they attack the local construction site ? And why the ape tits? I mean, most guys at the time were a bit homophobic about dressing up as a female anything. The problem with the hoax as an answer is that it opens up a whole new can of worms regarding the incident, and also doesn't seem all that plausible. I wonder how many people want to take credit for a hoax they didn't commit? Think of the notoriety and the book deals...

I’m not sure where the 8 foot tall comes from. This reconstruction puts it around 6‘5.

https://thedavisreport.wordpress.co...ilms-gives-insight-into-sizes-and-dimensions/

I can’t really speculate on the alleged homophobia of ‘most guys’ of the time but I may be right in saying a fair few drunken old rugby players have probably donned a pair of comedy breasts at some point. In theory, a female of the species would probably be smaller with a smaller footprint and we’ve already discussed water bags or similar in the costume.
 
It looks nothing like a man in a costume and it moves nothing like a man. As i mentioned before, a human forehead couldn't fit into that thing's profile. Gorillas have pale soles to their feet. I've worked with apes, closely and this looks like an ape not a man in an ape suit.

Pale soles but not white soles. And those soles don’t look like the soles of shoes.

Also, as you’ve worked with apes closely, you’ll have to admit the counterargument that there are those who are equally familiar working with humans (and there's quite a lot of them) and they say it’s a man in a suit.

As far as the gait is concerned, it’s the long-legged lope I find false. Apes have more rotation in the pelvis when they walk.

 
Another question. Where are all the other native monkeys, apes and gorillas in North America?
 
Another question. Where are all the other native monkeys, apes and gorillas in North America?
There is no fossil support for this, either. Along with aspects of ecology, evolution, and wildlife biology, independent lines of evidence are not converging on Bigfoot.
 
If there is such a creature in North America, the most plausible origin are Giganthropithicus coming over from southeastern Asia. It has been proposed they survived at least until 100,000 years ago, and as such just might have a relic population. They are related to orangutans.
As you state, there is no fossil evidence of such in Alaska, western Canada, or the US Pacific Northwest. Such a find would be quite the news.
 
Nope, dont buy it.

Giganthropthicus was a sedentary bamboo eater, think of an ape version of the Panda?

The cryptid primates all seem to be something rather different, though some are small, some are man sized and some giant. They are highly active omnivore creatures.
 
There is no fossil support for this, either. Along with aspects of ecology, evolution, and wildlife biology, independent lines of evidence are not converging on Bigfoot.

You're ruling our a seafaring Bigfoot, then?
 
I’m not sure where the 8 foot tall comes from. This reconstruction puts it around 6‘5
https://thedavisreport.wordpress.co...ilms-gives-insight-into-sizes-and-dimensions/
https://thedavisreport.wordpress.co...ilms-gives-insight-into-sizes-and-dimensions/ Except, when you look a bit closer you realize that the superimposition doesn't work as advertised. The scaling is out. Bigfoot is still substantially larger than the projected 6'5". Even if we drop the size claims to 7' it still isn't easy to find someone that tall. People of that height make up 0.000038% of the population, and many of them are skinny and would not fill out that suit, and if it were stuffed, it likely wouldn't sit right as you walked. I have a friends who are involved in movie costuming and I quizzed them about the ape suit issue. That unfortunately opened up a can of worms about furries, but their opinion was that it was hard to get an ape suit that would sit as well as the one in patterson-gimlin. I even sat around while they did an ape suit from 1967, for which there weren't any that looked remotely as good. Plus, if you look at the cleaned up image, you can just make out what might be a cleft palate. Why include that on a costume?
 
Whilst that is a totally cool bit of film with the superimposition, the rest of that website seems to go further (like about a million miles further) than anyone on this forum would advocate for. I present to you: the hair braid
https://thedavisreport.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/patterson-bigfoot-film-the-hair-braid/
Mmm nyyeessss. (Likewise the mention of a cleft palate mentioned above. It becomes interpretation of simulacra in distant fur at that level, surely? Not the same as trying to ascertain the figure's overall height)

However. I was watching a clip of the film on there
https://thedavisreport.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/armswing-smaller.gif?w=555&zoom=2
What I like about that is when the right foot hits the floor and you see a shudder at the top of the calf and knee. I can't imagine how you'd get that happening if you were wearing a furry legging, I feel like you wouldn't see such a thing because it wouldn't show through?
 
