Jeepers
Creepers, which is supposed to be a horror film, gets
its title from a 1930s song. The only things frightening about
the movie, however, are a few musical thud sounds, which fail
to rescue a plot that director Victor Salva wrote after he
viewed The Blair Witch Project
(1999) and The Sixth Sense
(1999) and then recalled hearing of an actual incident that
was far less scary but could be made into a dramatic screenplay.
Darry and Trish (played by Justin Long and Gina Phillips)
are driving home for spring break from Bannon College on a
back road in central Florida near Ocala. Silly dialog indicates
that they are brother and sister with an unsurprising but
mild degree of sibling rivalry. Suddenly, a large, rusted
delivery truck speeds behind them and honks loudly until they
get out of the way. Up the road they see something white being
dumped by a dark entity into a tube next to an abandoned structure,
which later turns out to be a church. As they continue driving,
the truck again comes behind them and honks, so they drive
off the road to let the vehicle pass. Curious that a human
body might be down the tube, they return to inspect. Darry,
however, falls into the tube, an apparent sewer pit, where
he discovers dozens of well-preserved human corpses with stitches
on their bodies as if operations had been performed and then
the bodies were crudely sewed up. Stunned by what he has seen,
Darry climbs out through the church basement stairs to get
back into the car. While Darry is traumatized and speechless,
Trish then drives to the first sign of civilization along
the road, a small café, to call the police in order
to report the heinous mass grave. While they wait for the
police, psychic Jezelle Gay Hartman (played by Patricia Belcher)
telephones them to warn them about a monster. Two patrol officers
arrive, listen to Darry’s story, and then the café’s
proprietor informs them that the car of the two siblings has
been rummaged by someone who has scattered the contents of
Darry’s dirty clotheshamper on the ground. Next, the
police follow Darry and Trish to the dump site in pitch dark.
As they draw near to the abandoned church, a monster (played
by Jonathan Breck) attacks the squad car. When Trish gets
out of the car to see why the police car is not moving, she
realizes that both police officers are dead. Soon, the Creeper
reappears and walks toward Trish, who then gets into the driver’s
seat and tries to run over the monster. But the Creeper regenerates
as a giant bat from apparent death, flaps his wings, and flies
off. The teenagers then drive to the nearest house to find
a telephone in order to call for help, but the owner (played
by Eileen Brennan) has a large number of agitated cats but
no telephone, and within a few minutes the Creeper emerges
and captures her. The teenagers then race toward a police
station to report the incident. The psychic then appears to
warn them that the Creeper is after one of them for body parts.
Within minutes, the Creeper enters the police station, is
unaffected by gunfire from a lot of police, and stalks the
two teenagers. The Creeper backs away from Trish, presumably
because she is wearing a cross as a pendant, but seizes Darry
and flies off. At the end of the film, we are in the Creeper’s
lair, where he is playing the song "Jeepers Creepers."
When the song comes to the line, "Where did you get those
peepers?," the camera pans over to a dead hulk of Darry
with the eyes missing. With the tagline, "What’s
eating you?," Jeepers Creepers was released
on Labor Day weekend to tap the niche market of filmviewers
who like horror films. More appropriate timing for the release
of the film might appear to be spring break or Halloween,
but possibly the traditional return to school after Labor
Day is not joyously greeted by playful American children,
who would prefer their summer vacations to last indefinitely.
Perhaps a return to books and teachers will seem less frightening
after seeing Jeepers Creepers, but the real
horror may be how low their test scores may be this year.
MH
I
want to comment on this film
