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The Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film

Analogue Boy said:
Not wishing to retread old ground with my size 29 boots,
Patterson was working on a bigfoot movie. He drew artwork of a female Bigfoot before he ever took a trip out to the woods with a camera in his hand.

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So we've got four people involved in those illustrations?:

William Roe's daughter
William Roe
Morton Kunstler .. then finally Patterson in that order?
 
Swifty said:
So we've got four people involved in those illustrations?:

William Roe's daughter
William Roe
Morton Kunstler .. then finally Patterson in that order?
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Yes. What’s the issue? Is it easier to believe in a big hairy monster with tits over a man who was planning on making a movie about a big hairy monster with tits hiring a movie camera and then just coming across a big hairy monster with tits and filming it as soon as he got into the woods?
 
Analogue Boy said:
Yes. What’s the issue? Is it easier to believe in a big hairy monster with tits over a man who was planning on making a movie about a big hairy monster with tits hiring a movie camera and then just coming across a big hairy monster with tits and filming it as soon as he got into the woods?
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I get your point and it's the most convincing one to me over the alternatives but I'm also a Fortean so I have to consider it might have been a real 'animal'. On the other hand, I reckon I'd be able to do/film a recreation using some of the techniques I've detailed above. It wouldn't be easy and it would be expensive mainly because of where it was filmed if I was paid to attempt to recreate something like that. Add to that I'd have the advantage of newer materials like foam gelatine instead of foam latex for a one shot deal. Foam latex would last longer and would be used in '69 but be hotter as a (full) costume in that environment. Pure gelatine would look the absolute best but would be completely impractical in that environment, it would fall off after about 10 seconds because we've used water base spirit gum glued jelly to someone's skin in that scenario.

I agree with you that the most sensible explanation would be a suit but the footage is a lot more complex than someone just chucking on a suit. I'm going with breakdown appliances (google Dick Smith's pioneering work on 'Little Big Man') to 'build up' a suit instead of it being a 'onesie' for want of a better word. I'm more excited that at the time, professional costume/F/X artists weren't known to be that advanced. The craft simply wasn't that advanced in '69.

edit: I'm coming from the perspective of 'what if I had to attempt to recreate this and was given a ton of money to do so?" ... high definition would be out for a start because that wasn't how the original was filmed so I'd be using a 16mm camera. A tripod would be out as well because Patterson didn't use one of those either. Both of those choices would help me a hide a 'zipper'/imperfections. The movement would be hard to fake and the flesh movements.
 
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Analogue Boy said:
Yes. What’s the issue? Is it easier to believe in a big hairy monster with tits over a man who was planning on making a movie about a big hairy monster with tits hiring a movie camera and then just coming across a big hairy monster with tits and filming it as soon as he got into the woods?
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Okay, made me chuckle but the problem here is that despite some well-funded attempts no-one has ever convincingly recreated the big hairy monster with tits footage to prove it was hoaxed. So yes, the most likely hypothesis is that he hoaxed it but to prove this we would have to demonstrate how.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Okay, made me chuckle but the problem here is that despite some well-funded attempts no-one has ever convincingly recreated the big hairy monster with tits footage to prove it was hoaxed. So yes, the most likely hypothesis is that he hoaxed it but to prove this we would have to demonstrate how.
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A static identical patty model would be achievable, making it move in the same way would be difficult if we were faking it (I mean the muscle movement, I'd try casting over sized fake gelatine muscles to put under the foam latex suit if that's what it was) .. gelatine was used for the Charles Laughton version of The Hunchback of Notre Damme for just one example .. other than derma wax, it's what most film and theatre actors used back then and a lot of them applied the make ups themselves. The problem with gelatine appliances is you can only use them once in a warm environment because they melt off so you have to make loads of the same appliance to re apply. The benefit of them is they move like real muscles when an actor wears them so he/she can facially emote more easily which looks more convincing. Or on the legs of an actor/actress acting as a bigfoot. A problem with that technique theory is that we're now gluing jelly to someone's legs then covering that up with foam rubber so the person's sweat would quickly melt that off. We'd glue a mixture of Yak hair and crepe hair onto each bit in '69.

If the footage is fake, a lot of prep work went into it and they wouldn't have had much time to get the footage right under the weather, terrain and limitations of F/X techniques back then. Again, using a 16mm hand held wold have helped a lot in making it look convincing.
 
Swifty said:
The only problem with the most obvious answer which would be "It's a man in a suit" is that there just wasn't anybody good enough back then to do that. Not even the best who was John Chambers. American Werewolf in London's Rick Baker might have been able to duplicate the patty footage at the absolute peak of his hair suit work which would have been Tarzan - The Legend of Greystoke in around 1984 .. I'd turn the music down for this but it demonstrates who good Baker was in that year .. all of these apes are fake costumed actors or puppets. ..


