FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1996

We are shown three pieces of film.

One: The first public viewing of the “Tent Sequence”.

Two doctors, one camera, one light. Someone else in dark clothes. A body under a sheet? It’s face is flat. Is is supposed to be a Grey?

Two: The “Main Autopsy”.

“For the avoidance of doubt we are presenting only parts verified to our satisfaction.” comes up on the screen, followed by much clearer footage than the confusing “Tent Sequence”. The doctors are in masks. This is “Body 2”, apparently (“reel 53”).

“Reel unnumbered. Body/leg.” Phone on wall. As in the last reel, the doctor is feeling the body and looking to the window. The camera is roving. There are actually two doctors in the room. An analogue clock is on the wall.

“Autopsy reel 56. Body/leg No.2” Body is cut open.

“Autopsy reel 59. Chest No.2” Insides glisten. Alien very easy-peel (but are people? I’ve never seen an autopsy of a human).

“Autopsy reel 61. Chest No.2” Behind the glass (the “window” I referred to above) is a third doctor. Fast- edit jump in a single shot. Weird sphere things - squishy. Everything is mush. Screen white-out.

“Autopsy reel 62. Head/eyes [No.2?]” Peeled off eyelids, left eye.

“Autopsy reel 63. Head No.2” Brain. Doctor waves to camera. Writes something down.

“Autopsy reel 64. Head No.2” Trying to get the brain out.

“Autopsy reel unnumbered. Brain.” Still in there. Brain in a tray - but still in head? Must be part-brain extraction?

Three: A German fake autopsy.

Three guys in masks. Alien old-man face. Big brain. Body washed down with garden hose. No genitals? One guy plays with an arm, and it almost falls off. Two guys are working on the body at once. Kitchen knives are on a table. The scalpel is not a scalpel. It is not even sharp. Not a good incision. Abdomen just rips open. The footage is uninterrupted. Gardening equipment is used. The insides of the body are damaged by their hands.

The debate: Philip Mantle (BUFORA) versus Rod Dickinson (artist and prop-maker, crop-circle maker)

Philip Mantle:

1. The Santilli film has nothing to do with Roswell. The film is dated thirty-first of May 1947, and from a different place.

2. Santilli contaced Mantle in 1993. The “Tent” film was seen by Mantle in 1995. The rest of is was screened in London in May 1995. The type of telephone in the film , with the curly cord, did exist in 1947. The story is that Ray Santilli had been researching old rock ‘n’ roll footage, when he came across the autopsy film, sold to him by its cameraman, who was also selling some Elvis footage. Santilli has kept some footage back and Mantle has seen it. Truman, according to Santilli, was in the film but that part “could not be processed”.

3. Kodak said the code of the film was from either 1927, ‘47 or ‘67.

4. The pathology report said that the alien is human but that the brain is not human.

5. The statement from the cameraman said that his boss was General Clarence McMullan. This man exists. His character fits the cameraman’s description.

6. The hand written labels from the film cannisters. UFOlogists Friedman and Schmit were amazed to see the official stamp of the Roswell base in 1947.

7. The telephone again - the curly flex was not standard, but you could get it if you paid extra.

8. The debris footage (which we did not see here, but have been on TV) - the British Museum said that they could not identify the symbols.

9. The pathologists who looked at the film included the unfortunately-named Professor Baloni. His opinion was that the creature is real. The “autopsy” techniques, however, were of a surgeon, not a pathologist. Another expert said that the hand movements were right and that the brain removal was accurate.

10. Michael Hessman, a cultural anthropologist, on instructions from Santilli, found Secorro New Mexico where the cameraman had said the filming took place.

11. Bob Shell, an American (and CIA) photo expert edits SHUTTERBUG magazine, the third biggest selling photography magazine in the world. He examined real pieces of the film and said that the stock is genuine 1947 stock. He has found witnesses including Native Americans who saw a “meteorite” in May 1947. In this time and place, newspaper archives are missing.

