Is Hollywood Responsible for the Patterson -Gimlin Bigfoot Video?

You've all see it, by now.  The famous Patterson-Gimlin video is a source of great debate for Bigfoot enthusiasts and debunkers, alike.  (You can watch it here.)  If it's not real, then it must be a guy in a suit, right?  And rumors abound that one person or another in Hollywood is responsible for the suit.  Case closed, for the skeptic.  But it's just not that simple when you do your homework.

Let's examine the video just a bit before looking at those claims, and bear in mind that this thing was filmed in 1967.  BigfootEncounters.com has a wonder .gif file that stabilizes the shaky image from the film.  People love to complain about the film quality, but Bigfoot enthusiasts actually spent a lot of time working on these videos to make them as clear as possible.  Here it is:

Now, we can see what we're working with.  Does it look like Hollywood's work?  Before you answer, let's consider Hollywood's work.  In 1968, on year after this video was made, Planet of the Apes would be nominated for an academy for costume design.  There's a good photo of one of these costumes here (I can't find a royalty free image, otherwise I would post one on my site.)  As you can see, it's a good mask with a leather jacket, long pants, boots, and hairy gloves.  It's good costume work, and certainly deserves the nomination it received.  But it's not as good as the Bigfoot costume, above.  A big-budget Hollywood film ought to have better effects than a homemade film done by amateurs.

Moving ahead a decade or so we meet the mighty Chewbacca.  Here we finally have a full body suit of an ape-like creature.  However, take a good look at Bigfoot, up there.  Chewbacca had a human-sized suit covered in hair.  If the Patterson-Gimlin film is a man in a suit, then he's in one sophisticated suit.  It's got a greater range of motion than a Hollywood suit, and you can see that Bigfoot has flex in his hands and feet, and the muscles in his face move when you look closely.  Chewbacca's feet look like hair boots rather than actual feet.  (I'm not knocking Star Wars, mind you.)  Also, it has often been pointed out that the subject of the Patterson-Gimlin film has ridiculously long arms.  It would take a circus freak to fit into that costume.

The point?  If this is a man in a suit, it's the most advanced suit ever filmed in its time.

There are claims that this person or that person in Hollywood made the suit.  The problem?  There's no proof.  Phillip Morris claims that HE made the suit back in the day, but his story is full of holes.  He says that he made the arms long so that an actor could hold a stick in his hand to control the entire arm.  That sounds nice, but it doesn't make since.  In the video, you can see the individual fingers moving, and that's not possible if the hand doesn't actually fit the glove.  It may be possible to set up some sort of rig that moves the fingers independently, but we are talking about some serious technological sophistication for a suit made on a small budget in the 60's.  We're talking about a real contortion act mixed in with a suit more advanced than anything Hollywood ever did until the 90's (if at all).  Not to mention, Phillip Morris runs a costume business, and this sort of thing would be really good for sales - and his business partner is the only person to corroborate his story.  (Lots of people have claimed responsibility for the suit; if I listed them all we would be here all day.  Bottom line?  None of them have even the most superficial proof.)

One last thing.  Let's take a look at Brian Dunning's words on the matter.  For those of you who don't know, Dunning is a skeptic who takes great pride in not believing in anything.  I'm not sure if he's a nihilist, but he abhors any belief in the supernatural or things like UFOs or monsters.  However, his words on the Patterson-Gimlin film are interesting:

I'm not a Bigfoot believer but I will give credit where credit is due. The Patterson-Gimlin film looked like a real animal to me. The Discovery Channel's "duplication" of it looked ridiculous. It looked nothing like a real animal, and certainly didn't remotely resemble the subject shown in the Patterson-Gimlin film. Chewbacca looked more real than the Discovery Channel's Bigfoot suit. Hollywood's state of the art in gorilla suits in 1967 were Planet of the Apes and The Galileo Seven episode of Star Trek. Two loggers with no previous gorilla suit experience made a suit that was better than today's state of the art, and certainly light years ahead of the 1967 state of the art. I'm not saying the film's real, I'm saying give credit where credit is due, and admit that if it is a fake, it's astounding. If you disagree then go through a stabilized version frame-by-frame as I have.

The half dozen or so Hollywood special effects artists who have since "come forward" to claim that they were responsible for the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot suit, and the dozens of guys who have "come forward" to claim that they were the guy wearing the suit, are no more evidence against the film than Ray Wallace's wooden feet are evidence that no real Bigfoot footprints exist.

Critics of the film also say that the creature's behavior is unrealistic. I have no knowledge of what a real Bigfoot's behavior might be, but I have encountered bears half a dozen times, and they acted exactly like the Patterson-Gimlin creature: just walked away, unconcerned, with maybe only a look or two back.
 

