The Patterson–Gimlin film is a 1967 American short motion picture, created by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin, that depicts an unidentified subject that the filmmakers stated was a Bigfoot. The footage was shot in 1967 in Northern California, and has since been subjected to many attempts to authenticate or debunk it.
The footage was filmed alongside a tributary of the Klamath River, about northwest of Orleans, California, in Del Norte County on the Six Rivers National Forest. The film site is roughly south of Oregon and east of the Pacific Ocean.Murphy (2008), 32 For decades, the exact location of the site was lost, primarily because of re-growth of foliage in the streambed after the flood of 1964. It was rediscovered in 2011."BIGFOOT'S bLOG," January 21, 2013, at http://bigfootbooksblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/gps-coordinates-for-bluff-creek-pgf.html Bigfoot Times newsletter, August 2012"BIGFOOT'S bLOG," at http://bigfootbooksblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/corrections-and-clarifications-to-peter.html It is just south of a north-running segment of the creek informally known as "the bowling alley".
The filmmakers were Roger Patterson (1933–1972) and Robert "Bob" Gimlin (born 1931). Patterson died of cancer in 1972 and "maintained right to the end that the creature on the film was real".McLeod, 128–29, 140 Patterson's friend, Gimlin, has always denied being involved in any part of a hoax with Patterson. Gimlin mostly avoided publicly discussing the subject from at least the early 1970s until about 2005 (except for three appearances),In Toronto for Dahinden's book launch in 1973 (McLeod, 173); at the 1978 University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology (McLeod, 140) Conference; and on Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World in 1980 when he began giving interviews and appearing at Bigfoot conferences.Murphy (2008), 57Regal, 129
The film is long (preceded by of "horseback" footage), has 954 frames,Munns, 29 – he located two additional frames at the beginning that should be part of the "count" and runs for 59.5 seconds at 16 frames per second. If the film was shot at 18 fps, as Grover Krantz believed,Krantz, 89, caption the event lasted 53 seconds. The date was October 20, 1967, according to the filmmakers, although some critics believe it was shot earlier.Long, 373–74, 401, 420–21Daegling, 147–49McLeod, 81–82Munns, 5 As a film published in 1967 without a copyright notice, it is in the public domain in the United States.
Background Patterson said he became interested in Bigfoot after reading an article about the creature by Ivan T. Sanderson in True magazine in December 1959.Perez, 6 In 1961 Sanderson published his encyclopedic Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, a worldwide survey of accounts of Bigfoot-type creatures, including recent track finds, etc. in the Bluff Creek area, which heightened his interest. Thereafter, Marian Place wrote:
Patterson's book, Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?, was self-published in 1966. The book has been characterized as "little more than a collection of newspaper clippings laced together with Patterson's circus-poster style prose".Hunter and Dahinden, 113 The book, however, contains 20 pages of previously unpublished interviews and letters, 17 drawings by Patterson of the encounters described in the text, five hand-drawn maps (rare in subsequent Bigfoot books), and almost 20 photos and illustrations from others. It was first reprinted in 1996 by Chris Murphy,(under his publishing company, Pyramid Productions) in a very limited number (approximately 200, according to Murphy) and then again re-issued by Murphyunder Hancock House Publishing in 2005 under the title The Bigfoot Film Controversy, with 81 pages of additional material by Murphy.
In May/June 1967 Patterson began filming a docudrama or pseudo-documentary about cowboys being led by an old miner and a wise Indian tracker on a hunt for Bigfoot. The storyline called for Patterson, his Indian guide (Gimlin in a wig), and the cowboys to recall in flashbacks the stories of Fred Beck (of the 1924 Ape Canyon incident) and others as they tracked the beast on horseback. For actors and cameraman, Patterson used at least nine volunteer acquaintances, including Gimlin and Bob Heironimus, for three days of shooting, perhaps over the Memorial Day weekend.Long, 39, 109–10, 115, 228–29This is the only stretch in that period that all the men would have had 3 free days. Patterson would have needed a costume to represent Bigfoot if the time came to shoot such climactic scenes.
Prior to the October 1967 filming, Patterson apparently visited Los Angeles on these occasions: Patterson drove to Hollywood in 1964 and visited rockabilly songwriter and guitarist Jerry Lee Merritt, a Yakima native who was living in Hollywood then.Long, 132Patterson and Murphy, 15 He was trying to sell his hoop-toy invention.Long, 176–77; Al Hodgson remembers that this was his mission on "the first time I met him " on his way south.McLeod, 79 In 1966 he visited Merritt again while he was still trying to sell his hoop-toy invention.Long, 107, 126 Merritt soon moved back to Yakima and became Patterson's neighbor, and later his collaborator on his Bigfoot documentary.Long, 99; see also Long, 100–33 and 312 Later in 1966 he and Merritt drove down there for several purposes. Patterson visited cowboy film star Roy Rogers for help.Long, 73, 91, 230 He tried to sell his ponies-and-wagon to Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm.Long, 230 In the summer of 1967, apparently after getting $700 from the Radfords and shooting some of his documentary, they tried unsuccessfully to attract investors to help further fund his Bigfoot movie.Long, 110–11, 114, 130 They copyrighted or trademarked the term "Bigfoot".Long, 127, 140
Both PattersonLong, 90. (This citation does not cover this entire sentence.) and Gimlin had been rodeo riders and amateur boxers—and local champions in their weight classes. Patterson had played high school football.
