WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN?
The Alien Autopsy Scandal
‘Our current dystopia is crafted by big characters who have figured out that bigger lies are easier to sell because their audience wants to believe’
So writes Rhik Samadder in his Guardian review of The Alien Autopsy Scandal that premieres on SkyDocumentaries on Friday 12 June.
In the three-part series, directed by John Dower, I appear as a journalist who got caught up in the initial media frenzy that preceded its public release. The Sky doc coincides with the release of Spielberg’s alien blockbuster Disclosure Day that, along with the Pentagon’s release of new files, heralds a summer of UFO nostalgia.
Dower’s series tackles the twists and turns of the grainy black and white footage that was supposed to show an autopsy on the corpse of an extraterrestrial killed when a flying saucer crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Spielberg’s movie features the Roswell crash as the back-story to the popular themes of disclosure and government secrecy that form part of the contemporary mythology surrounding UFOs.
Interestingly, a new survey released by Sky reveals half of Brits (52%) say they would be more sceptical of UFO footage released today than they were in the 1990s. But belief dies hard. The survey also reveals that, despite high levels of distrust among Gen Z in particular, more than half (60%) continue to believe governments are hiding evidence of UFOs and alien life. And as my own National Folklore Survey revealed last year, 24% of people living in England – approximately ten million – say they believe governments have successfully covered up the crashes of an alien spacecraft, primarily in the USA.
During The X-Files era of the mid-1990s the search was renewed for hard evidence to confirm these beliefs – and what better confirmation could there be than actual footage of the autopsy carried out on the alien pilots? This idea inspired a group of English media entrepeneurs, who asked themselves: wouldn’t it be great to have some Roswell footage?’. Indeed it would! And although it looks risible today, the alien autopsy footage released in 1995 had a deep cultural impact upon our ideas and folklore about the nature and appearance of aliens and government cover-ups.
Three decades later, images of the aliens from the autopsy crop up frequently in tabloid news stories about UFOs. In 2006 it inspired of a British-made movie starring celebrity comedians and TV presenters Ant & Dec in 2006. The footage itself appeared during the build-up to the fiftieth anniversary of the Roswell incident. The media sensation that followed was the culmination of decades of rumours about the existence of irrefutable proof, in the form of colour movies showing aliens and flying saucers, all hidden from the American people by the CIA. Since that time several highly-placed journalists and film-makers, including Steven Spielberg, have revealed they were shown clips from these top secret films by US government sources.
According to expert Philip Mantle, author of the definitive history of the legend, it was my exclusive story that tipped off the international media to what became a huge ‘silly season‘ story. In his book, Roswell Alien Autopsy: the truth behind the film that shocked the world, he writes:
‘The first the public was to learn about the film was on January 14th, 1995, when [Reg Presley, the late lead singer of The Troggs] was interviewed on a BBC Breakfast TV show. He surprised everyone by announcing what he had seen – a film of “real, live aliens”
Footage of Presley’s revelation on the sofa of the daytime show Good Morning With Anne and Nick features in episode 1 of the new Sky series. But as Philip points out, there was no great reaction to this earth-shaking announcement as daytime television did not have a huge audience. But soon afterwards he tracked down the owner of the footage, Ray Santilli – who describes himself as a ‘music entrepreneur’ – and arranged to see several clips from what became the autopsy film. Mantle continues, saying that he asked:
‘….[Ray] Santilli if he would show it at a British UFO Research Association conference I was organising in Sheffield for August that year [1995]. Surprisingly, Santilli agreed. Shortly after this I received a phone call from local journalist and long-time UFOlogist David Clarke, of the Sheffield Star – one of Britain’s biggest newspapers. Clarke… asked for a few quotes on the proposed August conference. I gave him a few lines and, as an off-the-cuff remark, noted that an ‘alien autopsy’ film was to be shown as an exclusive.
Clarke published his article and I was subsequently contacted by White’s Press Agency in Sheffield. They wanted to know more about the AA film and I answered their questions – never expecting anything to come of it. Within hours… [my] phone began to ring off the hook.The story was out. The conference sold out in no time and Santilli was besieged by journalists, UFO researchers and TV companies…’
The weekend of 18-19 August 1995 saw the first public screening of the film in Sheffield Hallam University’s Pennine Lecture Theatre during the British UFO Research Association’s 8th international congress. Tickets sold out and television news crews from around the world were camped outside in Hallam Square eager to interview the key players in the breaking story.