The Patterson-Gimlin film is not an open-close case.  It's an impressive film no matter what the truth behind it turns out to be.  Did two guys with a tiny budget make the world's most advanced special effects costume?  Or did they capture an image of an unknown creature?  Patterson spent a lot of money looking for further evidence of Bigfoot, and when he died he was still telling people it was real.  Gimlin, his partner, can be found attending Bigfoot conferences also claiming the video is the real thing.  This video is a real mystery - not something that can be written off easily.

Bigfoot and Muchalat Harry's White Hair

A fun story about a trapper getting trapped by Bigfoot is making the rounds (I first caught it on the Anomalist).  I really don't try to spoil these things, but this story has all the earmarks of an urban legend.  Which is a shame, because I love these stories.


In 1928, as the story goes, a trapper named Muchalat Harry would take his canoe across the river and set up traps.  While camping, he was caught by Bigfeet who kept him in their camp and showed general curiosity toward him.  After a few days of this he noticed his chance to escape and ran all the way to his canoe, barefoot and almost naked, and started rowing across the river.

I have no idea what kind of wild animal kidnaps people for pets, but that's how the story goes.  But the part that gets me is the end:

At about 3 a.m. the next morning, the exhausted and terrified man finally arrived in the village of Nootka on Vancouver Island. The Rev. Anthony Terhaar, a Catholic missionary priest, was living in the village at the time. Terhaar, who was called Father Anthony, and his fellow villagers were awakened by the sound of wild crying from the waters in the inlet. They lit torches and went out to see what was going on. There, they found the nearly frozen and exhausted Muchalat Harry lying in his canoe. He was barefoot and wearing only his wet and torn underwear. He had paddled his canoe through the night 45 miles from the mouth of the Conuma River.

Father Anthony and the villagers carried Harry’s almost lifeless body out of the canoe and took care of him. It took three weeks for him to get back both his sanity and good health. During that time, Muchalat Harry’s hair turned pure white.

The notion of turning a person's hair white through fright is an old one that shows up in many urban legends (and that oddball sound from The Crash Test Dummies), but it's not a real phenomenon.  As we learned in grade school, hair is made up of dead cells that have been pushed out of our pores.  The body can't act upon these cells or make any changes to them; a person goes gray when the hair starts growing that way - the actual hairs don't change color.

This story has a lot of fun elements - the irony of a trapper getting trapped, the testimony of a beloved priest who saw a terrible sight, and an urban legend about hair turning white.  But it doesn't have the ring of truth to it.  This story is often used to remind people that Bigfoot is dangerous and aggressive, but I don't think we can assume that from such a fanciful tale.

He Saw Bigoot in his Backyard - Is he Crazy?

Now infamous in cryptozoology circles is an eldery fellow named Mr. Mike who told his friends he has been seeing Bigfoot (and family) hanging out in his backyard.  According to those close to him, Mr. Mike really believes this.  He has convinced many people with his stories that there is something happening in his back yard.


But there are no pictures and no one else has ever seen them, which is causing many researchers to assume that his determination and confidence is due to a mental instability.  We'll find out soon enough, however, as video equipment has been put in place to figure this out.  (More on that investigation at Cryptomundo.)

Not everyone thinks Mr. Mike is crazy.  As GhostTheories.com tells us, a Bigfoot researcher named David Rodriguez believes Mr. Mike's story but is certain the cameras will pick up nothing.  Why?  Because placing cameras near Bigfoot causes us to lose Bigfoot's trust.

I'm not buying it.  I don't believe animals (even cryptids) can comprehend technology and I don't think their presence causes us to enter into a contract with them by which we are not allowed to film them.  Animals don't act that way.  Rodriguez says this has happened to him before which makes me think that this is really just a clever explanation to explain why he has no evidence for his claims.  Saying that Mr. Mike's Bigfoot will not show up because of a camera is a convenient way to place his bets since it's unlikely it will yield any results.

Of course, introducing new people into an environment will usually scare away animals, so there's some truth in this, but a concealed camera put in place quietly should not cause a problem.  In the past, cameras placed in the woods to look for Bigfoot have turned up pictures of deer and bears.  This would mean that cameras do not deter wildlife and, as such, should not deter Bigfoot either.  Rodriguez's statement makes it sound as if he thinks that Bigfoot is more aware of technology and would understand the media in the way a normal animal would not.  That sounds very Hollywood, but it doesn't make much sense.

5 Interesting Mysteries that have been Ruined by Wackos.

5 - Bigfoot

There are stories in every wooded area of the U.S. of some big hairy monster that roams around and scares people. There are photographs and a very convincing video to accompany this mystery and make it a healthy slice of Americana. I never get tired of hearing new stories about Bigfoot.

The Problem:

Did you know that Bigfoot is invisible? That he wanders in and out of our dimension? Oh, brother, now you know why real scientists (for the most part) will not touch Bigfoot with a ten foot pole. You can't get into this conversation without being seen as one of these guys who takes the legend too far.


