Jeepers Creepers (2001 film)
Jeepers Creepers is a 2001 horror film written and directed by Victor Salva. It stars Gina Philips and Justin Long as siblings returning home for spring break who encounter a violent truck driver portrayed by Jonathan Breck. The film takes its name from the 1938 song, featured in the film under a version by Paul Whiteman. Patricia Belcher and Eileen Brennan also appear in supporting roles, with Salva making a cameo appearance.
The film was a co-production between the United States and Germany, with United Artists co-financing the American Zoetrope title. It filmed in various towns in Florida starting in August 2000 after Salva convinced the studios to cast Phillips and Long with the help of executive producer Francis Ford Coppola, who had previously financed his directorial debut Clownhouse. Due to unforeseen budget cuts, Salva rewrote the third act during production.
The film was theatrically released by United Artists and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 31, 2001. It was a commercial success, grossing $59 million on a $10 million budget, despite mixed reviews from critics praising the first half over the second. It spawned a media franchise that includes two sequels and a reboot.
Plot
Trish Jenner and her brother Darry are traveling home from college for spring break. As they drive through the Florida countryside, an old truck violently tailgates them but eventually passes. During their drive, they discuss the urban legend of Kenny and Darla, a senior prom couple who disappeared in 1978. They later see the same truck parked next to an abandoned church. The driver, wearing a large trenchcoat, dumps what appears to be corpses wrapped in blood-stained sheets into a large pipe sticking out of the ground. The driver then notices them, giving chase and forcing them off the road.With the driver gone, Darry convinces Trish to return to the church. Hearing strange noises coming from the pipe, Darry crawls inside with Trish holding onto his feet. Darry then falls into the pipe, which leads into the church basement. There he finds a dying man with stitches running down his abdomen, as well as many corpses sewn to the walls and ceiling, including those of Kenny and Darla.
Escaping the place, Darry and Trish flee to a nearby diner. However, they receive a cryptic call from a woman, who predicts their imminent danger. She mentions a future encounter with a cat lady and playing the song "Jeepers Creepers", suggesting that one of them will meet a terrifying fate while hearing it. Darry proceeds to call the police. The siblings later learn from a waitress that the truck driver broke into their car, sniffed their laundry and looked like he "really liked it".
Two police officers escort the siblings back to the church, but reports come in that it has been set on fire. On their way back, the officers are attacked and killed by the truck driver, leaving Trish and Darry in shock. The two stop at the home of an elderly woman with numerous cats to call the police. The driver sneaks in and kills the cat lady, before revealing its monstrous appearance to Trish and Darry. Trish repeatedly runs the driver over with her car, only for a giant wing to tear through its trench coat. They drive off.
They eventually reach a police station, where they meet Jezelle Gay Hartman, the psychic who called them earlier. She explains that their pursuer is an ancient creature known as the Creeper, which awakens every 23rd spring for 23 days to feed on human body parts, absorbing them into its own body. It selects its victims based on their fear. Sgt. Davis Tubbs, the officer in charge, is skeptical of Jezelle's warnings, dismissing her claims as delusional. Tension grows between them as Jezelle insists that the Creeper is real and that one of the siblings is doomed.
That night, the Creeper arrives at the station, breaking into the holding cells and killing several prisoners to heal its wounds. Despite Tubbs' and the rest of the police force's efforts to stop it, the creature proves unstoppable. It eventually corners Trish and Darry in an upstairs interrogation room. After sniffing them both, it throws Trish aside and chooses Darry. Trish offers herself in his place, but the Creeper escapes through a window, flying off with Darry into the night.
The next day, Trish is picked up by her parents, and Jezelle returns home. In an abandoned factory, Darry's mutilated body is revealed—his back flayed open and his eyes removed. As the song "Jeepers Creepers" plays, the Creeper is seen using Darry's eyes as its own.
