The Raconteur Presents CROSPEY Doc Film Screening w Director Barbara Brancaccio October 2, 2010

Don't miss the movie New York Magazine calls "Beyond disturbing..."

The Raconteur Presents

CROPSEY
With Director Barbara Brancaccio
Documentary Film Screening/Q&A

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 knew well the legend of Cropsey. For the kids in their neighborhood, Cropsey was an escaped mental patient who lived in the abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution. He had a hook for a hand and came out late at night to snatch children off the streets. As teenagers, the filmmakers assumed Cropsey was just a cautionary tale used to keep them out of the chain-linked Willowbrook woods and the shuttered school buildings. That changed the summer of 1987 when Jennifer Schweiger, a 12-year-old girl with Down syndrome, disappeared from their community. That was the summer the kids of Staten Island grimly understood their urban legend was real. In 2009 Joshua and Barbara returned home to shoot a feature doc exploring the mystery behind Jennifer, four other missing children, and Andre Rand, a former Willowbrook janitor/real-life bogeyman who lived in the tunnels under the vacant school and was ultimately linked to the disappearances.