jarlrmai
Senior Member.
These days AI has replaced photoshop in this type of flawed argument.
Mendel
Senior Member.
So old science fiction and horror movies are actually documentaries?
Great post overall, and this is the term I should have used rather than "arch". I was going off memory and totally forgot this term. That's the one I have heard claimed as evidence that the casts, and hence Patty in the PG film, are real.
Yup, using the same logic, they must all be documentaries. We all know King Kong DID climb the Empire State Building. He must have, since I've seen it on film…
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Also, showing up in all the places they get reported would require a fairly large population"
Source: Saved from the Internet some time ago, if it becomes important I can go track it down.
But the point it, although I often think "Bigfoot, elusive man-ape of the Pacific Northwest," reports come in from pretty much everywhere in the US that there are people. That's a pretty darn big range there, even if ol' BF is pretty uncommon in any area across his range, you'd still need a lot of them just to cover the number of places they're supposedly seen.
And the more of them there are, the more chances for one to get shot by a hunter, or hit by a car, or caught in a trap, or otherwise be definitively shown to exist.
Of course, it could be argued that some of those areas don't have any Bigfeet, just people making erroneous and/or hoax reports. But the more that is true, the more firmly it establishes that there need not be ANY of them in the real world for them to be reported!
John J.
Senior Member.
At the national (US) level, there seems to be a correlation between where Bigfoot is seen and where UFOs are reported:
Surely this is significant evidence of some strange Bigfoot-UFO connection!
Waydaminnit:
(2nd, 3rd maps from https://nuforc.org/newmap/ and https://www.worldmap1.com/united-states-population-density-map#google_vignette)
Roughly similar maps can be found showing the distribution of other things across the US, including schools, bars, registered drone operators.
To a degree we might expect there to be more Bigfoot reports in areas with higher populations because there are more potential witnesses,
but a strong correlation only makes sense if Bigfoot is relatively evenly distributed across the continental US or is drawn towards human habitation (including major metropolitan areas) in most parts of the nation.
I would guess (haven't checked) that maps of the distribution of sightings of "established" (irrefutably existing) wild animals in the US, say bison (buffalo), wolves, alligators, would not show such a clear correlation with human population density.
Surely this is significant evidence of some strange Bigfoot-UFO connection!
Waydaminnit:
(2nd, 3rd maps from https://nuforc.org/newmap/ and https://www.worldmap1.com/united-states-population-density-map#google_vignette)
Roughly similar maps can be found showing the distribution of other things across the US, including schools, bars, registered drone operators.
To a degree we might expect there to be more Bigfoot reports in areas with higher populations because there are more potential witnesses,
but a strong correlation only makes sense if Bigfoot is relatively evenly distributed across the continental US or is drawn towards human habitation (including major metropolitan areas) in most parts of the nation.
I would guess (haven't checked) that maps of the distribution of sightings of "established" (irrefutably existing) wild animals in the US, say bison (buffalo), wolves, alligators, would not show such a clear correlation with human population density.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
I have not found any. There might be one based on Canadian sightings as reported to a Canadian clearing house?
Worth noting the the usual UFO sightings map one finds on the Internet shows a strong bias towards places where there are a lot if people per unit of area and English is spoken. This hints that such maps including multiple countries and based on reports of sightings may reveal more about the linguistic range of the map compiler than about how widespread reports are. Example: a UFO map compiled by an English speaker who did not know the terms used for UFO in Spanish and other languages (eg: OVNI) will miss a lot of reports from Central or South America, among other places...
Mendel
Senior Member.
There aren't enough yeti sightings to do statistics with.
https://maphub.net/TheHorrorCollection/yeti-abominable-snowman-sightings-map-updated-2026
https://maphub.net/TheHorrorCollection/yeti-abominable-snowman-sightings-map-updated-2026
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
I think so too. Remains would have been found in American caves, over time; even if bones from individuals who had succumbed to predators. Homo floresiensis remains were found in caves
Yeah, but I guess it comes down to two different perspectives on the whole Bigfoot thing. On one side, we have the people who believe Bigfoot is a real animal, some kind of primate or primitive human actually living in the forest. And on the other side, we have the people who believe it's some kind of interdimensional entity, perhaps a space alien or, why not, a demon of the forest.