The first time I learned about body/mass muscle structure being faked for a film was from around the same time with Marc Shostrum's crew including the now more famous than him KNB F/X working for him. They sewed bags of ball bearings under a foam latex body suit that was about the same size as how we view patty in that late 60's footage. They did that do create an obesity look with the bottom and breasts of the character wobbling for Evil Dead 2. Tiny details.

Facially, make up artists were able to create something as convincing as patty's face since the 1930's.

'Tying' all of that together though, on location with a cheap camera in a remote forest in '69 with a presumably a low budget would have been extremely difficult to practically achieve. If it is a man in a suit, I'd argue it's more likely to be a woman in a suit if it was faked. Because of the more nimble way it moves over the rough terrain. It would also be more likely to not be a single suit but compartments of a suit as well as a separate facial make up. Or it's the real deal. If it's fake, it was very advanced for 1969.
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Don't forget the ape-men scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey - that was 1968!
 
I liked this talk by Jeff Meldrum a lot. He talks about how anthropological theory around the time of the film could not have allowed for relict hominids. But actually things have changed since then. And he talks about foot casts and how they have a feature (across continents) which we do not have and which would be likely and which fit in with how the foot of the PGF creature moves.
 
stu neville said:
Well, as I keep saying I've looked at it more than most and I still don't know one way or the other.
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Do you favour either fake or "genuine", even slightly? Obviously if "genuine" there's all manner of complications as to what that means, beyond "not a deliberate fake and probably not a man in a suit." I find flesh and blood BHMs difficult to credit.

I have no idea and am no expert but I slightly favour "big man in a very good suit" simply because it's the simplest explanation, perhaps I'm misusing "simplest" here and the razor belong to that Occam chap.

If Patterson, Gimlin et al faked it, it's the best hoax ever.
 
gordonrutter said:
https://www.google.com/search?clien...ate=ive&vld=cid:61a79599,vid:avjdKTqiVvQ,st:0
For the relevant scene.

And a reminder the PG film was 1967 not 1969.
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Sorry, 1967 and thanks for the correction. That makes the patty footage even more impressive.

If it is a fake suit/appliances/combination, it's vastly superior to anything else including Kubrick's 2001-a Space Odyssey suits from the same era. I've read opinions from pro F/X artists who think artists couldn't have faked it that well in '67 including one from hair work/ape suit/Oscar winning expert Rick Baker who designed the sasquatch for the sentimental film 'Harry and the Hendersons'. Baker knows the evolution of fake hair suits and even he's baffled.

Obviously this is a comedic kid's film so the sasquatch's face has been designed to look cute but we get the general idea as well as Baker's hair work. He'd often hand punch the hairs in one at time!.

 
I don’t to rehash all the evidence we’ve raked over here so I’ll be brief.
The previous historic record of large primates in North America is very, very thin…
04FE2423-D56A-4A6D-B38D-704E8B45E9A1.jpeg

Patterson was desperately trying to raise funds for a Bigfoot movie for which he had previously done a concept illustration depicting a female Bigfoot with an oddly human breast shape.

Logging activity in the area revealed large footprints that raised Patterson’s interest were themselves revealed to be faked.

For me, the costume shows clear joins across the waist, which seems to rotate almost independently of the lower half. Here seems to be a visible difference of the nap of the fabric on the back. This would indicate the fibres aren’t stitched together with a natural symmetry in mind.

AI stabilisation shows a more human walk.

And for those who make a lot of rippling muscle detail, this thing doesn’t have an ass. (I’m not about being put on a watchlist for a search history of monkey’s bottoms) And see what I mean about the nap of the fabric on the shoulders? The waist seam join overlap also visible here.

171E1AC3-6D77-4DE2-8EBB-47AD59DAA438.jpeg

I’m in among the unconvinced lot, I’m afraid.
 
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I’d also add the plimsoll effect of the soles. Yes I get the white muddy environment but this just raises the question of why just the soles and not white mud on the upper part of the foot or even six inches up the shin accumulated over its regular route?
This would indicate a costume put on a few feet away and then given the all-clear to walk through the frame. Unless Bigfoot has a footspa at home and a daily cleaning routine.
 
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Analogue Boy said:
I’d also add the plimsoll effect of the soles. Yes I get the white muddy environment but this just raises the question of why just the soles and not white mud on the upper part of the foot or even six inches up the shin accumulated over its regular route?
This would indicate a costume put on a few feet away and then given the all-clear to walk through the frame. Unless Bigfoot has a footspa at home and a daily cleaning routine.
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Fair point although cats fastidiously keep themselves clean and so do apes so it's rare to see those species with dirty matted fur.
 
