Second Hand Filmas Online

[Amice Golden]

Thefootage was filmed alongside Bluff Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River, about 25 logging-road miles (40 km) northwest of Orleans, California, in Del Norte County on the Six Rivers National Forest. The film site is roughly 38 miles (60 km) south of Oregon and 18 miles (30 km) east of the Pacific Ocean.[2] 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.[3][4][5] It is just south of a north-running segment of the creek informally known as "the bowling alley".

The film is 23.85 feet (7.27 m) long (preceded by 76.15 feet or 23.21 meters of "horseback" footage), has 954 frames,[10] and runs for 59.5 seconds at 16 frames per second. If the film was shot at 18 fps, as Grover Krantz believed,[11] the event lasted 53 seconds. The date was October 20, 1967, according to the filmmakers, although some critics believe it was shot earlier.[12][13][14][15]

Patterson said he became interested in Bigfoot after reading an article about the creature by Ivan T. Sanderson in True magazine in December 1959.[16] 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laced together with Patterson's circus-poster style prose".[20] The book, however, contains 20 pages of previously unpublished interviews and letters, 17 drawings by Patterson of the encounters described in the text, 5 hand-drawn maps (rare in subsequent Bigfoot books), and almost 20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,[21] and then again re-issued by Murphy[22] 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.[23][24] Patterson would have needed a costume to represent Bigfoot, if the time came to shoot such climactic scenes.

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 Ren Dahinden, and archaeologist Don Abbott on and after August 28, 1967.[36] This find was reported to Patterson (via his wife) soon thereafter by Al Hodgson, owner of the Willow Creek Variety Store.[37][38]

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 1:40 p.m., they "came to an overturned tree with a large root system at a turn in the creek, almost as high as a room".[40][41]

The film shows what Patterson and Gimlin claimed was a large, hairy, bipedal, apelike figure with short, "silvery brown"[45] or "dark reddish-brown"[46] or "black"[47] 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.

The figure had walked away from them to a distance of about 120 feet (37 m) 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 80 feet (24 m) 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.[51] 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,"[52] 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 10 feet (3 m) to a better vantage point, fading into the trees again and being lost to view at a distance of 265 feet (81 m) as the reel of film ran out.[53]

Gimlin remounted and followed it on horseback, keeping his distance, until it disappeared around a bend in the road three hundred yards (270 m) 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.[54] Then the men tracked "Patty" for either one mile (1.6 km)[51] or three miles (4.8 km),[55] but "lost it in the heavy undergrowth".[56] They went to their campsite three miles (4.8 km) 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.

According to Patterson and Gimlin, they were the only witnesses to their brief encounter with what they claimed was a sasquatch. Their statements agree in general, but author Greg Long notes a number of inconsistencies. They offered somewhat different sequences in describing how they and the horses reacted upon seeing the creature. Patterson in particular increased his estimates of the creature's size in subsequent retellings of the encounter.[57] In a different context, Long argues, these discrepancies would probably be considered minor, but given the extraordinary claims made by Patterson and Gimlin, any apparent disagreements in perception or memory are worth noting.

The film's defenders have responded by saying that commercially motivated hoaxers would have "got their stories straight" beforehand so they would not have disagreed immediately upon being interviewed, and on so many points, and so they wouldn't have created a suit and a creature with foreseeably objectionable features and behaviors.[58]

A more serious objection concerns the film's "timeline". This is important because Kodachrome II movie film, as far as is known, could be developed only by a lab containing a $60,000+ machine, and the few West Coast labs known to possess one did not do developing over weekends. Patterson's brother-in-law Al DeAtley claims not to remember where he took the film for development or where he picked it up.[59]

Critics claim that too much happened between the filming (at 1:15 at the earliest) and the filmmakers' arrival in Willow Creek (at 6:30 at the latest). Daegling wrote, "All of the problems with the timeline disappear if the film is shot a few days or hours beforehand. If that is the case, one has to wonder what other details of this story are wrong."[60][61] The film's defenders retort that although the time window was tight, it was do-able.[62]

Chris Murphy wrote, "I have confirmed with Bob Gimlin that Patterson definitely rode a small quarter horse (which he owned), not his Welsh pony 'Peanuts'. Also, that Patterson had arranged to borrow a horse by the name of 'Chico' from Bob Heironimus for Gimlin to use [...] Gimlin did not have a horse that was suitable (old enough) for the expedition."[63] Heironimus stated that Chico (a middle-aged gelding) "wouldn't jump or buck".[64]

At approximately 6:30 p.m.,[65] Patterson and Gimlin met up with Al Hodgson at his variety store in Willow Creek, approximately 54.3 miles (87.4 km) south by road, about 28.8 miles (46.3 km) by Bluff Creek Road from their camp to the 1967 roadhead by Bluff Creek, and 25.5 miles (41 km) down California State Route 96 to Willow Creek. Patterson intended to drive on to Eureka to ship his film. Either at that time, or when he arrived in the Eureka/Arcata area, he called Al DeAtley (his brother-in-law in Yakima) and told him to expect the film he was shipping. He requested Hodgson to call Donald Abbott,[66] whom Grover Krantz described as "the only scientist of any stature to have demonstrated any serious interest in the [Bigfoot] subject," hoping he would help them search for the creature by bringing a tracking dog.[67] Hodgson called, but Abbott declined. Krantz argued that this call the same day of the encounter is evidence against a hoax, at least on Patterson's part.[68]

After shipping the film, they headed back toward their camp, where they had left their horses. On their way they "stopped at the Lower Trinity Ranger Station, as planned, arriving about 9:00 p.m. Here they met with Syl McCoy [another friend] and Al Hodgson."[69] At this point Patterson called the daily Times-Standard newspaper in Eureka and related his story.[70] They arrived back at their campsite at about midnight. At either 5[71] or 5:30[72] the next morning, after it started to rain heavily, Gimlin returned to the filmsite from the camp and covered the other prints with bark to protect them. The cardboard boxes he had been given by Al Hodgson for this purpose and had left outside were so soggy they were useless, so he left them.[69][73]

3a8082e126