It's easy to dismiss the first hypothesis based on the logic you've presented. Obviously, a breeding population would leave some sort of evidence behind. And I guess that's why the second type of claim has emerged among believers in the paranormal. All arguments about the lack of traces left behind by this large-footed primate in the forest can immediately be dismissed, since an interdimensional being "wouldn't leave such traces behind."
But as always, it's (often) impossible to prove a negative. Making up a space-traveling primate à la Chewbacca and then asking people to debunk its existence is kinda ridiculous, just like asking someone to debunk unicorns or leprechauns.
Mauro
Senior Member.
Well, inventing ad-hoc excuses is the usual way to prop up untenable theories, and when the excuses border the unfalsifiable (inter-dimensional beings, demons...) they're even better! What the proponents of this approach forget is that for any added hypothesis one must factor in the probability of that hypothesis being true... which (to be very, very charitable) I'd put in one in one trillion for physical interdimensional beings and one in one trillion trillions for supernatural ones. Thus this kind of theories is even easier to dismiss than the good ol' Ape of the Wood.
owntheissue
Active Member
At some point between Kaluza Klein and M Theory- this seems to have become the prevailing explanation for..... pretty much anything people want to waive hands at.
Some of the Alt Propulsion theories invoke higher dimensions but at least have demonstrated scientific reasoning for doing so - ET and Bigfoot are just out there invoking none 3+1 realities because.
True. Or at least they're not even worth spending time debunking. It's not about evidence; it's all about faith. According to Hitchens's razor, we can simply dismiss such claims without spending time explaining why. No one has ever presented any evidence that holds up to scrutiny and gives us a reason to believe an interdimensional super-ape is lurking in the woods. Therefore, we have no reason to believe such a creature exists, let alone spend time debunking such silly claims. When it comes to the flesh-and-blood Bigfoot, on the other hand, I think it's more relevant to debunk the whole story using arguments like the ones presented by @Mendel.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Here's one showing the distribution of forest, or as the chart says, "woody biomass". I'm going to guess that the "distribution of tree stumps that look spooky at night" looks much the same.
I had never really taken a close look at the 1967 PG film before. Sure, I'd seen it numerous times, but I'd never bothered to properly analyze what I was looking at. (Frankly, I've never been that interested in Bigfoot.) As a result, my interpretation of the footage had largely been shaped by what others claimed to see in it. However, after watching Capturing Bigfoot, I decided to take a closer look at it myself. And one thing quickly became apparent: much of what has been said about the footage, by believers and skeptics alike, seems to be based on assumptions and good old-fashioned pareidolia. Even the new high-resolution scan of the original film reveals surprisingly little detail. All the talk about muscles moving beneath the thick fur, not to mention the endless speculation about moving toes and thumbs, can probably simply be dismissed without much further consideration. No real need of any high tech suite there.
But then there are certain claims frequently made by believers that skeptics often take seriously enough to try to disprove. One of the most common is that the creature's arms are "unusually long", with proportions that supposedly don't match those of a human. But when I watch the film, I simply don't see any unusually long arms. So where does this claim actually come from?! Skeptics have often suggested that the arms could have been artificially extended using sticks concealed inside the sleeves, or perhaps gloves with elongated fingers. Personally, though, I'm not convinced there's anything unusual about the arm length that needs explaining in the first place. What I see when looking at that blurry, furry silhouette are proportions that seem perfectly consistent with those of a human in a padded suit.
In the still image above, I've lightened the background to make the creature's proportions easier to distinguish. The arms appear to reach almost to the knees, with the legs slightly bent. That's pretty much exactly where my own hands end up when I stand in a similar pose. Of course, it's entirely possible that the costume had some sort of oversized ape hands, slightly larger than those of a human. Looking at photographs of gorilla suits from the mid-20th century, relatively large hands seem to have been a common feature. The image below, for example, is from the 1951 film Bride of the Gorilla.
And then there's the famous walk. It's sometimes claimed that the creature in the PG film walks in a way that would be impossible for a human to replicate. But once again, I find myself questioning whether there's anything here that actually needs debunking, because I simply don't see what others claim to see. In the clip below, we can watch the section of the film where the "creature" is closest to the camera, with both legs clearly visible and unobstructed.