4 - Ancient Astronauts

Ancient civilizations sometimes drew odd things on their cave/temple walls that, to us, resemble aliens or flying saucers. Some of these sites are very interesting and make me wonder if UFOs did indeed visit our planet. It's far out, but it is possible...right? It is, at least, an interesting idea.

The Problem:

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken. Aside from having the most impossible name ever, he has both promoted and, simultaneously, ruined this concept. Rather than discuss the possibility that aliens visited our planet, he insists that everything from the ancient world was the product of aliens.

I saw this guy on a TV special that was very interesting...at first. He pointed out a few artifacts that looked like alien ships and I thought it was fascinating, but he went on to say that the Egyptians had mastered DNA cloning and that the sphinx was designed after one of their animal/human hybrids. Yeah, now if you talk about acient astronauts at all people will think you are one of his followers and no one will listen to you. Thanks, Erich.

3 - The Bloop

The Bloop is one of the neatest mysteries I have evers studied. In 1997, underwater microphones 3000 miles apart picked up the same sounds. These sounds were louder than any other sound in the ocean and have not been heard before or since. The sound has been identified as something biological, so some creature was lurking around making this noise, but no known creature is capable of make a noise nearly this loud. So, what was it?

The Problem:

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft's weird fiction noticed a similarity between this and a creature from his books called Cthulhu. This could be seen as a charming coincidence, but Lovecraft fans have taken over the discussion so that most of the websites concerning this very interesting incident are flooded with pictures of Cthulhu. This is a real mystery, a real event took place that we can't understand, and the fiction fans have taken the discussion away from us to play games.

2 - UFO's

People see UFO's every day. The Anomalist updates each day with new paranormal stories and UFO sightings are always abundant. Many UFO stories turn out to be nothing but not all of them, some of them are darned interesting and should be investigated.

The problem:

The New Age movement and the Reptoid movement.

The New Ager's moved into this subject by saying that UFOs were here to enlighten us. They insisted that UFO abductees experienced a moment of epiphany and that we should meditate on the meaning of these things and hope that UFO's could bring us to a higher understanding or existence. The New Agers neglected to notice that their metaphysical view of UFO's really didn't fit in with the the UFO stories that came from supposed abductees whose stories were filled with fear and stories of physical experimentation.

And, we cannot forget the reptoids. Harold Ickes sells a lot of books telling people about the reptoids, lizard men who live in the Earth and take on human form. They take on human form in order to affect our politics and Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton are both supposed reptoids. The reptoids are our last line of defense agains the Greys (UFO aliens) and some parts of our government are aligned with the Greys instead of the reptoid, causing an internal civil war against the alien groups. Or something like that.

If you follow UFO stories, your friends will think you are either a New Age mystic who wants to worship the alien exhaust vents or a conspiracy nut who thinks Greys designed DVD players in Area 51.

1 - Dinosaurs

We don't know everything about Dinosaurs, in my opinion we know less than we think. Each generation makes up new ideas about them and gives us new drawings and preconcpetions about their attitudes or habits, but these theories do more to tell us about the mindset of the researcher than the actual dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, in effect, are like a rorschach test for modern writers. Today's scientists, bombarded with political correctness and civil activism, have insisted that dinosaurs were not barbaric creatures, but loving family types that exhibited higher emotions.

But, did dinosaurs ever live with man? African tribes tell stories of the river stopping behomoths that slay elephants. Native American stories tell similar stories (without elephants). Is it possible? Surely, we can see it as a possibility without getting into any ridiculous arguments...right?

The Problem:

Yeah, right. For some reason, the insistence that Dinosaurs did not live with man makes some Christians emerge from their hiding places and shout out war cries against the world of science. Meanwhile, the idea that they did live with man, even in a limited capacity as a lost species, makes certain members of the non-Christian community feel threatened and send out their own hatred toward Christians. No one remembers who fired the first shot in this ridiculous debate, but we are unlikely to learn anything new and concrete about dinosaurs in the next 5 billion years because every discovery or theory just creates more fighting.

To those of you fighting over this, on both sides, you should all be ashamed of yourselves. It's just dinosaurs for cryin' out loud.

The SquatchHunger.com Bigfoot Hoax

Atlanta residents Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer made news by recently announcing that they had captured Bigfoot and had preserved the body in a freezer. At first they told only a few people, but the word spread and people from all over became interested.

The men, one of them a police officer, claimed the body was in a secret 'safe-house' to keep the media away until Bigfoot could be given to a proper authority. They wanted scientists, they got Tom Biscardi from SquatchHunter.com.

The staff of SquatchHunter.com received the frozen corpse and proceeded to thaw it out...eventually, they could make out a face...then a foot emerged...a...plastic...foot...

That's right. These jokers actually stuck a plastic Bigfoot costume in a freezer and sold it. For $50,000.

The policeman has lost his job and Biscardi is going to court to get his money back. This just makes every Bigfoot believer look bad.