A ‘Rehearsal’ Clip for the Most Famous Bigfoot Film?

What happened

Capturing Bigfoot, directed by Marq Evans, premiered at South by Southwest on 12 March 2026 and opened on 20 October, the 59th anniversary of the Bluff Creek film. At its center is a reel of 16mm film kept in a safe for decades. The NY Post (10 October) described it as a 40-second “test run,” “purportedly shot in 1966,” showing a Bigfoot walking through woods and “looking over its right shoulder in a very similar manner” to the 1967 film.

The footage

The reel appears in the documentary, distributed by XYZ Films. A copy is embedded in the NY Post’s 10 October article. No independent upload with a verifiable uploader is cited, and the sources give no timestamps within the reel. The NY Post says the reel shows “a more svelte, ape-like creature retreating into the woods slowly,” in a lush forest unlike the leafless 1967 setting. Variety’s review, describing the documentary as a whole, says Evans “finds the smoking gun.”

Timeline

• 20 October 1967: Patterson and Gimlin film at Bluff Creek.
• 1972: Patterson dies.
• 2017: According to the NY Post, Brooks comes into possession of the reel.
• Mid-June 2022: According to Evans, Brooks emails him about it.
• 12 March 2026: The documentary premieres at SXSW.
• 25 March 2026: Munns describes examining the reel.
• 10 October 2026: NY Post report.
• 20 October 2026: Release; LA Times and Variety coverage.

What witnesses reported

Brooks, a colleague of Evans at Olympic College, says in the film: “This film has been sitting in a safe for 50 years.” Her father worked in Boeing’s film department. She claims he was recruited into the hoax but never spoke publicly. Evans called the clip “a trial run, a rehearsal that was never discarded” (People, via Cryptid Map).

Patterson’s son Clint, on camera: “This is going to change everything about my dad’s film.” Greg Long, author of The Making of Bigfoot: “It’s a smoking gun, and thank God someone’s found it.” The longtime researcher Larry Lund: “That’s definitely faked and that’s definitely rehearsed.” The LA Times reports that Clint Patterson and Patterson’s widow confirmed on camera “for the first time that the whole thing was a hoax.”

What the research found

The stock. According to the SRO audit’s account of the 25 March 2026 Sasquatch Odyssey interview (about 15:49–17:41), Munns examined the physical reel under magnification. He identified Kodachrome II camera-original stock, “a Rochester manufacture mark coded 1966,” and traits he associated with a Kodak K-100 camera. The NY Post adds that “both films were shot on the same K-100 Kodak film camera.”