And to me, it looks remarkably similar to an ordinary man strolling through the woods. The knees aren't even bent all that much. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that the posture suggests an actor deliberately trying to imitate some sort of crouching, ape-like walk. The slightly bent legs could just as easily be explained by the costume being rather heavy and cumbersome, making it difficult to navigate the uneven terrain, especially with limited visibility through a mask.
Which brings me to my main point. I don't think attempts to debunk the Patterson–Gimlin film should focus on explaining away pareidolia and unsupported claims. If someone insists that the creature's arms are too long to belong to a human, the appropriate response shouldn't necessarily be to explain how a costume could have been constructed with artificially elongated arms. Instead, the claim itself should be challenged. Where is the evidence that the arms are unusually long in the first place?
The same goes for the supposedly impossible walk. Before trying to demonstrate how a human could reproduce it, shouldn't we first establish that there's actually something unusual about it? The burden of proof should rest with those claiming that the creature has non-human proportions or moves in a way no human possibly could. Such extraordinary claims require actual evidence, not simply interpretations of a blurry silhouette.
Patterson was certainly a clever man, and I suspect he understood just how poor the image quality needed to be to prevent viewers from identifying details that might give away the costume. Consequently, it's virtually impossible to conclusively debunk the film through an analysis of the footage alone. But the reverse is equally important: I have yet to see a single detail in the film that is genuinely inconsistent with a man wearing an ape suit. And if there's nothing in the footage that actually requires an extraordinary explanation, perhaps there's not much worth debunking in the first place. Trying to explain away supposedly elongated limbs and an allegedly impossible walk only plays into the hands of believers.
I have one question, though: what do you make of the newly discovered clip presented in Capturing Bigfoot? I'm thinking mainly of when it might have been shot. The film itself was produced in 1966, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was shot that year. At first glance, the vegetation seems to indicate that it was filmed in the fall, with lots of yellow and red leaves:
However, the problem is that the entire film seems to have a reddish color cast. Just look at the rider's face, or the blurry mess at the beginning of the film, when the camera is shaking:
If the film was shot in the fall, I would say the fall of 1966 is the best guess, with the fall of 1967 also being a possibility. The former is a bit problematic, since we have no indication that Patterson had access to a camera back then, let alone that he was filming staged Bigfoot footage. The latter, on the other hand, is also somewhat questionable, since it would suggest that the newly discovered footage was shot almost simultaneously with the famous Bluff Creek clip.
Which leaves us with a third option: that the footage was part of the mockumentary-style movie Patterson was trying to shoot in the Ahtanum Creek area in the summer of 1967. Personally, this seems like the most plausible explanation to me, if it weren't for the autumn-looking landscape. But what do you think? Could the red and yellow colors in the surrounding vegetation possibly be explained by dried-out vegetation combined with a reddish color cast in the film?
This was a long post, but it's basically all of my thoughts on the whole PG debacle.
But then there are certain claims frequently made by believers that skeptics often take seriously enough to try to disprove. One of the most common is that the creature's arms are "unusually long", with proportions that supposedly don't match those of a human. But when I watch the film, I simply don't see any unusually long arms. So where does this claim actually come from?! Skeptics have often suggested that the arms could have been artificially extended using sticks concealed inside the sleeves, or perhaps gloves with elongated fingers. Personally, though, I'm not convinced there's anything unusual about the arm length that needs explaining in the first place. What I see when looking at that blurry, furry silhouette are proportions that seem perfectly consistent with those of a human in a padded suit.
In the still image above, I've lightened the background to make the creature's proportions easier to distinguish. The arms appear to reach almost to the knees, with the legs slightly bent. That's pretty much exactly where my own hands end up when I stand in a similar pose. Of course, it's entirely possible that the costume had some sort of oversized ape hands, slightly larger than those of a human. Looking at photographs of gorilla suits from the mid-20th century, relatively large hands seem to have been a common feature. The image below, for example, is from the 1951 film Bride of the Gorilla.
And then there's the famous walk. It's sometimes claimed that the creature in the PG film walks in a way that would be impossible for a human to replicate. But once again, I find myself questioning whether there's anything here that actually needs debunking, because I simply don't see what others claim to see. In the clip below, we can watch the section of the film where the "creature" is closest to the camera, with both legs clearly visible and unobstructed.
