8 PM, Sat. Oct 2
CROPSEY
W/Director Barbara Brancaccio
Film Screening/On Stage Conversation/Q&A
First Presbyterian Social Hall
A real-life multiple-murder tale that could have been called "A Guide to Recognizing Your Boogeyman," Cropsey is the scariest movie you'll see this year.
Growing up on Staten Island, filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio had often heard the legend of ‘Cropsey.’ For the kids in their neighborhood, Cropsey was an escaped mental patient who lived in the old abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution. He would come out late at night and snatch children off the streets. Sometimes Cropsey had a hook for a hand, other times he wielded a bloody axe or a gleaming machete, but whatever the implement, Cropsey was always out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to get them.
Later as teenagers, the filmmakers assumed Cropsey was just an urban legend: a cautionary tale used to keep them out of those abandoned buildings and stop them from doing all those things that teenagers like to do. That all changed in the summer of 1987 when a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, named Jennifer Schweiger, disappeared from their community. That was the summer all the kids from Staten Island discovered that their urban legend was real.
Now as adults Joshua and Barbara have returned to Staten Island to create CROPSEY, a feature documentary that delves into the mystery behind Jennifer and four additional missing children. The film also investigates Andre Rand, a former Willowbrook janitor/real-life bogeyman who lived in the tunnels under the school and was ultimately linked to the disappearances.
Embarking on a mysterious journey into the underbelly of their forgotten borough, the filmmakers uncover a reality more terrifying than any urban legend. Tickets on sale NOW. $10 & $15. Click HERE to purchase online. Click HERE for more info about CROPSEY. NOTE: This event is at the Social Hall of the First Presbyterian Church, 270 Woodbridge Ave (adjacent to the cemetery),Metuchen, NJ 08840.
Middlesex County College & The Raconteur present
NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE
8 PM, Thurs - Sat, OCT 21 - 30
(special midnight show on Mischief Night)
Based on the 1923 German Expressionist film by F. W. Murnau (in turn, based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula), Alex Dawson's stage adaptation additionally draws on Chinese shadow-play, Shakespeare, and explorer/orientalist Richard Burton's translation of Hindu vampire fables to tell the story of the moon-headed, rat-fanged Count Orlock looking for love even as he brings a boatload of Black Death to a German village. From the team that brought you last year's unsettling hit A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, with makeup by Tom Savini alumnus Dan Diana, the production, which opens with the terrifying image of the eponymous Nos suspended fifteen feet above the audience, will make even the swooniest Twilight fan forget RobPat and his teen beat vamps. The Studio Theater @ MCC 2600 Woodbridge Ave., Edison, NJ 08818. All tickets $10. Click HERE for more info and to purchase online.
