Jeepers Creepers (2001 film)

Jeepers Creepers
File:Jeepers Creepers film.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Victor Salva
Produced by	Tom Luse Barry Opper
Written by	Victor Salva
Starring	Gina Philips Justin Long Jonathan Breck Eileen Brennan
Music by	Bennett Salvay
Cinematography	Don E. FauntLeRoy
Edited by	Ed Marx
Production company	Myriad Pictures American Zoetrope Capitol Films
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	August 31, 2001 (2001-08-31)
Running time	91 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10 million
Box office	$59.2 million

Jeepers Creepers is a 2001 American horror film written and directed by Victor Salva. The film takes its name from the 1938 song "Jeepers Creepers", which is featured in the film. Francis Ford Coppola executive produced, and the film stars Gina Philips, Justin Long, Jonathan Breck, and Eileen Brennan. Philips and Long play siblings who become targets of a demonic creature (Breck).

Plot

Trish Jenner and her brother Darry are traveling home from college for spring break. As they drive through the Florida countryside, an old, rusty truck tries to run them off the road. The vehicle eventually passes them, and they later see the same truck parked next to an abandoned church with a man sliding what appears to be a body wrapped in bloodstained sheets into a large pipe sticking out of the ground. The man notices Trish and Darry watching him and attempts to run them off the road a second time.

After barely escaping, Darry convinces Trish to go back to the church and investigate. At the church, Darry hears noises coming from within the pipe and crawls inside with Trish holding on to his feet, but ends up falling in after being startled by a swarm of rats. At the bottom, he finds a dying man with stitches running down his stomach, and hundreds of other bodies sewn to the walls and ceiling. After Darry escapes, the two flee the scene and attempt to contact the police from a diner. They are phoned by a strange woman who warns them that they are in terrible danger. Confused and frightened, they ignore her warning. Trish and Darry leave, with two police officers providing a security escort. As they travel, the police learn that the old church has caught fire; and any evidence of bodies has been destroyed. The police are then attacked and killed by the mysterious driver, who loads their bodies into his truck.

Fleeing once again, Trish and Darry stop at a reclusive old woman's house, begging her to call the police. The woman complies until she notices the driver hiding in her yard, disguised as a scarecrow. She attempts to kill him with a shotgun, but the driver kills her and reveals his inhuman face to Trish and Darry, before pursuing them once again. Trish hits the mysterious driver with her car and runs him over several times, seemingly killing him. However, they are horrified to see a giant wing tear through his trench coat and flap frantically in the air. They drive to the local police station, where they are approached by psychic Jezelle Gay Hartman. She reveals herself as the woman who called them at the diner and tells them the true nature of their pursuer: it is an ancient creature, known as "The Creeper", which hunts every twenty-third spring for twenty-three days to feast on human body parts and organs, which then become a part of its own body. She also tells them that it seeks out its victims through fear, and, by smelling the fear from Trish and Darry, it has found something it likes, but she does not know what.

The wounded Creeper arrives and attacks the police station, cutting off the power and gaining entrance to the cells. After feasting on prisoners to heal, the Creeper is swarmed by police but kills a number of them and evades capture. Jezelle, Trish, and Darry attempt to escape but find themselves trapped. Jezelle warns them that one of them will die a horrible death. Darry demands to know who, and Jezelle looks at Trish. The Creeper finds them, and they are separated. The Creeper sniffs Jezelle intently, but since she doesn't have anything it wants, it lets her go and heads off to find Trish and Darry. The monster corners them in an upstairs interrogation room. After sniffing and tasting them, the Creeper throws Trish aside and chooses Darry. The police burst in and take aim, and Trish offers her life for her brother's, but the Creeper escapes out of the window and flies away with Darry.

The next day, Trish is picked up by her parents, and Jezelle returns home in regret. The final scene shows the Creeper in its new hideout, an abandoned factory, where it is revealed that the Creeper has removed the back of Darry's head and taken his eyes.

Cast

• Gina Philips as Patricia "Trish" Jenner
• Justin Long as Darius "Darry" Jenner
• Jonathan Breck as The Creeper / Bald Cop
• Patricia Belcher as Jezelle Gay Hartman
• Brandon Smith as Sergeant Davis Tubbs
• Eileen Brennan as The Cat Lady
• Jon Beshara as Trooper Robert Gideon
• Avis-Marie Barnes as Trooper Natasha Weston
• Tom Tarantini as Roach

Production

Jeepers Creepers was filmed in Florida in the summer of 2000.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 45% of 108 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 5.1/10. The sites consensus reads: "Jeepers Creepers has a promising start. Unfortunately, the tension and suspense quickly deflates into genre cliches as movie goes on." Metacritic rated it 49/100. Scott Foundas of Variety wrote that it is "the most conventional and least imaginative of the recent crop of high-class fright movies". Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it "a cannier-than-average teen horror movie" that "disintegrates into a shoot-by-numbers monster hunt". Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "has the scariest opening sequence of any horror picture in recent memory" but becomes an "amusing horror-comedy, spooky and jolting but too literally preposterous to regain its initial aura of suspense." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the film starts off well but quickly degenerates into cliche.

Box office

Jeepers Creepers opened in 2,944 theaters and took in a domestic gross of $37,904,175; it later made $21,313,614 internationally, making a total of $59,217,789 worldwide.

It broke the record for the highest ever Labor Day opening weekend gross. The record for Labor Day weekend four-day gross is now held by Halloween (2007). Jeepers Creepers now holds the #5 spot and the #3 spot goes to its successor, Jeepers Creepers 2.

Home Media

Blu-ray

DVD name	Region 1 A	Region 2 B	Region 4 B	DVD Special Features
Jeepers Creepers	September 11, 2012	N/A	N/A	Audio Commentary Documentary Deleted Scenes Still Gallery Trailer

Awards

• Nominated: Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films - Saturn Award, Best Horror Film
• Nominated: Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films - Saturn Award, Best Performance by a Younger Actor: Justin Long
• Nominated: International Horror Guild Award - Best Movie
• Nominated: Catalonian International Film Festival - Best Film: Victor Salva

Sequels

In 2003, a sequel was released, Jeepers Creepers 2. Events in the second film take place days after the first film. The Creeper and Darry are the only characters to appear in both films, although they are not the only actors to appear in both films. In the first film, actor Tom Tarantini appears as the minor character "Austin McCoy" AKA "Roach" who is a car thief and regular in the Poho County jail. In the second film, he portrays "Coach Dwayne Barnes".

On September 11, 2015, it was announced that Jeepers Creepers 3 would go into production.

See also

• Jersey Devil
• Spring-Heeled Jack, a supernatural creature said to prowl Victorian England, from which the 'Creeper' in the film draws inspiration.

External links

• Official website
• Jeepers Creepers at IMDb
• Jeepers Creepers at Box Office Mojo
• Jeepers Creepers at Rotten Tomatoes

Preceded by American Pie 2

Box office number-one films of 2001 (U.S.) September 2

Succeeded by The Musketeer