12. Santilli said Bronk (mentioned in the MJ-12 memo as one of MJ-12) was in charge. Bronk’s 1947 diaries are missing.

13. Morgana Productions sent stills to Union Pictures (who did the Channel 4 INCIDENT AT ROSWELL documentary), BUFORA and FORTEAN TIMES. These were fakes. Then came the photo of a fake alien being airbrushed. Morgana Productions (and that is not their real name) is a special effects company. Then came the fake autopsy film (froma German TV company who had been filiming BUFORA!)

14. Bob Shell said that Clinton asked some captain to investigate the film and its cameraman. This captain told Bob that at least part of the film was the genuine article.

2. General points about hoaxes: UFOlogists like to ignore hoaxes. Hoaxing is a strategy for making art. Artifice includes narratice and perception. Adamski, Ed Walters and Bruce Macobi (Gulf Breeze), crop circles etc. etc. - there have always been hoaxes linked to UFOlogy.

3. Is there anything in the film to show construction? The body in the “Main Autopsy” has raised shoulders - not prone. A dummy cast from a standing human! A silicon and latex horror creature - Steve Johnson’s Roswell movie had creatures made of silicon. Latex looks like but does not cut like skin. The cutting knife would have a tube on the blind side filled with blood. The film breaks when the knife has to be handed to another doctor. We never see the incision in the torse, only the line of blood. It happens off-camera. During the film break. The skin is folded on the chest. We didn’t see that happen! And that was what was so hilarious about the German film. The way the skin cuts is unrealistic.

4. Pathologists are not trained to tell real from false or to analyse film.

5. JURRASSIC PARK’s effects man, Stan Wilson, thinks the Santilli film is a fake. So does the aforementioned Steve Johnson.

6. The debris footage symbols symbols are a logo: “VIDEO TV”

7. The central player is Santilli. His statements are inconsistent. In early ‘95 he said he had crashed disc and terrain footage. The film stock and tone of composure Kodak offered to test - Santilli did not take up that offer. After the Fox and Ch4 documentaries we know that the film has not been analysed properly. France’s TV1 found the man who sold Santilli the Elvis footage in 1992 (not in 1993, as in Santilli’s story) in Cleveland. Jack Barnett was the cameraman, and died in 1967 and never was in the army. Hessman and others claim Santilli told them Truman was in the film. Hessman saw the film labelled with Truman’s name but he did not see Truman , though he said he had it in his possession. deliberately misleading? The Royal Society do not have computers to heighten the film quality, according to Santilli. This is antoher bogus story.

8. Philip Mantle had been quoted in the papers as describing the film as if he believed in it, twelve days before he actually saw it. He has, really, been promoting the film and working with Santilli since 1993. This very debate was not let happen at the last BUFORA conference.

9. The film was probably made three or four years ago. Dickinson praises it as a work of hoax-art.

Random points from the following open discussion:

Mantle said that the aliens could be human freaks. Also that a standard fixed-focus camera goes weird when it comes to a close-up. He said too that there is better footage Santilli has not released.

If the film was 1947 stock, it could not be special effects.

Hoaxes are not usuually motivated by government cover-up but are a creative endeavor. American UFOlogists are generally paranoid, therefore there is a feeling that the film is disinformation.

Turner Syndrome looks nothing like the creature.

The 1976 Shackleton snuff movie(s) hoax has been fed into a new rumour that the body is an altered human corpse.

No weighing scales in the autopsy.

There is a bunsen burner there... why? For sterilizing the knife???

Roswell Footage Ltd is a Santilli Company. Surely if the film is genuine there is no way Santilli & co could copyright it? But they’d “edited” it by putting in the text “Reel 63. Body No.2” etc. etc. They also had something called “first ownership”.

There was a vote taken of the audience on whether the film was a hoax or not. The vote was carried unanimously that it was a hoax.

POSTSCRIPT

1. The can labels bearing the military stamp have been exposed as bogus.

2. Irving tells a different version of the Royal Society story: that it was claimed (presumably by Santilli) that the Society WERE analysing the footage, but the truth of the matter , according to the Society, was that the Society didn’t have the “computer enhancement facility” and never agreed to assist in enhancing the film anyway.

UnConvention '96 reviews

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