In October 1967, Patterson and his friend Gimlin set out for the Six Rivers National Forest in far Northern California. They drove in Gimlin's truck, carrying his provisions and three horses, positioned sideways. Patterson chose the area because of intermittent reports of the creatures in the past, and of their enormous footprints since 1958. His familiarity with the area and its residents from prior visits may also have been a factor.
The most recent of these reports was the nearby Blue Creek Mountain track find, which was investigated by journalist John Green, Bigfoot hunter René Dahinden, and archaeologist Don Abbott on and after August 28, 1967.Perez, 8 This find was reported to Patterson (via his wife) soon thereafter by Al Hodgson, owner of the Willow Creek Variety Store.Byrne, 138Jevning, Notes from the Field: Tracking North America's Sasquatch, 105, quoting Hodgson in an interview. Later, Hodgson said, he "branched out" into selling, e.g., clothing (and the "variety store" designation was dropped).
Though Gimlin says he doubted the existence of Sasquatch-like creatures, he agreed to Patterson's insistence that they should not attempt to shoot one with a gun.Daegling, 115
Encounter
As their stories went, in the early afternoon of Friday, October 20, 1967, Patterson and Gimlin were riding generally northeast (upstream) on horseback along the east bank of Bluff Creek. At sometime between 1:15 and 1:40p.m., they "came to an overturned tree with a large root system at a turn in the creek, almost as high as a room".Perez, 9, 20Gimlin, quoted in Perez, 9
When they rounded it, "there was a a 'crow's left over from the flood of '64," and then they spotted the figure behind it nearly simultaneously. It was either "crouching beside the creek to their left" or "standing" there, on the opposite bank. Gimlin later described himself as in a mild state of shock after first seeing the figure.Meldrum, 139Krantz, 87
Patterson initially estimated its height at to ,Patterson & Murphy, 195 and later raised his estimate to about . Some later analysts, anthropologist Grover Krantz among them, have suggested Patterson's later estimate was about too tall. Gimlin's estimate was .
The film shows what Patterson and Gimlin claimed was a large, hairy, bipedal, apelike figure with short, "silvery brown"Patterson and Murphy, 195 or "dark reddish-brown"Napier, 90 or "black"Sanderson (1969), 66 hair covering most of its body, including its prominent breasts. The figure in the film generally matches the descriptions of Bigfoot offered by others who claim to have seen one.
Patterson estimated he was about away from the creature at his closest. Patterson said that his horse reared upon sensing the figure, and he spent about 20 seconds extricating himself from the saddle, controlling his horse, getting around to its other side,Perez, 9 and getting his camera from a saddlebag before he could run toward the figure while operating his camera. He yelled "Cover me" to Gimlin, "meaning to get the gun out".Perez, 10 Gimlin crossed the creek on horseback after Patterson had run well beyond it, riding on a path somewhat to the left of Patterson's and somewhat beyond his position. Patterson estimates he came within of "Patty". Then, rifle in hand, he dismounted, but did not point his rifle at the creature.Meldrum, 140
The figure had walked away from them to a distance of about before Patterson began to run after it. The resulting film (about 59.5 seconds long at 16 fps) is initially quite shaky until Patterson got about from the figure. At that point, the figure glanced over its right shoulder at the men and Patterson fell to his knees; on Krantz's map this corresponds to frame 264.Perez, 12 To researcher John Green, Patterson would later characterize the creature's expression as one of "contempt and disgust ... you know how it is when the umpire tells you 'one more word and you're out of the game.' That's the way it felt."
Shortly after this point the steady, middle portion of the film begins, containing the famous look-back frame 352. Patterson said, "it turned a total of I think three times,"Wasson, 69 the other times therefore being before the filming began and/or while he was running with his finger off the trigger. Shortly after glancing over its shoulder on film, the creature disappeared behind a grove of trees for 14 seconds, then reappeared in the film's final 15 seconds after Patterson moved to a better vantage point, fading into the trees again and being lost to view at a distance of as the reel of film ran out.Krantz, 89–90
Gimlin remounted and followed it on horseback, keeping his distance, until it disappeared around a bend in the road away. Patterson called him back at that point, feeling vulnerable on foot without a rifle, because he feared the creature's mate might approach. The entire encounter had lasted less than two minutes.
Next, Gimlin and Patterson rounded up Patterson's horses, which had run off in the opposite direction, downstream, before the filming began. Patterson got his second roll of film from his saddlebag and filmed the tracks.Wylie, 12 Then the men tracked "Patty" for either or ,Sanderson (1969), 68; Sanderson might have mixed up this with the they traveled back to the campsite. but "lost it in the heavy undergrowth".Coleman and Clark, 198 They went to their campsite south, picked up plaster, returned to the initial site, measured the creature's step-length, and made two plaster casts, one each of the best-quality right and left prints.
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