It’s the Nightmare Before Halloween!
A Brooklyn filmmaker has turned her porch into a surgical torture chamber teeming with mutilated baby dolls—a display gruesome enough to terrify kids and turn stomachs.
But Joyce Draganosky said her ghastly Halloween creche is all in good fun – and popular with children.
“Every year the neighbors look forward to it. The kids say, ‘More gore! More blood!’ This is my neighborhood. I’m not going to hurt kids,” Draganosky, 52, told the Post.
Anyone strolling along Bergen Street in leafy Boerum Hill is in for a shock at her stoop: a collection of creatively butchered infant dolls and — their tormenter— a grinning, pumpkin-headed surgeon.
Draganosky, who makes non-scary documentaries and short films for a living, said she and her partner do Halloween displays every year. This year’s creep show went up Sunday, and Draganosky said she she’d take it down if neighbors tell her she’s gone too far — in fact, she was removing a few macabre props while chatting with the Post, and she wondered aloud whether somebody might take offense.
Gothamist quoted one unnamed passer-by panning the display: “Wow. That’s f—ed up. They must not have kids. This really reflects poorly on Brooklyn and this neighborhood.”
Neighbors interviewed by the Post stuck up for the medical monsterpiece.
“There’s always gonna be somebody who’s like, ‘Waa, waa, it’s too scary to walk down Bergen Street.’ I don’t think the kids here have a problem with it,” said Becky Freeman, 31, a flight attendant. “It’s playful and creative. It’s not realistic or anything. I’ve actually been telling people, go by and look at it.”
“It’s just Halloween,” said Bob Florin, 70, a retired small business owner. “You’re entitled to decorate if you want to. I’ve lived here for 44 years. It’s not like the kids are gonna walk around and scream because of this. We get a kick out of what they do every year. If the kids are frightened, walk on the other side of the street.”
Another local thought the neighborhood could use a good jolt: “I’m always for controversy,” said retired social worker Irv Abelman, 72. “I understand the potential for scaring the children.”