Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film

Dmitri Donskoy
A formal academic study of the Patterson film was conducted by Dmitri Donskoy, Chief of the Dept. of Biomechanics at the USSR Central Institute of Physical Culture, and later associated with Moscow’s Darwin Museum (Daegling, 45). Donskoy believed that the creature was non-human based on its weight and its gait. He inferred it was weighty from the ponderous momentum he observed in the movements of its arms and legs, in the sagging of the knee as weight came onto it, and in the flatness of the foot. Its gait he considered non-artificial because it was confident and unwavering, "neatly expressive," and well-coordinated, and yet non-human because its arm motion and glide resembled a cross-country skier's. Krantz describes Donskoy’s conclusion as being that the film depicts “a very massive animal that is definitely not a human being” (Krantz, 92).


D.W. Grieve
Anatomist D.W. Grieve of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine studied a copy of the film in 1971, and wrote a detailed analysis. He notes that "The possibility of a very clever fake cannot be ruled out on the evidence of the film," but also writes that his analysis hinges largely on the question of filming speed (see above).

Grieve concluded that "the possibility of fakery is ruled out if the speed of the film was 16 or 18 frames per second. In these conditions a normal human being could not duplicate the observed pattern, which would suggest that the Sasquatch must possess a very different locomotor system to that of man." If filmed at the higher speed, Grieve concluded that the creature “walked with a gait pattern very similar in most respects to a man walking at high speed.”

Grieve noted that "I can see the muscle masses in the appropriate places ... If it is a fake, it is an extremely clever one" (Hunter and Dahinden, 120). Like Krantz, Greive thought the figure's shoulders were quite broad. Also like Krantz, Grieve thought Patterson's estimate of the figure's height was inaccurate. Grieve concluded the figure in the Patterson film revealed "an estimated standing height for the subject of not more than 6 ft. 5 in. (196 cm.)." He notes that a tall human is consistent with the figure's height, but also notes that for a tall human, "The shoulder breadth however would be difficult to achieve without giving an unnatural appearance to the arm swing and shoulder contours."[4]

More personally, Grieve notes that his “subjective impressions have oscillated between total acceptance of the Sasquatch based on the grounds that the film would be difficult to fake, to one of irrational rejection based on an emotional response to the possibility that the Sasquatch actually exists. This seems worth stating because others have reacted similarly to the film” (cited in Byrne, 157).


Bernard Heuvelmans
Bernard Heuvelmans — a zoologist and the so-called "father of cryptozoology" —thought the creature in the Patterson film was a suited human. [5]