Cinema Purgatorio Unleashing Cropsey
No, not the burned and scarred killer from the slasher classic The Burning (who incidentally looked way scarier than the new Freddy Krueger that is now haunting the nightmares of people who like good movies); we’re talking about the really creepy documentary that debuted at last year’s Tribeca.
Cinema Purgatorio announced today that “the spine-tingling documentary Cropsey, which peels back the layers of fact and fiction behind one of New York’s most disturbing unsolved mysteries, will debut theatrically on Friday, June 4, at New York City’s IFC Center before spreading to Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, Boston, and additional bookings through Cinema Purgatorio.”
Gravitas Ventures has picked up North American VOD rights to the documentary feature, which became available nationwide on VOD beginning May 1, 2010.
Synopsis
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 the escaped mental patient who lived in the old abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution, who 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, but it didn’t matter, 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 13-year-old girl with Down’s 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, the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearances.
Embarking on a mysterious journey into the underbelly of their forgotten borough, these filmmakers uncover a reality that is more terrifying than any urban legend.
Check out the trailer below and for more information dig on the official Cropsey website.
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