Photo © Rene Dahinden. 2b. The Patterson Film Capturing the fleeting sight of a seven-foot apelike creature retreating into the Northern California wilderness, the Patterson Bigfoot film is among the most renowned artifacts in the field of paranormal study. The footage has achieved iconic status even among the public at large, and forms the foundation of many Bigfoot hunters' beliefs. The controversial reel of film was shot by Roger Patterson, a former rodeo rider who had become deeply fascinated with Bigfoot after reading press reports about the creature in 1957. He wrote and self-published a book in 1966 entitled Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist? Patterson then set out to film a documentary about sightings of Bigfoot. On October 20, 1967, Patterson and his friend Bob Gimlin were riding on horseback in the wilds of California's Bluff Creek valley, with Patterson carrying a rented 16mm camera to shoot some atmospheric footage for his planned film. He ended up filming a lot more than just scenery. Patterson and Gimlin spotted a huge, dark-furred, bipedal creature hunched over in the middle of a creek. The beast rose to a full height that Patterson estimated at seven feet, four inches, and began walking toward the woods. Thrown to the ground after his horse reared up in fright, Patterson anxiously yanked the movie camera from his saddlebag and began shooting. The day's filming had left him with only 28 feet of film in the camera, but he managed to record the alleged Bigfoot's image briefly before it fled from view. Patterson and Gimlin discovered that a number of footprints had been left behind, and they preserved them in plaster casts. The tracks were fourteen inches long and five inches wide. But these trophies were almost insignificant in comparison to the prize inside Patterson's camera. In the ensuing three decades, the 952 frames of Patterson's Bigfoot film have been submitted to all manner of examination and analysis. (The famous "Frame 352" from the film is shown on this page.) The creature has been classified as female, because of its apparent breasts. Theorists have extrapolated descriptions of everything from its psychological bearing to its eating habits on the basis of its behavior in the film. Minutiae of the creature's physiognomy, such as the exact way in which it moves its neck, and its unusual method of distributing its weight as it strided, have led many to conclude that this could not be a man in a suit. But many others feel certain that Patterson's Bigfoot was a fake. Being established in the "Bigfoot business," Patterson stood to profit from fabricating film footage of the creature. Bigfoot expert John Napier pointed out that the footprint casts were physiologically inconsistent with the height of the creature and the length of its stride as shown in the film. If the creature was a fake, everyone agrees that it was a remarkably skillful one. The only known source of such a high quality of costume and makeup in 1967 was the movie special effects industry, and in fact there is strong evidence that this Bigfoot came from Hollywood. After lengthy investigations and interviews, journalist Mark Chorivinsky has found that the consensus among the movie-effects industry professionals is that the film depicts a prankster in a skillfully crafted costume. In fact, many state that the falsity of the Patterson film has been common knowledge in the business for years. The makeup artist Chorivinsky found most frequently associated with the Bigfoot film is John Chambers, a legendary elder statesman in the field of monster-making. Chambers is best known as the makeup mastermind behind the Planet of the Apes films. His innovative and highly articulated ape masks won him an Academy Award in 1968. Chambers created monster costumes for dozens of other movies and TV shows, including The Outer Limits and Lost in Space. Chorivinsky reports none of the makeup professionals he spoke with had firsthand knowledge that Chambers had created the Patterson Bigfoot, but a large number of them either felt that it was widely accepted that he was responsible for it, or else reasoned that Chambers was the only artist at the time skillful enough to have crafted such a costume. Chambers, who currently resides in a Los Angeles nursing home in frail health, has recently told interviewers that he had nothing to do with the Bigfoot seen in Patterson's film. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence implicating Chambers's involvement is compelling. The Patterson film was shot in 1967, in the same timeframe that Chambers was working on Planet of the Apes. Chambers often did uncredited work, and would not have been opposed to a project in which his contributions would remain unknown. The Patterson Bigfoot shows evidence of having a water bag under the fur in the stomach area, a trick used to make a gorilla suit move like real flesh. This liquid stomach technique was developed by Charlie Gemora, with whom Chambers had worked at Paramount. Chambers created monster suits for Lost in Space in 1965 and 1966 which look very similar to the creature in the Patterson film, only with a different head. Chambers may have recycled them to fabricate the Patterson Bigfoot. Perhaps the most striking evidence is the fact that Chambers is known to have participated in another Bigfoot hoax: The Burbank Bigfoot. This was a 7' 4" Bigfoot carcass painstakingly built in Chambers' Burbank garage over a plaster body cast of actor Richard Kiel, best known as the villain Jaws from the James Bond movies. It is unclear who commissioned the Burbank Bigfoot or what became of it, but one account explains that it was created to be part of a traveling sideshow. In October 1997, upon the thirtieth anniversary of the Patterson film, new reports surfaced to confirm that Chambers had concocted the creature. This time, movie director John Landis stepped forward to verify what he said had been known among Hollywood make-up artists for years. "That famous piece of film of Bigfoot walking in the woods that was touted as the real thing was just a suit made by John Chambers," Landis said. The director said that Chambers had revealed this secret to him when they worked together on Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1970. But the case is far from being closed just yet. A number of Bigfoot authorities, notably cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, vehemently refuse to accept the Chambers connection to the film, and insist that the creature might be real. A new study by the North American Science Institute has concluded that Patterson's Bigfoot is genuine, and computer enhancement analysis suggests that the creature's skin and musculature are that of a living animal, not a hairy suit. Next: Orang-Pendek Missing Links Primate Center Index Back to Cryptozoo Entrance