Evidence in the film itself contradicts Santilli's claims. 3: The Spirit is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak The first showing of the alien autopsy film to a large audience came on Friday, May 5, 1995. Shortly after 1 p.m., approximately 100 people filed into a small auditorium in the Museum of London [22]. It was an invitation-only crowd consisting of members of the press (including the BBC), representatives of some TV networks interested in buying rights to show the film in their respective countries, and assorted UFOlogists from Britain, America, and the Continent. Security was tight. The guests had to submit to the indignity of being frisked for cameras before they were allowed to enter the hall. After passing the search, they were required to sign in (no gate crashers allowed!). Some printed material was passed out to the attendees: a fact sheet about the Roswell Incident and the 509th Bomb Group, and a copy of the MJ-12 briefing papers, themselves widely acknowledged as a hoax [24]. The hundred guests entered an empty auditorium. Ray Santilli did not introduce the film--indeed, no introductions were made at all. The crowd was alert and anxious to be initiated into the big secret. The lights went down at 1:05 p.m., and the projector started. Prior to the actual film, a few titles appeared on the screen. These stated that the film had been acquired from the man who originally shot it, and that the copyright was "exclusively owned" by Ray Santilli's company, Merlin Communications [52]. Another clarification followed, informing the audience that the autopsy footage was contained in fifteen canisters of 16 mm black-and-white film, each three minutes long. This was in direct contradiction to a previous statement given out that the film ran in ten minute reels. The discrepancy was not explained [27]. The film began. What was shown was the famous "white room" sequence, later shown on Fox TV in the U.S. as "Alien Autopsy -- Fact or Fiction?" The film opens with a strangely shaped, naked corpse lying on a table in a small white-walled room. Two people appear, clad head to foot in white decontamination suits. No facial features are visible, as the two have only small rectangular windows in their hoods through which to see out. Soon a third person appears, staring into the room from outside, through an apparent glass window. Though he is on the outside, this man is gowned and capped like a surgeon, and even wears a cloth face mask. He never enters the room, but stands there throughout the sequence, staring at the body on the table. The body is both strange and unexpectedly human in form. It is not a stereotypical "gray," nor is it particularly small. It seems to be about five feet long and robustly built, with meaty arms and legs, a swollen head, distended belly, and an enormous wound on the right leg. Some of the those in the Museum of London audience recoiled at the sight, thinking they were seeing a deformed or deliberately disguised human body. All the body's features can be described in entirely human terms. It was bald, and had no hair anywhere else. The eyes were large and dark, and seemed to lack features like an iris or pupil (this appearance would change during the autopsy). The morphology was human; bilateral symmetry, upright bipedal stance, and apparent female genitalia. The oddest details were mere footnotes to the general picture: the subject had six fingers per hand and six toes on each foot. Once the examination began, the solid dark membranes over the eyes were easily removed with forceps, revealing rolled-back white sclera. Other visible details worked against the alien identification. The multiple digits had nails, just like human fingers and toes, some teeth were visible for an instant during the preliminary exam, and the ears, though small, were of distinctly human shape. What were the odds that an extraterrestrial being would so closely resemble Homo Sapiens? After a gingerly examination by the hooded figures, the cutting starts. An incision is made along the right side of the neck, from behind the ear to the base of the throat. Dark fluid oozes out. The cut is repeated on the left side. A T-shaped incision is made on the cadaver's chest, the long axis of the cut going down to the navelless belly. As our intrepid cameraman moves in for close-ups of the alien viscera, his camera goes out of focus -- again and again. This was explained as being due to the fact that the camera did not have through-the-lens focusing (i.e., the cameraman couldn't see the picture going blurry), and also because the cameraman was swathed in a full coverage protective suit like the doctor and his helper. Still, it is very convenient for him to obscure the telling details of the subject's anatomy. Jump-cuts also obscure some of the most interesting procedures. The opening of the chest cavity occurs off camera. When the doctor begins to open the skull with a Victorian era bone saw, the camerama stations himself behind the doctor, where he can see nothing but the man's back and his right elbow sawing back and forth. When organs are removed from the body, they are dark glistening masses, which might be alien viscera or slaughterhouse leavings -- it's impossible to tell. The autopsy room technician piles these bits of offal into dishes and bowls. The dark lenses from the eyes are placed in the same beaker of liquid, thus