The Patterson–Gimlin Film, 1967, and the Reel From the Safe

On 20 October 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were riding along Bluff Creek in the Six Rivers National Forest of northern California. Patterson had a rented 16 mm camera. The roughly one minute of film he shot that afternoon shows a large, dark, hair-covered figure walking across a creek-side clearing and turning to look back toward the camera. It became the most analyzed and argued-over footage in Bigfoot history: some researchers have defended the figure’s gait and proportions, and others, including a man who later said he wore the suit, have called it a costume.

The reel from the safe

In June 2022, Olympic College film instructor Teresa Brooks contacted filmmaker Marq Evans. Her late father, Norm Johnson, had worked in a Boeing film lab in the 1960s and was linked to Patterson and Gimlin through his brother. In a locked safe of his she had found a reel of 16 mm film. Evans digitized it. Among the footage was a 40-second clip, which the filmmakers say was produced and developed in 1966, a year before Bluff Creek. It shows a thinner “Bigfoot” walking through woods and glancing over its shoulder much as the 1967 figure does.

That clip is the centerpiece of Evans’s documentary Capturing Bigfoot, which premiered at SXSW on 12 March 2026 and opened on Prime Video and in some cinemas on 20 October 2026, the film’s 59th anniversary. It also carries interviews with Patterson’s son Clint, who says his mother told him years ago that the sighting was a hoax. The production paid a reported $30,000 to license the original 1967 film.

What is and isn’t shown

The 1967 film is real film, shot where and when Patterson and Gimlin said. The 2026 reel is offered as a rehearsal, and press coverage has run with “hoax exposed.” What’s public so far is the documentary’s own account: no independent dating of the reel has been published, and we haven’t seen the clip outside the film.

Sources

• Prime Video, Capturing Bigfoot (2026)
• XYZ Films, Capturing Bigfoot
• New York Post, “Original famed Bigfoot footage exposed as hoax after ‘rehearsal’ clip unearthed in new film” (10 Oct 2026)
• Wikipedia, “Capturing Bigfoot (2026 documentary)”
• Wikipedia, “Patterson–Gimlin film”

Weighing it

The Bluff Creek footage still carries the case, and its authenticity has been challenged for decades. The rehearsal reel is the strongest documentary challenge yet, but its dating has not been independently checked in public. The map pin marks the town of Orleans, not the film site.