September 20, 2018
Written by: Victor Salva
Starring: Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck
Budget: $10,000,000
Quote: "You know the part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it."
Trivia: Victor Salva has always said the Creeper legend is complete fiction but the scene where Trish and Darry witness the Creeper dumping a body down a well by an abandoned church was inspired by the case of Dennis DePue, a former Michigan Property Assessor who murdered his wife and was seen by witnesses near an old school house with a bloody sheet.
Jeepers Creepers came out the year I graduated high school and was really big with a lot of my friends but I never gave it a chance. After watching it seventeen years later, I'm kind of bummed that I missed out on a fun film with an incredible beginning. The film does lose a lot of steam towards the end and the more the show of the creeper, the less creepy he gets, but it is still a pretty unique and entertaining movie. I also really like that the two main protagonists are brother and sister instead of boyfriend and girlfriend, which has been done to death in teen horror flicks (the director Victor Salva chose this to avoid sexual tension and instead focus on them trying to survive). I also am fascinated by mythologies and Salva creates a really interesting one with the Creeper. We have a modern myth in the vein of Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil.
The first ten to fifteen minutes of the film are absolutely flawless. It begins in the car with brother and sister Darry (Justin Long) and Trish (Gina Philips) who are travelling home during spring break through Florida. The two banter as siblings will helping to demonstrate the bond between the two, giving some backstory, and generally making the audience like the two college kids. However, very soon, an old rusted truck nearly runs them off the road with its erratic and dangerous maneuvers eventually passing them. Later they see the truck parked outside of an abandoned church and a tall figure wearing a hat and duster is carrying something human sized wrapped in a red stained blanket and tossing them into a large pipe that goes into the ground. Tension mounts as they are suddenly spotted now making them witness to whatever the tall man is doing. What is great is that we only get a silhouette of the figure making him seem both imposing and otherworldly. As they speed away they are trailed by the truck which this time is successful in running them off the road. Despite his sisters warnings, Darry decides to drive back to the church to look in the pipe and see if anyone is there that might need help. The thoughts of the viewer are echoed by Trish who mentioned that this is the moment in horror movies when a character does something dumb and the audience hates them for it (getting meta!). Darry ends up falling through the pipe landing at the bottom where he discovers the body in the sheet is not completely dead but is stitched up around his stomach. It is also at this moment when he realizes that the walls and ceilings are lined with hundreds of stitched up human bodies. Darry eventually escapes and he and his sister go to a diner to call the police.
If the movie had stopped here, this would have been one of the greatest shorts filmed. The filmmakers did an incredible job building the tension from the first run-in with the truck, to witnessing the dumping of bodies, to being ran off the road, and finally to revisiting the church. Knowing that the tall man could come back at any moment makes the scene especially anxiety causing. The final discovery of the bodies lining the wall also take the film to a higher level. We realize that this is not just a slasher flick but something supernatural. What exactly we are dealing with it unknown at this point and that is what is so terrifying. Also, The Creeper is no more than a dark figure or a maniac behind the wheel of a truck. Our imaginations are allowed to run wild with regards to what he did to the people he threw down the pipe. This is the climax of the film and unfortunately the next hour is unable to achieve this same level of excitement.
At the diner, Darry and Trish get a call from a psychic who warns them about the song Jeepers Creepers and asks him about cats (both of these will come later in the film). The creeper kills a bunch of cops before being ran over a bunch of times by Trish. We then get to see his true form... he's like a bug man or something. The psychic explains that he is a creeper demon that feeds every twenty three years, searches for his victims by smelling their fear, and uses what he feeds upon to create himself (you are what you eat). Despite being all jacked up from being ran over a bunch of times, the creeper is able to limp his way to a few victims. With a belly full of people he is once again ready to battle Darry and Trish. There is something about Darry that he really likes. Darry and Trish get protection from a bunch more really bad police officers who shoot the hell outta some stairs but don't hit the creeper. In a not so romantic scene, the creeper takes Darry and flies him away to his lair where he can eat, kill, or whatever him, while Trish feels like a failed big sister.
There are some really great moments in this second and third acts. At one point, the creeper has decapitated a police officer and from a car Darry and Trish watch as he spends a long time smelling the head before eating the tongue out of its skull. It's both disgusting and fascinating for the characters and the viewers. In one of the films more bloody moments, a police officer enters a jail cell to find two scared prisoners watching as the creeper eats the flesh of their fellow inmate. A demon that smells fear and consumes human flesh makes for a scary monster.
The problem with the film is that after that amazing first part, the rest of the movie lacks that tension so it seems slow in comparison. Also, the more we see of the creeper, the less mysterious, interesting, and frightening it becomes. There are too many moments where we get close up views of his face and it disappoints what our imaginations created in that beginning scene. Plus, when it is shown that he is a bug demon monster thing, it doesn't add to how frightening it is, but on the contrary just makes it seem goofier. I do not mean to disparage the entire film. Even the last two thirds of the movie were enjoyable to watch. It is just a bit disappointing after the greatness of the beginning... also this is neither here nor there, but this was written/directed by the same guy who wrote/directed Powder. I loved that movie but haven't seen or thought of it in twenty years... I should give it a watch some time.
...what's your thoughts on Jeepers Creepers? Or Powder? Or whatever?
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