The Alien Autopsy Film

Summary

In May 1995 Ray Santilli, a British music and video producer, announced that he had acquired footage of an autopsy performed on a non-human body, said to have been shot in 1947 and secretly copied by a retired military cameraman. He described twenty-two reels, twenty-one safety prints and a negative, bought for a hundred thousand dollars. Fox broadcast it on 28 August 1995, drawing an 8.1 audience share.

On 4 April 2006 Santilli and his partner admitted on Sky One that they had made the footage. It was shot in a flat in Camden, using a manikin filled with sheep’s brains and other animal parts from Smithfield market. In 2018 a magician, Spyros Melaris, said he had led the team that made it. No original reel has ever been produced for anyone to examine.

What is documented

The claim, as made. Twenty-two reels, twenty-one safety prints and one negative, acquired from a retired military cameraman who had secretly copied the film about forty years earlier. Santilli said he paid a hundred thousand dollars, and that he had been offered it while in the United States buying Elvis Presley and early rock and roll footage.

What was shown. By the count of C. Eugene Emery Jr., writing in The Skeptical Inquirer, only three or four minutes of a purported seventeen were actually shown. Fox aired the programme three times in 1995, including an uncensored version.

What critics said at the time. Emery also questioned why the brain came out so easily with no severed connective tissue, and asked why experts were being invited to judge whether the film could have been faked in 1947 rather than in 1995. He was fair about its quality: "The snippets the producers chose to air looked convincing in many ways." The anatomist Paul O’Higgins of University College London observed that "To judge from the film, the autopsy was carried out in a couple of hours", adding, "We are expected to believe we casually cut them up in an afternoon."

Santilli in 1995. "We didn’t hoax it, 100 percent sure."

The admission, 4 April 2006. On "Eamonn Investigates: The Alien Autopsy film", broadcast on Sky One, Santilli and Gary Shoefield admitted they had created the 1995 footage. Asked how much came from the original film, Santilli answered: "Less than 5%." They said the original stock had deteriorated by the time they raised the money to buy it, so what they produced was a restoration.

The cameraman. The man filmed reading a statement verifying that he was the original cameraman was, as the 2006 programme revealed, a man "picked up off the street and given lines to speak to camera", in David Clarke’s words. The revelation came in the same programme in which Santilli and Shoefield admitted making the footage.

How the body was made. In Clarke’s account, a model maker built the manikin "in just three and a half weeks", even though the first one did not work and a new one had to be made. It was filled with sheep’s brains in jelly and other animal parts, "all bought from Smithfield market". The sculptor John Humphreys, whom Clarke calls the unsung hero of the film, also played the surgeon, and smeared animal blood on the unseen side of his surgeon’s knife to simulate bleeding.

The 2018 account. Spyros Melaris, a magician, said he led the team that made the film, using a foam sculpture filled with offal, animal organs and pig brains, shot in his then-girlfriend’s house in Camden. His details differ from those in Clarke’s account: pig brains rather than sheep’s, and a house rather than a flat. His stated motive: "As a magician, I wanted to create the biggest illusion ever performed on a global stage", and the film "had to be correct in every aspect" in look, feel, props, costumes and detail.

The Kodak episode. Santilli said he sent part of the film to Kodak, and that Kodak replied it could have been made in 1927, 1947 or 1967. Those are three candidate years spanning forty years, which authenticates nothing. The sample examined was a portion of negative never shown to come from the autopsy footage, and Melaris later said he had spliced footage onto an old newsreel specifically to mislead Kodak staff.

What happened next. Three days after the admission, on 7 April 2006, a comedy feature fictionalising the making of the footage opened in British cinemas. Santilli was its executive producer.

Leading explanations

A staged production made in London in 1995 (established). Shot in a Camden flat with a sculpted manikin filled with animal parts, a man picked up off the street playing the cameraman, and a sculptor playing the surgeon. Admitted by the makers in 2006, and claimed in 2018 by a magician who says he led the team.

Santilli’s restoration claim (rejected). That genuine 1947 footage existed but had deteriorated, and that less than five per cent of the broadcast version came from it. No original footage has ever been produced. Nothing in the film’s provenance predates 1995. The Kodak dating returned three candidate years forty years apart, on a fragment never shown to be part of the autopsy footage, which the production’s own leader says was spliced onto a newsreel to mislead.

Authentic 1947 footage (rejected by the man who claimed it). Santilli’s original position, maintained until 2006.

Current status

Debunked. The film was made in London in 1995 and the people who made it have said so: Santilli and Shoefield on television in April 2006, and Melaris, who says he led the team, in 2018. One narrow question is still live, and it belongs to Santilli alone: whether any genuine 1947 footage ever existed, of which he claims less than five per cent survives in the broadcast version. That claim has no support. No original reel has been produced in more than thirty years, nothing in the provenance predates 1995, and the Kodak dating cited for it was performed on a fragment that Melaris says was spliced onto old newsreel to mislead. Production of any of the twenty-two claimed reels for independent examination, with edge codes and emulsion analysis by a film archivist, would settle it. So would identification of the cameraman as a real person with a service record, rather than the stand-in the 2006 programme revealed.

Last reviewed: November 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.