And to me, it looks remarkably similar to an ordinary man strolling through the woods. The knees aren't even bent all that much. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that the posture suggests an actor deliberately trying to imitate some sort of crouching, ape-like walk. The slightly bent legs could just as easily be explained by the costume being rather heavy and cumbersome, making it difficult to navigate the uneven terrain, especially with limited visibility through a mask.
Which brings me to my main point. I don't think attempts to debunk the Patterson–Gimlin film should focus on explaining away pareidolia and unsupported claims. If someone insists that the creature's arms are too long to belong to a human, the appropriate response shouldn't necessarily be to explain how a costume could have been constructed with artificially elongated arms. Instead, the claim itself should be challenged. Where is the evidence that the arms are unusually long in the first place?
The same goes for the supposedly impossible walk. Before trying to demonstrate how a human could reproduce it, shouldn't we first establish that there's actually something unusual about it? The burden of proof should rest with those claiming that the creature has non-human proportions or moves in a way no human possibly could. Such extraordinary claims require actual evidence, not simply interpretations of a blurry silhouette.
Patterson was certainly a clever man, and I suspect he understood just how poor the image quality needed to be to prevent viewers from identifying details that might give away the costume. Consequently, it's virtually impossible to conclusively debunk the film through an analysis of the footage alone. But the reverse is equally important: I have yet to see a single detail in the film that is genuinely inconsistent with a man wearing an ape suit. And if there's nothing in the footage that actually requires an extraordinary explanation, perhaps there's not much worth debunking in the first place. Trying to explain away supposedly elongated limbs and an allegedly impossible walk only plays into the hands of believers.
I have one question, though: what do you make of the newly discovered clip presented in Capturing Bigfoot? I'm thinking mainly of when it might have been shot. The film itself was produced in 1966, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was shot that year. At first glance, the vegetation seems to indicate that it was filmed in the fall, with lots of yellow and red leaves:
However, the problem is that the entire film seems to have a reddish color cast. Just look at the rider's face, or the blurry mess at the beginning of the film, when the camera is shaking:
If the film was shot in the fall, I would say the fall of 1966 is the best guess, with the fall of 1967 also being a possibility. The former is a bit problematic, since we have no indication that Patterson had access to a camera back then, let alone that he was filming staged Bigfoot footage. The latter, on the other hand, is also somewhat questionable, since it would suggest that the newly discovered footage was shot almost simultaneously with the famous Bluff Creek clip.
Which leaves us with a third option: that the footage was part of the mockumentary-style movie Patterson was trying to shoot in the Ahtanum Creek area in the summer of 1967. Personally, this seems like the most plausible explanation to me, if it weren't for the autumn-looking landscape. But what do you think? Could the red and yellow colors in the surrounding vegetation possibly be explained by dried-out vegetation combined with a reddish color cast in the film?
This was a long post, but it's basically all of my thoughts on the whole PG debacle.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
Indeed, When discussing the film online with BFBs (Big Foot Believers) I've often tried to "soften" my presentation by admitting that things that I see when looking at the film (most notably the saggy-britches effect in the sitting down area!) may not really be there, but may just be my brain interpreting the very poor quality video that we all have to look at in a fashion consistent with what I think I am seeing, a man in a suit.
I say this because, first of all, it is true, that may be why I see a saggy britches costume and they don't, and it is fair for me to admit that. But I also hope that, if they can grasp that I might be seeing things that are as much in my mind as in the video, they might be more open to the idea that THEY may also be doing this when they see rippling muscles and impossibly long arms.
It is also worth pointing out what the video shows of the face:
It drives home just how poor the imagery is. Mask or actual 'squatch, either way, how many nostrils does it have? Probably two, but you can't see that in the imagery. Does it have ears? Can't see if it does or not. And too bad about that terrible injury that put out an eye... oh, you can't see it? OK, neither can I, we can't see the eyes at all, in fact.
Similarly looking at the hands, it probably has fingers, but you can't see them.
All of which is moot now, the evidence that it was hoaxed has become pretty conclusive. But a lot of claims were made about subtle details in footage that was, after all, providing very poor resolution.