ruining their scientific value. After all, there would no longer be any way to distinguish which eye they came from, which side touched the eye and which side faced out, etc. The doctor makes written notes on a clipboard using his (presumably) bloody gloves, even though a microphone is hanging over the body to record his remarks. Having gone to the trouble to totally cover themselves against possible alien bacteria, the doctor's notes would have been completely contaminated and only accessible to other decon-suited people! The overall effect of this sequence is sordid and unsatisfying. Where are the scientific experts of the U.S., who would be eager to witness the autopsy of an extraterrestrial? Where is the still photographer to record the procedure for any written reports? Assuming the event is top secret is no answer. Dozens were present when the first atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site. Reports on the alien autopsy, even if restricted to the members of the mythical Majestic 12, would certainly require still photos for illustration. The white room autopsy smells of haste and cheapness -- two faults the U.S. government is seldom guilty of. Reaction to the Museum of London screening was mixed. Interest was high, but many were not impressed by what they saw. Kent Jeffrey, the only Roswell researcher present, said later: "I would like to state up front and unequivocally that there is no (zero!) doubt in my mind that this film is a fraud." [23] Ray Santilli wasn't concerned. In a statement posted on Compuserve on June 3, 1995, he expressed amazement and disappointment that "so-called" UFOlogists indulged in what he felt was gossip, rumor, and misinformation about his film. He reiterated his belief in the authenticity of the cameraman, Jack Barnett, and stressed he had seen the man's official discharge papers, photo albums, etc. He repeated that the film Barnett had supplied had the edge code appropriate to 1947 (a square and a triangle), and he vowed not to release more information about Barnett because the old man feared prosecution by the U.S. government, feared a dispute over ownership of the film (if real, it's U.S. Army property), and he didn't want to report the $100,000 Santilli paid him to the IRS. There are a lot of logical problems to these objections. The sensation caused by the revelation of a UFO crash in New Mexico in 1947 would far outweigh any attempt to prosecute an octogenarian photographer--imagine the headlines if the government tried to indict Barnett! As far as the IRS goes, the story of Jack Barnett getting his money is out there. Did Santilli think the IRS could not find Barnett if it wanted to? They caught Capone, after all. Santilli claimed the May 5 screening was held to quiet speculation about the alien autopsy film (it had the opposite effect), and that it was timed to happen along with the fifty year anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe [54]. To those critics who had seized on details in the white room footage--the wall clock, the telephone with a curly plastic cord--he asserted all these items were available in 1947 [55]. The phone in particular would come under considerable scrutiny as the summer wore on and autopsy buffs had little else to study. One disingenuous statement Santilli made on June 3 is demonstrably false. He claimed he was a disinterested party, that it was sheer luck that he stumbled across the alien autopsy film, and that he had no real interest in UFOs. This does no gibe with remarks made by BUFORA's Philip Mantle, who said that in 1993 Santilli contacted him about making a UFO documentary. This was apparently not about the alien autopsy footage, for as Mantle stated, the discussed documentary didn't materialize, and then Santilli brought up the matter of this strange film he said he'd acquired in America. Clearly UFOs had been on Santilli's mind for a while [6]. The rumor mill ground into high gear after the May 5 screening. Many false stories were circulating, such as the rumor that the American TV show "Unsolved Mysteries" had positively identified the film as a South American B-movie ("Unsolved Mysteries" denied any such knowledge) [11]. UFO researcher Jacques Vallee was alleged to have been offered the film before the Santilli, but had declined to touch it. Vallee denied this ever happened [12]. The rumor about Vallee may have been sparked by his own account of how he and J. Allen Hynek were offered a supposed film of UFO contact by members of the Defense Audio-Visual Agency in 1985. This film never materialized, and Vallee wrote off the encounter as an obscurely motivated hoax [56]. A second showing of segments of the autopsy film was scheduled for the Third International Symposium on UFOs, to beheld in San Marino, Italy, on May 20-21. Far from allowing the drumbeat of interest in the film to die down, as he claimed, Ray Santilli was in fact building interest in the news media and the international UFO community. He had plans to market the film on video tape, sell the TV rights in specific countries, and a deluxe screening of the footage would be the centerpiece of the August BUFORA conference, which was to be held in Sheffield, England. As was said in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, "the dead travel fast." Next: Medical Experts Sound Off Abra Cadaver Index References What do you think? Tell us in the message boards!