Hoaxes and Other Mischief: The “Alien Autopsy” Film

The “Alien Autopsy” Film

Buzz about film footage of a lifeless Roswell extraterrestrial under the knife (and bone saw) of human pathologists began in 1993, when the film’s existence leaked—or was leaked—to the UFO community. The prospect was frankly exciting: official military footage of the 1947 postmortem examination of a Roswell alien. The 16mm film belonged to Ray Santilli, a British record producer and film distributor who owned a company called Merlin Communications. Santilli announced his possession of the footage with some fanfare, claiming that he had acquired it for $100,000 from the elderly (and anonymous), ex-Army Air Forces camera operator that had shot it. (The same man, Santilli said, also shot top-secret footage of the first A-bomb “Trinity” test in July 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico.) Santilli hoped to sell television rights for a smart sum, and decided to “tease” the footage with a screening for specially invited opinion makers at the Museum of London. The May 5, 1995, audience numbered about one hundred, and included notables from the worlds of religion and science. According to some accounts of the showing, many in the audience were chopfallen—simply amazed as a surgeon’s scalpel cut into the flesh and probed the organs of a deceased humanoid from another world. Others in the audience, though, were skeptical, and suspected that they had been cast as unwitting players in a stunt.

As indeed they had. Santilli built on the initial hubbub generated in London and successfully pitched his footage to America’s Fox television network. The autopsy footage—positioned as the heart of a sixty-minute program hosted by latter-day Star Trek actor Jonathan Frakes—aired on Fox stations on Monday, August 28, 1995, as Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? The show performed strongly in the ratings, pleasing the network and delighting advertisers.

Of course, the centerpiece autopsy was phony.

The procedure supposedly took place at Carswell Air Force Base, near Fort Worth, some weeks after the crash at Roswell. Right off the bat, Santilli’s credibility was in question, because his early promotion quoted the old photographer as saying the footage was shot at a dry lake bed near White Sands, New Mexico.

To fill out the program’s running time, various experts appear in talking-head cameos. Their presence framed the show and provided some credibility (UFOlogists Stanton Friedman and Kevin Randle were among the guests). The autopsy footage was shot without audio, on grainy, black-and-white film stock.

People present in the footage wear surgical gowns and masks. Voice-over narration (added by Santilli) identifies the autopsy physicians as Lloyd Berkner and Detlev Bronk.