Ann K
Senior Member.
It also has a washed-out appearance as if it was poorly exposed. To the photography experts among us, does this just look like an old film, fading? Do the colors fade so that the disappearance of green leaves everything looking red, whereas with more green they'd just appear brown instead?
This is extremely unscientific, but I decided to play around a bit in Photoshop. I tried adjusting the color settings to give the horseman a more realistic skin tone. Then I applied the same settings to a screenshot of the foliage. Here's the result. I would say that the most obvious autumnal feel had suddenly disappeared.
Obviously, this proves nothing, since I might have messed up the settings rather than bringing the colors closer to reality. But the interesting part is that I only had to adjust the red tones, and I didn't have to make any dramatic changes to achieve a significant difference in the overall appearance.
Could this, after all, be a scene shot in the summer of 1967, when Patterson was trying in vain to finish his mockumentary? Possibly. One clue might be the forest backdrop seen at the beginning of the film. There, the trees look rather green and thriving.
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Mauro
Senior Member.
I checked you assertion that the arms in the above picture are not unnaturally long. In the picture the fists of the creature look to reach a little below the hip. Checking with a normotypical H. sapiens sapiens (myself), the fists extend possibly even lower than in the Bigfoot picture. My conclusion is the picture shows arms with normal H. sapiens sapiens proportions. Alternatively, I might have had Bigfoot ancestors.
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Yeah, the whole "long arms" claim is kinda weird. And it's obviously rather difficult to determine the exact positions of different joints in a blurry image of a man in a padded suit covered in thick fur. But I see no reason to believe the proportions rule out a man in a suit. Instead, they seem to fit human proportions perfectly. But perhaps Bigfoot is nothing more than a man with excessive hair growth. Who knows…
MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
Arm length was one of the things I looked at when comparing the frames of Patty and Norma in a similar position (comment #541). Here's a side by side comparison with arm lengths measured in pixels. It's not exact since the positions are not identical; Patty's right shoulder is angled down, while Norma's right shoulder is up, etc. It's also very hard to make out the exact top of the shoulder and end of the hands. I drew red lines where I think the top of the shoulder and end of the hands are on both, and yellow lines indicating the angle of the shoulders. My result is 204 pixels for Patty and 201 pixels for Norma, which I am interpreting as essentially the same given the imprecision. So if we accept that Norma is a guy in a suit, it follows that Patty could be as well, wether the arms are within the natural human range or were artificially extended.
Not a photography expert myself, but Charles Pickel, the film expert in the documentary, actually said it had little fogging or fading which led him to believe it was probably exposed and developed in 1966.
I am including the 30 second clip here because I think this would be considered Fair Use.
This of course does not rule out a 1967 exposure and development date, but it does seem to rule out a much later date.
I think a lot of the redness is coming from something to do with how your source images (or the video they came from) were captured. In my captures from the HD Amazon prime video of the documentary I do not see much of a red hue and they look closer to the manually corrected version of your images.
There is some brown and yellow and a bit of red foliage on the ground, but the trees still appear to be mostly green.
My captures also look like the frame posted by the documentary producers (comment #556) so I think they accurately depict the colors.
View attachment 93770
Thanks! That's really helpful. Looking at your pictures, I'm no longer convinced that we can say for sure the video was shot in autumn. To me, it would make much more sense if it was shot during the summer of 1967. We know Patterson was shooting his never-finished Bigfoot movie around that time, and we know he had access to a camera. It would also explain why the "rehearsal video" was made in the first place. It could simply have been intended for inclusion in the mockumentary that never came to be.
To the best of my knowledge, no footage from the movie has surfaced, so it's impossible to know exactly what kind of film he had in mind. But I've heard people talk about "flashback scenes" recreating historical Bigfoot encounters. And by October, he knew he would soon have to return the hijacked camera, and he probably realized that the movie was never going to happen. The idea that he might have created a fake video as a Plan B to make some money doesn't seem too far-fetched.
