Eammon Investigates The Alien Autopsy-This programme was shown on Sky one between 20:00-21:00 in the UK on Tuesday 4th April 2006.

The programme jumped about a lot, so this isn't in chronological order as it was broadcast.

It very briefly covered the background. In essence, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield claim that they were in Cleveland, Ohio in 1992 trying to obtain rare home movie footage of Elvis Presley. Santilli was contacted by an ex-US army cameraman, offering the Alien Autopsy film for an undisclosed price.

Santilli travelled to Clearwater, Florida to meet the cameraman. He didn't discuss this with Shoefield until he returned to Cleveland. Santilli examined the film and was convinced it was genuine, but he couldn't afford the price being asked.

3 years later, Santilli had sufficient funds, and purchased the 22 rolls of film, but found that the film had deteriorated in the intervening time and was virtually worthless. Shoefield supports this account, claiming to have been present in Santilli's office when he opened some of the cannisters, and recalled that the film smelled very strongly (he didn't specify what it smelled of). When Eammon asked Santilli how much he paid for the film, he replied "in your terms, not a lot of money". Santilli also said that he supplied copies of the film free to broadcasters. Ray Levine, editor of the "News of the World" in 1995 was interviewed and he said that Santilli offered him the film for sale, and the newspaper offered £50,000, but "There was a sort of a smoke and mirrors type of conversation between us and Ray Santilli, where he was coming up with all sorts of reasons why it couldn't be produced immediately". When Santilli realised that the film would need to be verified by experts and details published in the paper before he would receive any cash, he ceased to communicate with the NotW.

In order to recoup some of the investment, Santilli decided to "Restore" the film (essentially recreate it, using dummies and props). He claims that "less than 5%" of the film he released to the media was from the original footage, and that he can no longer identify which frames are from the original. He showed Eammon a few frames of the original film (it wasn't shown in any detail on the TV) The remainder of the original film is in the posession of an anonymous backer in Germany. Santilli said "I wasn't involved in the world of ufology, you know, my concerns were strictly commercial at the time, because I thought it was a great opportunity, and I was looking at footage which really was a difficult sell, and I thought, well, if we're going to make any money out of it, we need to find a different answer, which is why we restored it".

The dummy was created over three-and-a-half weeks by sculptor and SFX designer John Humphreys (who I thought bore an uncanny resemblance to the "alien", perhaps he used his own face as a model). The organs were made from sheep and chicken offal (including the brain, which was a sheep's brain encased in jelly), the leg injury made use of a sheep bone joint. The set was a terraced house in Camden Town, London. The actors included Santilli, Shoefield, Humphreys, and one of Shoefield's employees, Gareth Watson.

Props (including the camera) were carefully chosen so as to be appropriate for the time-period, and care was taken to ensure that they didn't appear to be "antiques". The "debris" was also manufactured by Humphreys, according to him, based on usable stills from the original footage, but according to Santilli, "we're not expert enough to know [what] the original heiroglyphics were and in fact the imagery wasn't that clearly defined for us to be able to emulate it". The 6-fingered palm print was "artistic licence".

The first attempt to "restore" the film failed, and a second dummy had to be created. (In fact, Humphreys made no mention of there being two dummies on-screen, only Santilli did). When the dummies were finished with, Humphreys said it was disposed of by being cut into small pieces and burnt. According to Santilli they were cut into small pieces and placed in plastic sacks which were dumped in different locations in London.

Santilli was quite insistent that "I didn't fake alien footage... no, we restored it", and compared it with the restoration of the Mona Lisa and the Sistine chapel!

Santilli still refuses to name the cameraman, claiming that he promised not to do so. During the "restoration", under pressure from people to identify the cameraman, Shoefield faked an interview with him in a hotel room in Los Angeles - just a character picked up on the street.

Somehow, I doubt that the cameraman ever existed - Santilli could easily have duped his co-restorers into believing that he did. No-one other than Santilli saw the 'original' film in good condition. On the other hand, all of those involved in the programme might have been 'got at' by MI5/CIA/MFI/C&A and forced to debunk the true story.....

Cheers,

Joe McGonagle

Related Article: See The Alien Autopsy Film

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