Speaking of the BBC’s X-Creatures
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 28th, 2006
Loren referenced the BBC’s attempt to debunk the Patter/Gimlin film in his Animal X post yesterday. They would do this by recreating a suit that would "prove" that the subject in the film was a man in a suit.
Said "recreation" was filmed for the BBC’s X-Creatures show that was broadcast in 1998.
Below is the man in the suit that the BBC claimed was "proof" that the film was hoaxed using a man in a suit.
Click on image for fullsize version
And here is the side by side comparison to show how they were sooo successful. Tell ya what, it doesn’t prove anything to me. Well, except that the film is almost certainly that of a living creature.
What do you, the astute reader of Cryptomundo, think?
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Good Morning Craig….
I remember that episode…agreed their recreation illustrated the difficulty of hoaxing “Patty” 20 years earlier…as I remember there was a technical F/X commentary by Stan Winston.
Let’s keep that “protocol” discussion active and those rapid response donations rolling in…LOL
seeing is believing….
ole bub and the dawgs
The thing about the patterson creature (or costume) is that it was very proportioned with thought to muscle tone. I hate how everyone uses this one frame for reference because when you watch the film of it actually walking, you notice how the arms, shoulders and buttocks are proportioned very much like that of a gorilla, not of a man. And you can tell that it either had sculpted pads to create muscle shape or a very big person in there if it was a costume. Most attempts at recreation end up with a sagging suit. Even in this little comparison photo, look at the calf muscle of the Patterson figure and look at the saggy-baggy drawers of the recreation.
Any look at the arms when compared to a human in a suit just shows how strange and unique the Patterson/Gimlin film is. If that film is a hoax, it is one of the best hoaxes of our time.
I would really like to see another party try to recreate this film. First off by making a suit that is tight fitting with short hair. This shaggy attempt with a tall skinny person inside looks like a middle school home-ec project.
Even the costume/makeup used in the brilliant “Messin’ With Sasquatch” Jack Link commercials (and they truly are brilliant) doesn’t come anywhere near the level of impressiveness and overall “creepy-realness” of the PG subject. For me, it totally comes down to the arms. If I were going to fake a suit/footage/pic/whatever, I’d use the PG figure as the benchmark and modify my suit to at least try and capture the same strange almost-but-not-quite-human proportioning by first and foremost extending the arms of the suit a bit.
The X-Creatures recreation was laughable at best, and how anyone could claim the mystery solved by looking at the side by side comparison of the two subjects is beyond me.
TO DATE (and here we are in 2006 already!) there hasn’t been a single FX shot or man-in-suit that compares to the uniqueness of the Patterson subject.
Curious indeed.
They appear to have forgotten two of what I consider to be the most compelling details of the film: the breasts and the herniated bulge in the right thigh that Dr. Jeff Meldrum pointed out several years ago. If Patterson and Gimlin were the side-show barking charlatans that they are being portrayed as by skeptics, do you think they would have had the presence of mind to hang breasts on it??
I’m sure the BBC would have more convincing results recreating the Mobius pics from a few weeks ago. They’d probably have to downgrade their suit a little though.
they nailed it so good their episode was laughed out of rotation on the discovery channel family of channels.
i gotta tell you if i screwed this up as bad i would be ashamed to show it. it is a biscardi marx level of competence as far as fake monkey costumes go.
Anybody who looks at the side to side comparision can tell one is real and one is a man in a suit
There is only one thing to say after all these years and no one can come close to putting anything on film that even remotely looks like the BF in the P/G film. To me makes the argument moot it was the REAL THING PEOPLE!
I wonder if it was a hoax (I do not think it was) but then why not say in a year or 2 go out and film again and say see we got it a second time and they might have made more money from it. I mean why not they had the suit right????? NOOOOOOOO It was the real deal!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nice borrow from the much beleagured BFRO. They have done some great stufff.
Appears to me this sentence – “Said “recreation” was filmed for the BBC’s X-Creatures show that was broadcast in 1998,” would be more appropriate if the first word had the “i” missing.
muscle definition is the key to the Patterson film. You can tell that the BBC version is a man in a suit. The patterson film is with out a doubt, genuine. I’ve never seen one, but after watching the Patterson film, one can not help but feel that they are witnessing a real live unknown creature.
As someone has said before-Patty looks like a man in a suit-Until you see a man in a suit.It then becomes obvious that the PGF is something special.
im sure the bbc if this the only bbc i know said that it was proven that it was not a hoax i cant remember i was only young and turned channel over to watch Manchester United 🙂
No, I am sure they said that the recreation ‘proved’ Patty was hoaxed. The presenter Chris Packham, is actully a very good naturalist and broadcaster, but he was way off the mark on this. It looks like someone on their way to a fancy dress party!
Interestingly, Packham went to Malaysia in this programme, and seemed open minded about the existence of an undiscovered creature there. He said he considered the chances of Orang Pendek being real to be much greater than the chances of finding Sasquatch or Yeti, so he is not totally closed to the possibilities.
PS tell Man U to keep their hands of Carrick!
I don’t understand how these so-called special effects experts can study the P/G film and still be so far off the mark.
(1) “Patty” is almost black & they always make a suit with medium brown hair on it.
(2) They almost always make a suit with a long moustache, which “Patty” doesn’t have.
(3) “Patty” has basically no forehead like we have & apes don’t.
(4) The so-called experts are using modern day special effects technology in these attempts & the P/G film is nearly 39 years old.
The two things about the P/G film that convince me it’s not a hoax are the fact that there is no human-like forehead & in the M.K. Davis enhancement of the film, the creature apparently blinks its eyes. If they had somehow elevated the mask portion of the suit to hide the forehead of the person wearing it, the person’s eyes would be significantly lower than the eye holes in the mask.
The P & G Film has been studied frame by frame by the late Dr. Krantz and many others. They repeatedly point to the movement of the muscles underneath the fur and the fluid style of the walk. They believe the film to be genuine.
I’ve got a background in photography which includes the type of camera used to make the film. Hoaxing the film would’ve been very difficult. I side with the scientists who’ve reviewed it. The film is most likely genuine but lacks sufficient detail to be a reliable indicator of the existence of the species.
Please remember that even very good pictures, film or video won’t get the species recognized. However, they will spark debate and might bring about serious interest if proven to be genuine. Keep your cameras handy.
Larry Lesh
airforce47, if the film is genuine, then it is prima facie evidence of the existence of the species.
Or at least the genus!
airforce 47 sums it up: photos and film are not going to make or break the case for BF or any other cryptid…it will only rile up the debate. With technology getting as good as it is, it is going to get harder and harder to tell real from faked (though the Patterson footage is the real deal…from everything everyone has had to say…there are too many factors that would have looked different if it had been a fake…and if it is a fake, show me the original suit that matches the critter on the footage so that we can see for “real” what a fake it is).
I am getting off on a tangent, but we are going to have to have a mass encounter with the critters, capture one, or invite one to the 11 0’clock news to get the real goods and settle the bet between us and the “pseudo-skeptics.”