Well, it's all just speculation, and I guess it's impossible to get much further given the lack of evidence.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
I don't know if you've read through the whole thread, it's only 15 pages
, but a member named jamesrav was the person most arguing the PGF could NOT be a hoax, for a variety of reasons, but the walk was a primary one. He relied primarily on claims by Krantz and Meldrum, a report from a Soviet "bio-mechanics expert" and his own obsessive habit of watching a loop of Patty walking at an altered speed (.25) for several minutes every day. He also claimed the track-way left at the site showed Patty walking in a tightrope-like fashion, almost the way runway models cross over a center line. Something he argued no fat guy like Heronimous could do. The walking video is linked below, and to me just looks like a guy walking in a suit.So, the claim is attributed to 2 PhD anthropologist, and as such, does have to be addressed. I agree it doesn't look all that unusual, especially if someone is wearing a bulky suit with oversized feet. As for Krantz, there is video of him explaining all the ways the walk can not have possibly been replicated by a human, then he proceeds to demonstrate the walk just fine, basically negating his argument. It seems many of the videos posted up-thread are no longer available, so I can't seem to find it right now.
Meldrum went on a Discovery Network show where some human gait experts at Stanford had some dancers or athletes try to replicate the walk, something Meldrum felt they got close to, but not quite:
I did note, the series Best Evidence also included other fringe subjects and that the Discovery Network is known more for sensationalism than hard science:External Quote:
External Quote:
Exactly what "all parameters" means is not clear. Krantz and Meldrum had a lot invested in the film, so I think they made a lot of claims about the walk being non-human. The Soviet guys apparently saw a copy of the PGF that Dehinden was showing in Europe in the early '70s. Several of them were into the Yeti and the Almasti and other relic hominids. The one bio-mechanics expert wrote up a paper that concluded, from the few seconds on an unzoomed copy of the film, that the creature:
Which sounds like a human or any other bipedal hominids going about in a bipedal way. And:External Quote:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/donskoy1.htmExternal Quote:
It's all a bit vague. However, one will note going over the thread, that jamesrav in particular continued to hammer this point about the walk as one of the main reasons this could not be a hoax. He also continually misrepresented what Donskoy actually wrote, saying (my bold):
So, like it or not, the walk is a central point to the "not a hoax" crowd.
My first impression when seeing the new footage was how much brighter and more colorful it seemed. The PGFs that we see now are digitized from a number of copies that were produced from the original. The original is either lost, or director Evens suspects they may be in the hands of the Dahinden family, as he was the last known person to have the original:
Munns and Meldrum claim Patterson had a number of contact copies made that would have been of high quality and that Munns digitized these:External Quote:
https://www.isu.edu/media/libraries...-OF-THE-PATTERSON-GIMLIN-FILM-IMAGE_final.pdfExternal Quote:
Interesting note. Patterson had Kodak make some transparencies and other people had various copies made at various labs, but there is no mention of where the first copies were made. Perhaps Patterson's contact at Boeing again?
In any event, the PGF exists as copies, possibly very good ones, but always seemed a bit washed out to me. While there may have been fall colors in the new footage, it would depend a lot on where it was filmed. Supposedly this is near Yakima WA, where these guys are all from. Fall may extend well into winter, like it does here in Northern California. This is the dry south east corner of Washington, not the coastal wetlands.
Munns main argument against the new footage is that just because the film stock is from 1966, it may have been used later after the PGF was produced. His argument seems to be that DeAtely made this film, possibly to help with promoting the PGF. Of course the big problem I see, is that IF DeAtley and others made this to mimic the PGF, the did a real good job of throwing together a costume that looks a lot like Patty. Besides the walk, the idea that no one could have possibly made a costume like that in 1967 is a main argument form the non-hoax crowd, something the new footage proves wrong no matter what.
There was always something not gorilla about the face. Granted, there's not much there and I'm as guilty of pareidolia as anyone, but it always looked like the mask may have had a broad flat nose, as opposed to the big nostril nose one associated with gorillas, especially masks:
And maybe a big mouth with lips?
