| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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JEEPERS CREEPERS
Rating: 
USA/Germany/Italy. 2001.
Director/Screenplay – Victor Salva, Producers – Tom Luse & Barry Opper, Photography – Don E. FauntLeRoy, Music – Bennett Salvay, Visual Effects – E=MC2 (Supervisor – Bob Morgenroth), Special Effects Supervisor – Michael Arbogast, Makeup Effects – Makeup and Monsters Inc (Supervisor – Brian Penikas), Production Design – Steven Legler. Production Company – American Zoetrope/Cinerenta/Cenegenta/Medienbeteiligungs KG.
Cast:
Gina Philips (Trish Jenner), Justin Long (Derry Jenner), Jonathan Breck (The Creeper), Patricia Belcher (Jezelle Gay Hartman), Eileen Brennan (The Cat Lady)
Plot: Brother and sister Derry and Trish Jenner are driving home cross-country for Springbreak when they are harassed by a truck on a lonely country road. Shortly after they see the driver of the truck seemingly dumping dead bodies down a pipe. Investigating, Derry finds a pit beneath a church containing hundreds of bodies. But this draws the driver’s attention and it starts hunting them, tracing them by their scent. As they flee, it becomes increasingly apparent that they are dealing with a supernatural creature.
Jeepers Creepers is an interesting little horror film. It comes executive produced by no less than Francis Ford Coppola. Although the interesting credit is that of director Victor Salva. Victor Salva is a genre regular who made the great and underrated Clownhouse (1990), as well as the psychically gifted teen film Powder (1995), the excellent little-seen backroads psycho-thriller The Nature of the Beast (1995) and the interestingly philosophical Peaceful Warrior (2006). There is an invariable controversy that dogs Victor Salva, one that emerged during the release of Powder, which is that in 1988 Salva pled guilty to having sex with an twelve-year old boy. This news had parental groups trying to arrange boycotts of Powder. The controversy has thankfully evaporated by the time of Jeepers Creepers, perhaps because Salva is working making an R-rated horror film rather than a PG-rated family film. Personally one feels that Salva should be left alone after having served his time and shouldn’t be slammed for trying to get on with life and become a productive community member. Moreover one feels that an artist/filmmaker’s private tastes should have no real bearing on evaluating their work – any more so than say a president’s private affairs should affect his ability to govern a country. Nuff said about the issue – it shouldn’t concern us any more here. On with the review.
Jeepers Creepers isn’t quite the classic it seems to think it is – the promotional campaign even went to the extent of constructing a tv ad campaign that has Clive Barker saying so, while the film was (probably prematurely) called a modern horror classic by Cinefantastique. Salva certainly knows how to create horror and Jeepers Creepers is a well constructed rollercoaster ride of eerie shocks, grisly viscerality and unexpected slampunches. The Duel (1971)-like pursuit by the truck, the descent into the creeper’s lair and especially the spooky scene where the creeper attacks a cop car are all directed by someone who obviously has a flair for genre material. That said, the film never fully puts the screws on the audience – there’s some good shocks, but never a single sequence that the whole audience goes out buzzing about and becomes talked about for years afterwards, the way a classic should. Salva never conjures the genuinely haunting atmosphere that Clownhouse had. [Although he did in the much superior sequel].
Nor does Salva offer any particular explanation for the creeper, there’s never any level of subtext or symbolic function running beneath the film – which only really leaves Jeepers Creepers a well-made but standard issue monster movie. Being a postmodern, post-Scream (1996) horror movie, Jeepers Creepers is filled with characters comparing their situation to other horror movie situations, although thankfully Salva doesn’t start throwing in references to other films. The major negative note is the surprisingly abrupt ending. The film ends with one character abducted by the Creeper – in any other genre entry the film would’ve built to a climax with the other rescuing them but instead this just goes out on a surprisingly downbeat note that leaves most of the audience puzzled.
The film also has a number of similarities to a couple of other films that came out the same year, particularly The Forsaken (2001), which was also about people on an innocent backroads journey having to take on a motorized supernatural force, as well as the similar non-supernatural thriller Joy Ride (2001).
Jeepers Creepers proved to be quite a modest sleeper success and build up a strong reputation in video afterlife. Salva returned to make an even better sequel Jeepers Creepers II (2003). A Jeepers Creepers III has been touted for 2009, minus Victor Salva.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2001
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