I've always thought that this was a crap suit. I've just watched Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot, along with a couple of other rickety bigfoot documentaries from the 70s. I now think it's a fairly accomplished suit, but nothing like convincing.
Analogue Boy said:
For me, the costume shows clear joins across the waist, which seems to rotate almost independently of the lower half.
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Absolutely, it's blatant.
 
Besides Wikipedia claims no one has been able to duplicate this situation, the rippling muscle structures looks real to me.
 
charliebrown said:
Besides Wikipedia claims no one has been able to duplicate this situation, the rippling muscle structures looks real to me.
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Here's a link to the original, unmolested footage - plus a couple of "remasters". Where - on the original - can you actually see any "rippling muscle structure"? For the life of me, I can't! On the slow motion, zoomed in, AI enhanced version you can see "something" wobble about the legs. That could be muscle, but it also could be an artifact of the original film, or an artifact introduced by the editing software, or anything else for that matter. You simply can't tell.

And then there's the whole hairy boobs thing. Mammals don't have hairy boobs - for a reason.

 
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lordmongrove said:
As i have said before, having worked closely with great apes for am extended period, i don't think this is a guy in a suit.
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I agree 100 percent, after seeing so many experts investigating every aspect of the movement of this creature, the underlying muscle structure, and I believe casts were taken of her footprints as well. She also did not move clumsily, as one would expect from a man in a suit. One has to wonder why the horse reared up too. Interesting.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
I agree 100 percent, after seeing so many experts investigating every aspect of the movement of this creature, the underlying muscle structure, and I believe casts were taken of her footprints as well. She also did not move clumsily, as one would expect from a man in a suit. One has to wonder why the horse reared up too. Interesting.
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Welcome back, Ronnie Jersey!

Your (surprising and unexpected) reappearance here is most welcome!!
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
I agree 100 percent, after seeing so many experts investigating every aspect of the movement of this creature, the underlying muscle structure, and I believe casts were taken of her footprints as well. She also did not move clumsily, as one would expect from a man in a suit. One has to wonder why the horse reared up too. Interesting.
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Welcome back!
 
I veer towards genuine mainly because of the state of special effects costume at the time. Also the gait is just wrong and I haven't seen that gait in many other films.

Hairy boobs? Who knows? I don't think it is an outlandish condition as we don't know the evolutionary line? Did Neanderthals have hairy boobs? They were supposedly better adapted to cold than we are (Or Gorillas, Orangs, Chimps, Bonobos, Siamangs)

I'm not sure how accurate it was but there was a TV programme where new digital analysis was used which couldn't "find the zipper" and those processes were undreamed of in 1967.

Also, I'd like to see a modern costume/effects designer make a Patty suit using the old tech. If they can do it convincingly I may veer towards fake, but all the coatumes I've seen have been rubbish and certainly wouldn't stand the sort of analysis the PG film has undergone. Actually I wouldn't mind seeing them make one with new tech to see how it compared. (The suit not CGI filming)

And - welcome back, Ronnie Jersey - hope everything is OK with you and Mr J.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
I agree 100 percent, after seeing so many experts investigating every aspect of the movement of this creature, the underlying muscle structure, and I believe casts were taken of her footprints as well. She also did not move clumsily, as one would expect from a man in a suit. One has to wonder why the horse reared up too. Interesting.
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It’s a delight to see you posting again, Ronnie. Welcome back!

maximus otter
 
charliebrown said:
The cost of producing a hoax of this magnitude is more than the average person can spend.
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Think of it as an investment in getting their Bigfoot movie made, it would be a business investment. It wouldn't have been a successful business investment, as the movie never got made, but still an investment.
 
Yes, and passing it off as real might have been an attempt to recover that investment after the movie failed to be made.
 
It is interesting to read the skeptical opinions on the Metabunk forum:

"There's nothing I'd rather spend America's birthday on than Googling "chimpanzee breasts" in a private tab. It's what George Washington would have wanted.

Now, on to more monkey breast research. These are the saggiest/fullest monkey breasts I could find on a quick and furtive search. Note that the big gal in the middle has the fullest breasts, and they have a definite movement to them. The monkey at the upper right is the saggiest/lowest, but those would definitely move when she walked. Otherwise they are small, hairless, and have VERY pronounced nipples, which we don't see on the Bigfoot film."

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/patterson-gimlin-bigfoot-film-is-a-hoax.12254/

Yes, there are some posters who simply will not even contemplate the idea of Bigfoot and make it clear, but there are many others with a keen interest in getting to the, ahem, big hairy bottom of this whole case. Well worth read.
 
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