A big brow, a broad flat nose and maybe a big mouth. Something more human like, but not quite. One of those things that nags at the back of your memory, then you remember. The War of the Gargantuas. A kaiju, or Japanes monster movie, like Godzilla, that featured a brown mountain dwelling "good" gargantua and a green sea dwelling "bad" Gargantua, with humanoid faces that included heavy brows, flat noses and big mouths:
While this was written, filmed and released in 1966 in Japan, it didn't get state side until 1970, so no. But wait, it turns out this was some sort of quasi-squeal to an earlier kaiju film, weirdly called Frankenstein vs Baragon. Apparently these critters were call Gargantuas in the English version, but were known as Frankensteins in the original Japaneses version. The convoluted plots seem to be that the heart of Frankenstein's monster was recovered by the Nazis and sent by U-boat to Hiroshima were it somehow ended up in a young street urchin after the atomic bomb. This new "Frankenstein" grows to a huge size and ends up battling the monster Baragon because Godzilla was no longer around to help out
. Then this new Frankenstein latter became the latter Frankensteins or the Gargantuas. Or something like that.Bottom line, Frankenstein vs Baragon was released in the US the summer of 1966 and this is what the titular character looked like:
Just me?
Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oPlRr_OfxZI
Ann K
Senior Member.
I googled "human proportions for artists", and this is only one of many diagrams, all of them quite similar in proportions. But this, of course, is an "average proportion" sketch, and your mileage may vary. FYI, I'm about 5'1", and my hands come down to my mid thighs. So I think my small hands and short arms are in the same proportion to my short body.
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MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
Youtube now thinks I want to see everything sasquatch related since I subscribed to the Capturing Bigfoot channel and liked their 4k PGF scan video. Yesterday it recommended me the 1975 film The Mysterious Monsters, which presents the case bigfoot is real, very much in the manner of later Discovery/History Channel shows where they present alleged experts and data to confirm the fringe belief (and being from the 70's they of course threw in some hypnotic regression of BF encounters!). The opening reminded me of old films my grandparents had recorded on VHS tapes that I used to love as a kid (The Bermuda Triangle was my favorite, I must have watched it like 20 times), so I gave it a watch/listen while I was doing other stuff for the nostalgia.
In one section (01:16:34 of the youtube video) they pit Grover Krantz against primatologist Geoffrey Bourne (I wasn't familiar with him; he was director of Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University from 1962 until 1978 according to his wikipedia article), with Krantz "refuting" the points Bourne brought up against the authenticity, including the gait, soles of the feet, sagittal crest, and breasts. I was pretty surprised at Krantz' response to the gait and breasts because those are such strong points in the pro-PGF camp and I had recalled him endorsing the gait as unique and the breasts as evidence of anatomical authenticity at later points.
Here's the whole 3 minute segment:
And the transcript (bolded parts from Krantz are what surprised me):
External Quote:
The full film on youtube:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOZpuSqS6aw
John J.
Senior Member.
It's kind of Meldrum marking his own homework.
Maybe the walk the dancers or athletes were trying to replicate was the walk of a guy in a padded ape suit.
I'm guessing we don't have any objective idea of how good the demonstrators were at copying other gaits, and that they weren't wearing big furry costumes as they did so.
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That sounds exactly like what believers always say when someone replicates a fake UFO video: "It's not exactly the same. The details differ." Sure they do. Recreating something exactly is obviously way more difficult than creating the hoax in the first place.
It's indeed difficult to say much about the details of the suit, as the image quality just isn't good enough. If I had to guess, I'd say Patterson made the suit himself, possibly using the one Morris sold as a starting point. And Patterson seems to have had some fairly detailed ideas about what Bigfoot should look like. Not so much a gorilla face, but rather something with more "caveman" features:
The actual construction of details like the face, hands, and feet probably depends on why the suit was made in the first place. If it was specifically crafted for the Bluff Creek hoax, then I don't really see any reason to pay much attention to facial details and such. The distance and poor image quality ensure that these features are effectively hidden, barely distinguishable except to those with a vivid imagination. But if the suit was originally intended for Patterson's mockumentary-style film, then I guess it would have needed to be more detailed. And if so, it seems reasonable to assume that Patterson was aiming to create something similar to what he believed Bigfoot "actually" looked like. His own sketches might offer a clue.
Yeah, and when bending the knees and taking a step, one must remember that the hands come much closer to the knees.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Excellent points. IF the new footage is real, as in it's a dry run, then I would imagine the suit had more detail. We get a glimpse of the face in it:
It also suggests Patterson was intent on a scene where Bigfoot looks back at the camera, so the costume would have needed a face of some kind. I agree with the notion he might have been going for a "caveman" look, as that is a layman's understanding of an evolutionary cousin to modern humans.
