Jeepers Creepers (2001 film)

Jeepers Creepers

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Victor Salva
Produced by
  • Tom Luse
  • Barry Opper
Written by Victor Salva
Starring
Music by Bennett Salvay
Cinematography Don E. FauntLeRoy
Edited by Ed Marx
Production
company
Distributed by United Artists
Release dates
  • August 31, 2001 (2001-08-31)
Running time
 91 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $10 million[2]
Box office $59.2 million[2]

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 he 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, including a pair of relatives who presumably went missing "20 years" earlier. After Darry escapes, he is too horrified to speak about what he saw, and the two flee the scene and attempt to contact the police at a diner. At the 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, and beg 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, which then form parts 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. After cutting off the power, it gains entrance to the cells and feasts 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 he has removed the back of Darry's head and is now using his eyes.

Cast

Production

Jeepers Creepers was filmed in Dunnellon, Florida in the summer of 2000.[3]

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 the movie goes on."[4] Metacritic rated it 49/100.[5] Scott Foundas of Variety wrote that it is "the most conventional and least imaginative of the recent crop of high-class fright movies".[6] 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".[7] 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."[8] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the film starts off well but quickly degenerates into cliche.[9]

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.[2]

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.[10]

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

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 in early 2016.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "JEEPERS CREEPERS (15)". British Board of Film Classification. June 26, 2001. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Jeepers Creepers (2001). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-10-24.
  3. ↑ http://pohocounty.blogspot.com/2010/07/creeper-still-circles-his-3rd-and.html
  4. ↑ "Jeepers Creepers (2001)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
  5. ↑ "Jeepers Creepers". Metacritic. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
  6. ↑ Foundas, Scott (2001-08-26). "Review: 'Jeepers Creepers'". Variety. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
  7. ↑ Holden, Stephen (2001-08-31). "Jeepers Creepers (2001)". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
  8. ↑ Thomas, Kevin (2001-08-31). "Clever 'Jeepers Creepers' Pushes Too Far". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
  9. ↑ Bradshaw, Peter (2001-10-18). "Jeepers Creepers". The Guardian. Retrieved 2014-07-25.
  10. ↑ All Time Labor Holiday Weekends. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-10-24.
  11. ↑ http://variety.com/2015/film/news/jeepers-creepers-3-francis-ford-coppola-1201590943/
  12. ↑ Mentioned in the directors commentary audio track, in the Jeepers Creepers DVD

External links

Preceded by
American Pie 2		 Box office number-one films of 2001 (U.S.)
September 2 		Succeeded by
The Musketeer
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