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There is a new documentary out called Big Fur. It's about skilled taxidermist Ken Walker trying to create a bigfoot from scratch. It seems he uses the PG film as reference.
 
Sharon and Analogue Boy make good points about Bigfoot cryptids; there is no evidence for any kind of breeding populations or speciation, etc... And yet, the details seem to show a real non-human creature; you can see the muscles and tendons flex where they should with their attachment points, etc., in convincing ways.
 
And why the ape tits? I mean, most guys at the time were a bit homophobic about dressing up as a female anything.

I’m not familiar with American carnivals and fairs but there is a famous old trick where a girl is turned into a gorilla. I’ve only seen it featured in the Zambora sequence in Diamonds Are Forever but as the trick is based on Pepper’s Ghost, it must be old as the hills. Maybe some outfits did come with removable. breasts. Who knows? Magic forums discuss this trick....

https://themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=214477&forum=23

So it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a costume with (detachable) breasts could exist and was available for performances of a more adult nature. Also, I think I read that Morris mentioned the costume came with the quite fake looking rubber chest and mask. Both of which he thought had been removed from the costume and replaced.

 
I’m not familiar with American carnivals and fairs but there is a famous old trick where a girl is turned into a gorilla. I’ve only seen it featured in the Zambora sequence in Diamonds Are Forever but as the trick is based on Pepper’s Ghost, it must be old as the hills. Maybe some outfits did come with removable. breasts. Who knows? Magic forums discuss this trick....

https://themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=214477&forum=23

So it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a costume with (detachable) breasts could exist and was available for performances of a more adult nature. Also, I think I read that Morris mentioned the costume came with the quite fake looking rubber chest and mask. Both of which he thought had been removed from the costume and replaced.
Hehe, that's a pretty interesting piece of folklore that I haven't come across before. Nice one AB. IDK if it is relevant in this situation, but it is worth consideration for its sheer weirdness.
 
What I like about that is when the right foot hits the floor and you see a shudder at the top of the calf and knee. I can't imagine how you'd get that happening if you were wearing a furry legging, I feel like you wouldn't see such a thing because it wouldn't show through?
I agree. It would have to be a damn thin/tight ape suit to allow an effect like that, and that would be damn hard given that ape suits need to be thick to have all that fur.
 
From that magiccafe link...

I saw Girl to Gorilla at a local carnival back around 1973, and spoke with the talker before showtime. His brother played the gorilla; his wife was ticket taker, and his daughter played "Sheena the Gorilla Girl" (she also looked totally burned out on the grind business).
 
There, I must agree. I’m not against the idea of the existence of ALL cryptids BTW. It’s just this film and the need that it HAD TO BE MADE that raises my suspicion.
 
Analogue Boy, what do you think about that clip, then?
What do I think? That clip doesn’t show the bit where it looks like a white-soled shoe. And it’s black and white so doesn’t allow for colour analysis. If anything, it muddies the water.
 
I mean what do you think about the way when the right foot hits the floor and you see a shudder at the top of the calf and knee?
 
Pale soles but not white soles. And those soles don’t look like the soles of shoes.

Also, as you’ve worked with apes closely, you’ll have to admit the counterargument that there are those who are equally familiar working with humans (and there's quite a lot of them) and they say it’s a man in a suit.

As far as the gait is concerned, it’s the long-legged lope I find false. Apes have more rotation in the pelvis when they walk.


Known great apes are mostly knuckle walker and seldom walk erect for long periods. Male Sumatran orang-utans walk erect on the rare occasions that they decent to the ground but they have an odd, clumsy rolling gait quite unlike the subject in the PG film. The orang-pendek walks smoothly on two legs. A hypothetical upright ape or relic hominid would not move like a knuckle walking ape trying to walk upright.
 
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