When I arrived on assignment to get a scoop for the Sheffield Star, the media frenzy was in full swing. Television crews from as far afield as China travelled to the city for the world exclusive. In the weeks that preceded the television spectacle, the media sought out expert opinions from pathologists and special effects technicians. Everyone who entered the sold-out sessions that afternoon had their bags searched by security staff employed by Santilli’s team.
Philip told me: ‘While showing the film you could have heard a pin drop and there was even a lady down the front quietly sobbing. The place was packed and we even had to hire another room where the whole conference was broadcast via CCTV’.
So what did I make of the film?
To say I was underwhelmed is an under-statement. My attempts to quiz Santilli during the brief Q&A afterwards were swatted away with a response that ‘it [the film] had not been proved to be a hoax’.
The headline almost wrote itself: ‘Alien film a FAKE says movie wizard’
My story, published on page 1 on 18 August, 1995, did not reveal the author of the hoax. But it was prescient in identifying the source: someone within the movie special effects industry. It featured comments from special effects designer Cliff Wallace, who worked at Pinewood Studios and had formed his own company, Creature FX, in the early 1990s. Wallace carefully scrutinised the film, along with colleagues. They spotted what appeared to be a seam that ran down one arm of the creature. That immediately suggested it was a life-like dummy.
‘The film is a fake – there’s no doubt about it,’ he told me. ‘It’s been done very cleverly by someone within our profession but there is no possibility that it could have been filmed in 1947’.
It turned out that Wallace was correct. But the truth about the film did not emerge until decades later. One by one, the team confessed to their respective roles in filming the fake autopsy that was made using a dummy filled with animal innards, inside a flat in Camden, central London. In 1999 the Mail on Sunday revealed additional footage, that was supposed to show a tent in which the bodies were stored before the autopsy, were made by a separate team at a farm in Bedfordshire. This was meant to feature a cameo appearance by President Harry Truman, played by the farmer who hosted film crew on his land.
But in the Sky documentary Ray Santilli claims that he really saw genuine alien autopsy footage during his trip to the USA. He claims, unconvincingly, this had deteriorated so much that he and friends set about a restoration that incorporated a few frames that dated from 1947. Rik Samadder, in his Guardian review, describes Santilli’s contributions to The Alien Autopsy Scandal as vibrating ‘with nervousness and a perpetual smirk’, adding that ‘he looks as trustworthy as a wolf selling a secondhand red hood’.
Stu Neville, writing in Fortean Times, compares Santilli’s attempts to keep the legend alive with the long-running hoax perpetrated by two West Yorkshire schoolgirls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. Their photographs of fairies dancing in Cottingley beck caused a sensation when they were endorsed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during the 1920s. Six decades later the two octagenarians confessed the photos were indeed faked. But ‘crucially…the girls maintained until their dying days that there actually had been fairies, which they had tried to photograph’ as they wanted people to believe in them and one photo was, in fact, genuine.
Back in 1995 Santilli made deals with television and video distributors before the film was screened by Channel 4’s Secret History series on 28 August 1995. Long before competition from streaming platforms this was a unique televisual event that was witnessed by an estimated six million people in the UK, nearly half the British TV audience at that time. It was shown simultaneously, in the USA, in a Fox special hosted by Jonathan Frakes, the actor who played Commander Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Fox network presented the footage in the style of a circus ringmaster: ‘…some claim the government recovered alien bodies at Roswell…see unbelievable footage of an alien autopsy and decide for yourself if it’s a hoax, or the most compelling evidence of life on other planets’.
The Fox version attracted 11.7 million viewers for the initial broadcast and the footage was sold to broadcasters in 33 countries. Santilli claims his proof of Roswell footage has since been viewed by more than 1.2 billion people across the world, both across global broadcast networks and subsequent home video releases.
Won’t get fooled again? Don’t you bet on it.
Your comparison with the Cottingley Fairies case is very apt I think.