Friday, April 07, 2006

The End of the Alien Autopsy


I first saw the Alien Autopsy film when working on a documentary with a British film producer for a show to highlight the film. He sought comments from those of us who had spent time and money investigating the Roswell UFO crash. I studied the film, saw that it bore no resemblance to the descriptions of the aliens provided to us, noticed many other things wrong with the film, and thought that the autopsy as portrayed seemed to be rather superficial if not a bit cavalier.

We learned later that one part of the autopsy had been faked. Philip Mantle, a British UFO researcher had learned that the tent footage, a rather poorly lit, hard to see segment of the film had been "recreated" because the original footage was too poor to use on television. The tent autopsy wasn’t used because it was nearly blacked out and the body on the table could have been almost anything. In other words, the tent footage had been faked, though for the best of reasons, according to Ray Santilli, the man responsible for the whole Alien Autopsy mess. He had recreated it.

Now, comes more interesting news. Mantle, in a letter posted to various places on the Internet, tells us:

Tonight showed the SKY ONE TV show 'Eamon Investigates - Alien Autopsy’. The show starts of with Santilli still claiming that he saw real film of aliens and that he purchased it from a former US military cameraman. However, there is now a change in the story. Santilli & his colleague Gary Shoefield claim that it took 2 years to buy the film & that when it finally arrived in London 95% of it had 'oxidised' and the remaining 5% was in very poor condition.

They therefore decided to 'reconstruct' it based on Santilli's recollection and a few frames that were left. To do this they hired UK sculptor John Humphreys. Humphreys tells of how he used sheep’s brain for the brain and a lamb’s leg for the leg joint.

The cameraman's interview film is also a fake. The man in the film is someone they literally brought in off the street and gave him a prepared script to read from.

Santilli and Shoefield continually try to insist that the AA film as we know it is a restoration, but in fact it was made by John Humphreys.

To try and justify they claim that some of the surviving original frames are seen mixed in with the reconstruction/restoration. Interestingly neither Santilli, Shoefield or Humphreys could point out where and which are these frames when viewing the AA film.

Santilli admitted that the six-fingered panels in the debris film were the result of 'artistic license' and he even produced one of the I-beams from the boot of his car. The debris film was also made by John Humphreys.

In fact, Humphreys is the surgeon in the film, and a former employee of Shoefield's in behind the window. He's Gareth Watson, a man I met several times in Ray's office.

Nick Pope and myself appear briefly in this show and I dare say Nick will have his own comments to make.

For anyone interested in the AA film I do recommend watching this if you can. I've taken part in another show for Channel Five in the UK the content of which I am not permitted to disclose.

After watching this tonight I can honestly say that I do not believe one word of either Santilli or Shoefield and I have no doubt that the film is nothing more than a complete fake.

There is and never was any original film and there is and never was any US military cameraman. Santilli & Shoefield had little credibility as it was but now they have none.

The alien autopsy film is dead and I hope to put it to rest, once and for all, soon. Watch this space.

Philip Mantle

I could review the many reasons that I believed the film to be a fake, but those who are interested can find the opinions in my 1997 book, The Randle Report: UFOs in the ‘90s. You can also look at the Alien Autopsy wetsite hosted by v j enterprises at:

This also sets up a number of interesting questions. As some have pointed out, there are those who claimed to have seen the footage elsewhere. It was those witnesses, and Cliff Stone comes to mind here, who said they saw the footage long before Santilli released it into the public arena. Interestingly, none of those people are on record about such a film prior to the announcements made in 1995. Even more interestingly, with Santilli’s admission, none of those people ever said that the film didn’t look quite right. They just claimed to have seen it all before.

Yes, I know what the fall back position will be. Santilli said the film was so poor that they could use very little of it, so they recreated it. A very small part of the footage is real and the rest reconstructed. So, those claiming to have seen the film can now say, well, yes, it’s a reconstruction of what I saw long ago. I just couldn’t compare the original to what I saw but it looked like the same thing.

Crap.

Mantle said it all when he said the Alien Autopsy is dead. That’s where it should be, but there will be those who will claim that the government (whose… US or UK) got to Santilli and forced him to say the film was a recreation. There will be those who claim that the sheep’s brain or the lamb’s leg don’t make sense and this is proof of government pressure to discredit the film. There will be those who will see conspiracy everywhere in the confession, but will never acknowledge the real conspiracy is the one created by Santilli and friends to make money.

So, I agree with Mantle. The Alien Autopsy is dead. Let’s leave it there and move on.