The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
LET’S TALK ABOUT HORROR
Props to Elvira, Danny Elfman, Dita Von Teese and many more for braving ‘The Boo Crew’ house
Down a quiet street in a neighborhood in suburban Burbank, California, there’s a house that contains frightening secrets. If you’re thinking, this is how most horror movies begin, well, you’re right.
Once through the front door, past the life-size Harry Potter and Voldemort figures locked in battle and the 5-foot snake statue from “Beetlejuice,” there’s a secret door — and behind it you’ll find the Speakeasy Studio, where Trevor and Lauren Shand, along with friend Leone D’Antonio, record and produce “The Boo Crew” podcast.
Getting into the studio is no easy feat. You need to know which book to pull on a massive bookcase to unlock the hidden lair.
They’ve welcomed a wide variety of guests into their home for the podcast, including film composer and Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman, horror icon Elvira, My Chemical Romance vocalist and “The Umbrella Academy” creator Gerard Way, actors and musicians Kevin Bacon and Juliette Lewis, and burlesque performer Dita Von Teese. The Shand house is also filled with movie props and other collectibles they’ve purchased through movie house auctions or eBay, so they give tours to guests, walking them among the items, artwork and costumes you might recognize from movies and TV shows.
“It’s funny when people come into the house and they’re just so taken aback by everything,” Trevor Shand said. “Danny Elfman came in and started looking around and he was asking us questions, which was crazy. All of the props definitely help get the conversations going.
“There’s something within the collection that everyone who walks through the door gravitates toward, whether they’re a ‘Harry Potter’ fan or they’ll find stuff from their favorite movie. We’ve even surprised filmmakers when they come in by showing them things from their own films that they didn’t know still existed or they thought had been thrown out,” he said.
The Shands, who’ve been married 14 years, met while working at radio station KROQ (106.7 FM) in Los Angeles. Lauren Shand worked on “Loveline,” and Trevor Shand is still there as the imaging producer and voiceover artist for the station; he records all of his work out of the house as well.
They turned their love of all things horror into “The Boo Crew,” which launched in 2017. Since then, the podcast’s audience has grown significantly, becoming part of the horror-centric Bloody Disgusting group in 2019.
During the pandemic, the Shands and D’Antonio were asked to turn the podcast into a TV show so fans could watch through Bloody Disgusting’s streaming service.
“The idea for the podcast came from us and a big group of friends going to see horror movies all of the time, and we’d spend more time talking about the movie after the movie than the length of the entire thing,” Trevor Shand said as we stood in front of a large cabinet that housed over a dozen ventriloquist’s dummies that would sporadically, and eerily, shift their heads in our direction.
The studio itself took more than two years to complete with the help of a panic room company, and the devils are truly in its details: It’s completely hidden away and soundproof thanks to a variety of sound panels wrapped with acoustically transparent canvas disguised as elaborately framed Victorian-era artwork. The copper-colored tin ceiling normally wouldn’t be ideal for acoustics, but it’s punched with thousands of holes, with soundproofing above. A large, dark wood desk had to be constructed inside the room, and all of the equipment was specially made, including keyboards that look like old typewriters and a computer mouse that resembles an old Morse
code telegraph key.
There’s also a piano in the room that has encouraged certain guests to explore their musical talents; Alex Wolff from the 2018 horror movie “Hereditary” was inspired to write a song about his experience on the podcast.
“He got on the piano and made up a song about us killing people and chopping them up into little pieces,” Lauren Shand said with a laugh, noting that the actor, who also stars in the latest “Jumanji” films, was a huge hit with their 12-, 9-, 6- and 4-year-old kids.
“The kids don’t recognize a lot of people that come in, but they were so excited about him,” she said of Wolff, who is a singersongwriter as well as an actor and producer. “He was so sweet. He played basketball with my son, so that was one of the more memorable ones for me.”
Trevor Shand said he loves to talk to horror film directors. Mike Flanagan, who directed “Hush” and “Doctor Sleep,” stopped by to check out the prop collection, which includes several pieces from his Netflix film “The Haunting of Hill House,” like the actual, fullsize forbidden red door that sits at the end of the Shands’ hallway. Flanagan even gave the couple a mirror used in his movie “Oculus.”
Trevor Shand was also excited to meet Diablo Cody, writer and producer of one of his favorite horror-comedy films, “Jennifer’s Body.”
There are numerous items from that film around the house, including lead actress Megan Fox’s costumes and one of Trevor Shand’s most prized props, a siliconebust of Fox that was used in the film as she transformed into her monstrous form to eat boys. That was a difficult prop to find, but after years of searching, Lauren Shand found it and gifted it to her husband for Christmas just last year.
“We had Megan Fox in as a guest and she was amazing and a surprise, because she grew up with a father who did exorcisms,” Trevor Shand said. “She has an interest in all of that stuff on a way higher level, to a point where she said she couldn’t watch horror movies because they disturbed her so much because of the reality side of her upbringing. So that was fascinating to listen to.”
For the past year, they’ve been bringing various guests onto the podcast via Zoom, including musicians Phoebe Bridgers and Kesha, bands like Royal Blood and Anthrax, and actors Emile Hirsch, Devon Sawa and Kathryn Newton.
“The podcast actually picked up so much during this time,” Trevor Shand said. “We were doing like one podcast every two weeks to now two or three a week. It is fun, but the whole reason we built this studio was to have people actually in here. We’re wanting to get back to that and we’re almost there. Directors and film companies are starting to release their movies in theaters now, so we’ll have guests back in here soon.”
They’ve done hundreds of interviews at this point, but the Shands still have a list of guests they’re dying to invite over.
“Guillermo del Toro,” Trevor Shand said. “He’s at the top of the list because yes, he’s a director, but he’s also a collector like us and I would love to talk to him just about that.”
“I want to talk to Edgar Wright, who directed ‘Shaun of the Dead,’ or actors Simon Pegg or Nick Frost. … ‘Shaun of the Dead’ is my favorite movie,” Lauren Shand added. “But also, I love Death Cab for Cutie. I don’t know if they’re horror fans, but death is in the name.”