Whether the costume was constructed for the documentary or the Bluff Creek film, I think either event would have needed some detail in the face and hands. I think it was only after some test runs, like the new footage likely shows, that Patterson decided he needed to get further away and shake the camera a lot more.
Patterson had obviously been playing around with the supposed documentary for a while. My own take is, after not securing enough funding to get to going, he took what he had learned and maybe the costume he had created/modified and went for a quick turn around. Instead of a whole documentary, he went for 40 seconds of "proof". Which turned out to pay off better than a documentary ever would have, especially for DeAtley.
MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
Capturing Bigfoot has released the uncut version of the Norm Johnson mystery film on their patreon behind the $5 membership tier.
https://www.patreon.com/CapturingBigfoot/posts/watch-1966-norm-173783852
There is a little more footage than shown in the documentary and it is slightly better quality, but overall there's not much more than was shown in the documentary (it's about 45 seconds of actual video and then a couple minutes of dark frames - which I presume is the unexposed remainder of the reel). I will say there are a couple of new frames that show the horse rider at the beginning in focus and without motion blur, and it looks very much like Bob Gimlin's face to me, but it explicitly says at the start that frame grabs are prohibited without permission so I can't share them.
https://www.patreon.com/CapturingBigfoot/posts/watch-1966-norm-173783852
There is a little more footage than shown in the documentary and it is slightly better quality, but overall there's not much more than was shown in the documentary (it's about 45 seconds of actual video and then a couple minutes of dark frames - which I presume is the unexposed remainder of the reel). I will say there are a couple of new frames that show the horse rider at the beginning in focus and without motion blur, and it looks very much like Bob Gimlin's face to me, but it explicitly says at the start that frame grabs are prohibited without permission so I can't share them.
Agreed. No matter what, the suit had to be flexible enough for a man to walk around in, and since the creature was supposed to turn its face towards the camera, at least some facial features were needed. At the same time, the man in the suit had to have at least some visibility through the mask. I just wonder how believable it all looked in real life. One telltale sign could be the feet. They just don't look believable at all. In the "rehearsal film", they're not as prominent, since the feet are mostly covered by vegetation, but in the well-known film, they truly look like the soles of a pair of boots. Heironimus claimed he wore a pair of rubber boots. If Patterson paid the same amount of attention to the face, a close-up might have looked rather ridiculous.
Oh yes, I'm sure he understood that a shaky camera and a distant creature were absolutely crucial. Otherwise, I'm sure we wouldn't still be talking about this almost 60 years later.
MonkeeSage
Senior Member.
There's a frame in the new film that also shows what clearly looks like a boot/shoe sole. Here's the frame (grabbed from the Prime video rather than the new patreon version I mentioned).
Ah yeah, watched it and it was actually quite interesting, since I now realize that the short film is constructed from several carefully directed "scenes", so to speak.
It all starts with a dark shadow lurking among the trees. Suddenly, the horseman comes into view, seemingly looking at the creature and reaching for his rifle. (Interestingly, he can't help but take a moment to smile at the camera.)
Then we have a cut. (Well, not a cut per se, but the recording being stopped and later started again.) Suddenly, we see a close-up of the forest, and the cameraman appears to be searching for the creature, shaking and panning the camera. It's possible to make out a dark figure behind the trees.
And yet another cut. Now we have the part where the man in the ape suit walks away, stops and looks at the camera, and then continues walking. And then there's another cut before the creature disappears behind some vegetation.
To me, this looks less like a "rehearsal" and more like a series of scenes intended for the mockumentary they were working on that summer. But that's just a thought.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Maybe, but you'd shoot test footage of the suit doing the stuff you wanted to do in the story, so you'd know whether it looked OK or did you need to back up a bit, get some smoke and maybe soften the focus!
You're obviously right, but having the creature lurking among the trees behind the horseman, barely noticeable, seems a bit uncalled for if the film was shot merely as a rehearsal for the one shot at Bluff Creek. For such a scene, a man in a garbage bag would do just fine.
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