Cast
Credits adapted from the British Film Institute.Production
Development
Many film news sources believe Jeepers Creepers was loosely inspired by the case of Dennis DePue. In 1990, Coldwater, Michigan, siblings Ray and Marie Thornton witnessed DePue, who had already caught their attention after quickly driving past them moments prior, disposing of a blood-soaked blanket behind an abandoned schoolhouse. DePue then tailgated them for two miles, and after he drove off, the siblings returned to the schoolhouse to investigate, finding the blanket and reporting their findings to the police. The murder case and subsequent manhunt of DePue were featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries on March 20, 1991. The following day, DePue committed suicide during a shootout with police in Mississippi. The episode's reenactment of events, and details contained throughout, such as a license plate game that the Thorntons played, were deemed similar to the opening scenes of the film.While writer and director Victor Salva has not confirmed whether the film took inspiration from this case, he said the beginning was based on "a true story that I was told, only it was an elderly couple, and they went back to this pipe to see what he was throwing down there. I thought that was a tremendously brave thing to do, but I also remember, when I heard it, thinking 'If that was a movie, if they went back, I would be on the edge of my seat'". The script also borrowed elements from Night of the Living Dead and Duel. Salva was inspired by his favorite film, Creature from the Black Lagoon, to make a monster movie, and was influenced by the restraint displayed in the suspense films of Alfred Hitchcock, including The Birds. Some readings of the film found the Creeper to share characteristics with Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, characters inspired by serial killer Ed Gein.
Salva took one month to write the screenplay, down from his average of six months. He said he wanted the Creeper to kill characters that were for the most part male because he was "very tired of seeing women slaughtered and raped" in cinema. To conceal his final girl-styled ending from viewers, Salva employed red herrings throughout the first act so viewers would think Trish was going to die. His original script also featured a twenty-page third act eventually scrapped during production. In it, Darry drives the Creeper's truck into a train, unsuccessfully sacrificing himself in an attempt to kill the Creeper. The entire sequence was storyboarded by Brad Parker in preparation for the shoot but, due to an unforeseen budget cut of $1 million, it had to be removed and rewritten. As a result, Gina Philips and Justin Long were allowed to improvise during the third act. Some scenes cut from the script were used in its sequel, Jeepers Creepers 2.
Salva wanted the film's defining moment to be the reveal that the Creeper was not human and, to do so, kept the character mysterious throughout the first half by re-writing certain scenes, going against the advice of agents, managers, and established directors. Salva gave his finished screenplay to executive producer Francis Ford Coppola, who had helped finance Clownhouse, Salva's directorial debut. As a result of the successes of the 1999 films The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense, Salva received four offers from interested studios within two days of completing the script. Seven to eight months later, United Artists and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer acquired the distribution rights for $2.5 million. United Artists agreed to finance a quarter of the film's $10 million budget, with Germany's Cinerenta-Cinebeta and Cinerenta Medienbeteiligungs KG supplying the rest. The film was one of five to be produced as part of a 1991 agreement between Germany's VCL Films and United Artists to co-finance titles from Coppola's American Zoetrope, each budgeted at $10 million. Jeepers Creepers was made years after Salva served prison time for sexually abusing a child actor during the production of Clownhouse. On working with Salva again, Coppola recalled "Some of the financing for the film fell through. One of the actors resigned when he learned about the case. So I helped Victor get the job. I was criticized for it, but my attitude is, he has a talent, and that talent in itself is good. We don't have to embrace the person in believing that their art is a contribution to society."
Casting
Auditions took place in Los Angeles. Philips said she wanted to star after finding the script too scary to finish in one night. She auditioned twice by herself for the role of Trish, and then once with a shortlist of actors who were auditioning for the role of Darry, one of which was Long. Salva said Philips had an "intense focus" during the audition process and that it was "her authenticity that got her the part". While Long was unsure going in to audition, Salva cast him because of his natural way of portraying fear. Coppola convinced American Zoetrope to forgo casting A-list actors in the lead roles in favor of the relatively unknown Long and Philips.The role for the Creeper was written specifically for Lance Henriksen, who Salva had worked with on The Nature of the Beast and Powder, but he dropped out of the project. Jonathan Breck auditioned to face his own fears of the horror genre. After being told that he would be showing his own interpretation of the Creeper, Breck spent his time researching different animal movements. On the day of his audition, he shaved his head and took part in the "sniff test", where he was told to sniff the casting crew while in character. When asked about his shaven head, Breck told the casting director that the Creeper "wouldn't have hair", before getting the part. Salva cast Eileen Brennan as "the cat lady" because of her performance in the short film Nunzio's Second Cousin. Chris Shepardson played the "dying boy" that Darry finds while in the Creeper's lair. Due to budget reasons, Salva had to write the character without any lines, but during filming, the crew eventually decided to give Shepardson a short line to say. Salva made a cameo appearance in the film as a victim of the Creeper. A casting call was held on August 19, 2000, at a Holiday Inn in Ocala, Florida.