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JEEPERS
CREEPERS
8/10
USA
2001
director
/ script : Victor Salva
producers include : Francis Ford Coppola
cinematography : Don E FauntLeRoy
editing : Ed Marx
music : Bennett Salvay
lead actors : Gina Phillips, Justin Long, Patricia Belcher, Eileen Brennan
90 minutes (approx)
“They
say music should be fun
Like reading a story
Of love -
But I wanna read
A horror story!”
The Fall, ‘Dice Man’
A
few months ago somebody asked me why I watched so many movies. My instinctive
reply was to say it meant I could see through somebody else’s eyes for
an hour or two. A solid enough response, but I could also have said that,
while much rubbish must be endured, every now and again you stumble across
an unexpected delight. To use a gambling metaphor, it’s like a longshot
winner that easily pays for all the losers.
Jeepers
Creepers fits both reasons equally well, but it wouldn’t be fair to
go into exactly why. The less you know in advance, the better. It’s a
short, silly-titled horror movie with no stars, and thus may be
dismissed as just another videorack-bound teen fright-pic. But what an
indictment of the current cinema scene if the best American horror film
of at least the last ten years didn’t get the credit, and the box-office
dollars, it deserved. Jeepers Creepers isn’t a masterpiece – it’s
a B movie, with modest aspirations, to scare and entertain. But there
are few things more enjoyable than a really fine B movie: ferociously
economic, ingenious, and refreshingly bullshit-free.
Salva’s
startlingly confidence is evident from the low-key opening, with Trish
(Phillips) and brother Darius (Long) driving home from college along ‘scenic’
rural routes. Exposition is disrupted when the pair are threatened by
an aggressively-driven old truck with blacked-out windows, license plate
BEATNGU. Soon after, they spot the truck outside an off-road building,
and the driver dropping what looks corpses down a large pipe sticking
out of the ground. Curiosity gets the better of Darius, who turns back
to investigate…
Jeepers
Creepers may lose some viewers at this point, as the kids’ decision
does stretch plausibility – it’s even harder to understand Darius’ determination
to actually climb down the pipe. But most will be sufficiently
gripped not to mind, and Salva rapidly ratchets up the tension. He never
stops. Jeepers Creepers unfolds in accordance with classical dramatic
unities of time and place – it virtually unfolds in real time.
This gives the film the taut relentlessness of nightmare, as Trish and
Darius are pursued by a seemingly unstoppable menace. We follow them very
closely, seeing more and more of what they’re up against, at exactly the
same rate as they do themselves. And their foe turns out to be
nothing like they – or we – could ever suspect.
 While
the opening road-games and isolated-farmhouse stuff recalls Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, later sections veer into John Carpenter territory, specifically
Assault On Precinct 13, when Darius and Trish realise that the
local police station isn’t much of a safe haven, and even The Thing.
Jeepers Creepers does have the genre’s now-inevitable nods to post-modernism
and urban myth, but these are very lightly done and without any hint of
zaniness or camp. There is humour, but the basic mood is deadly
serious: this is a throwback to much older tales of terror.
It’s
already been noted how aspects of Jeepers Creepers recall the best
early-70s TV movies (specifically Gargoyles), and The Twilight
Zone’s in there as well. But there are even older models – horror
comics of the 40s and 50s, movies like Night of the Demon and Carnival
of Souls, and the rural-nightmare excesses of Herschell Gordon Lewis.
But more than anything, Jeepers Creepers is closest in tone to
literary antecedents – the macabre, darkly witty tales of Saki
(HH Munro), MR James (Night of the Demon inspiration) and Ambrose
Bierce.
These
turn-of-the-century writers would probably call the story ‘The 23rd
Day of the 23rd Spring’ - part of the folkloric explanation
of the movie’s events provided to Darius and Trish by the local psychic
(Belcher). Not that we should take everything the psychic says as gospel
– her visions don’t turn out to be entirely infallible. Her ‘back story’
is convincing enough, as far as it goes, but thankfully Salva resists
the urge to cross every T and dot every I. While there are loose
ends and plot holes, these only become apparent in retrospect, and looking
back one actually ends up appreciating the picture more and more. You
wait in vain for Salva to put a foot wrong, and it never happens: hopefully
he’ll show equally good judgement by resisting the temptation to fill
in any gaps in a sequel. Jeepers Creepers is fine as it is – it
ends at exactly the right time, with exactly the right shot: a marvellous,
shocking, funny image that provides the perfect payoff.
20th
June, 2001
(original ‘teaser’ review posted June 11th,
2001 : click here to read it!)
Alternatively check out our exclusive interview
with director Victor Salva
now
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