Most viewers are probably familiar with this tape’s intriguing history. According to Ray Santilli, owner and distributor of the tape, he was approached in 1994 by a retired United States military photography who shot this footage while on duty in 1947. The purpose of the filming was to record an autopsy being conducted on an Alien corpse. After developing the film, the photographer was unable to get the military to take back the damaged or low quality film reels, so he kept them all these years until selling them to Ray Santilli in England.

The film shows the nude body of an Alien laid out on a table in a small white room, with a viewing window in the background to an adjoining observing room. Occasionally, the viewer catches a glimpse of at least one person moving behind the glass window in the observation room. The pathologist is wearing a head to toe white costume with full head helmet, as if to avoid contamination by bacteria or radiation.

The Alien has an oversized head, large eyes, tiny ears, inflated mid-section, no body hair, and the exterior appearance of female anatomy from a distance. The internal organs are unlike human organs according to Dr. Cyril Wecht, Chairman of Pathology at St. Francis Central Hospital. A dark thin film is removed from the Alien’s eyeball and dropped with tweezers into a pan. Interestingly, this dark thin film covering designed to slip directly over the eyeball, is reported in Col. Corso’s book, "The Day After Roswell." Corso reports this Alien technology was discovered on the eyeballs of the deceased Aliens at the Roswell crash site, thus launching the "discovery" of night vision scopes for the military.

The autopsy is performed in a stark, windowless, institutional room using metal tools from a metal pan on a metal table. A depression-style black wall phone and black round wall clock hang on the barren walls. Anyone having worked in an outdated state psychiatric hospital will recognize the decor instantly. The room used for the autopsy is reminiscent of an institutional setting built before 1920, the wall phone is vintage 1930’s, and the metal carts and equipment appear seasoned as well.

The autopsy footage spliced together to produce this video is low quality by nature of its origin. Camera angles are bad as well as focusing. Various individuals have debated the authenticity of the filming because of its low quality features. Skeptics criticize the camera man for his bad filming, while one special effects team felt they could duplicate it with a budget of several hundred dollars.

Stan Winston disagreed. He is an Academy Award Winning Creature Designer for "Jurassic Park," "Terminator 2," and "Aliens." Winston stated that, "[If it’s a fake], then I don’t know how they did this." Winston describes the difficulty in getting blood to drip evenly from a round skull incision during a special effect, but found the autopsy in the film performed accurately as he would expect.

Supporters of the videotape’s authenticity point out that the military issue Bell and Howell movie cameras of that era were fixed focus. Hence any walking around on the part of the camera man would quickly cause the image to go out of focus. Other criticisms have been aimed at the camera man for misjudging where he should step during the autopsy to get a better picture of the Alien.

One of the biggest arguments on TV and the Internet against the tape’s authenticity is centered on the clock. Skeptics argue the time keeps jumping backward and forward on the segments shown on TV. Those myths are put to rest as soon as the viewer watches the actual tape where time moves ahead as it should on this videotape. Segments shown on TV appear to go backwards because they are shown out of sequence.

Another argument has centered on why the autopsy began at 10:10 a.m. and not 8:a.m. sharp. This argument presumes that every surgical procedure starts at the beginning of a work shift, without time for preliminary preparations.

There are two valuable gems at the end of the video. First is a complete showing of all segments spliced together chronologically. The second and last bit of "silent" film is a steadily held camera photographing artifacts presumably from a crashed UFO. A man’s arm is glimpsed on occasion as he walks around various tables, lifting and pointing to different artifacts for the camera. Items are laid out and sorted for benefit of the camera. A control panel with impressions for six fingers match the Alien's six-fingered hands from the video. Control panels for at least two pairs of Aliens’ hands are shown. Other items known as "I-beams" have engraved characters on them, not unlike some crop circle markings. It is easy to imagine a translation of "Entrance" or "Exit" for some of these. Some of the characters appear to have Celtic origins.

Ironically, popular UFO groups and enthusiasts have had fun touting all the reasons why this videotape could not possibly be genuine. This news must be especially pleasing to military groups in charge of UFO cover-ups. No need to worry about how to kill the truth behind the videotape. The public has already done it for them!

The videotape is released through VidMark Entertainment and is also available as a video rental. Due to the graphic dissection process, this video is recommended for mature audiences. The videotape is worth watching.