1967 Patterson Gimley Film. An elaborate bigfoot hoax?

Surely The Footage Is Fake?
It's easy to be skeptical about the existence of bigfoot and pretty much all of the video footage that claims to have captured a sight of the creature is easily seen through as a hoax. With this in mind it is also easy to pass off the iconic 1967 Patterson Gimley bigfoot footage as fakery, not least because one year earlier in 1966 Robert Patterson published a book titled "Do abominable snowmen of America really exist?"

So why is it that the Patterson Gimely footage is second only to the Zapruder Kennedy assassination footage in the amount of times it has been analysed and scrutinised? It's because over 50 years on we still don't have a clear answer on whether the film is a hoax or a genuine sighting of an elusive humanoid ape, and it seems the closer we look the more it seems the footage could be genuine.

Patterson and Gimley apparently recorded footage of bigfoot on 20th October 1967

Person in a monkey suit
Initial observation of the footage would likely have you think it's just a man in a costume, and here is where it gets interesting, if this were just a person in a monkey suit then the suit itself was the work of an absolute genius because there is very clear muscle definition, and in the stabalised and enhanced footage it can be seen that each muscle contracts and relaxes appropriately for a real living animal, from its arms and legs right down to its mouth and eyebrows.

In 1967 the top Hollywood costume designers were not able to create such a realistic muscular movement in there ape costumes one of them even stating that the only way to achieve such definition in an ape suit would be to individually glue each hair on to someones body.

King Kong 1976, notice how the ape looks like a big cuddly teddy bear with no muscle definition.

Patterson Gimley Bigfoot Footage 1967, notice the muscle definition of the triceps and quads and how they contract as you would expect, the back of the thighs even seem to display ligaments stretching and contracting, not to mention the wobbly motion of the breasts.

Is It Genuine Then?
There are many skeptics who believe the footage to be fake, that Patterson and Gimley purchased a monkey suit from a Hollywood costume designer and set about trying to fool the world.

To this date, even with the advancement of video analysis techniques, the footage can not be proven to be fake, and even with the advancement of animatronics it would be difficult and costly to recreate the level of natural movement we find in this shot of "bigfoot".

So, it's a mystery.