Jeepers Creepers

[James Anderson]

Jeepers Creepers

Today is the worst day of my life.  It started out good.  I played in an annual baseball game with my father.  While at this game, a plane towing a banner streamed across the sky.  This banner was for a little movie called “Jeepers Creepersâ€�.  The tag line for this movie is:  â€œWhat’s eating you?â€�  I’ll tell you what’s eating me!  The fact that I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching the worst movie ever made.  The fact that I didn’t pay to see this movie sooths the pain a little, but not much!  Most movies have a few simple rules they must follow in order to be considered a movie.  These items are:  an opening, a plot, developed characters, and an ending.  I guess the writers of this movie thought differently.  Writers?  What am I talking about?  They had to have thrown a bunch of monkeys in a room with a typewriter and a tape that played that annoying Jeepers Creepers song over and over again.  I can’t believe that the song (which pretty much dictates the ending) is a main focus of this cinematic disaster!  I know what people are saying.  â€œWhy would you go see a movie like that in the first place?â€�  My answer is that I have a place in my heart for Neo-B Movie horror flicks that give me a little chuckle.  There was no laughing here… Just pain and anguish!  This movie was obviously put out on a holiday weekend with a big fat promo and hype behind it to score a big opening weekend and then fade into obscurity and fall into Movie Hell next to Leonard Part 6 and Howard the Duck.  The pace is very slow with shots that could have been cut in half.  If this movie was re-cut with acceptable shot lengths in mind, I would have been out of that theater in under an hour!  While enduring these unnecessarily long shots, I said to myself that the movie must be building to a big climax where the audience (through thinking on its own of told directly) will figure out the point of this debacle!  No such luck… as soon as the pace began to pick up…  IT WAS OVER.  Nothing resolved and an emptiness was left in my soul.  So I sit here now, writing this as part of therapy to rid myself of this evil.  I sit here with a towel rapped around my waste from the shower I had to take to wash the dirtiness from my body!  I beg of you; tell your family, your loved ones, even your enemies NOT (I repeat) NOT to see this movie.  Thank you!

                        James Anderson

[Brock]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree here.  I've seen it twice already, and I think it's a must for any horror or B-Movie fan.  There are some parts where it's laughable, but there are also points where it's pretty damn freaky.  One of my friends also disliked the ending, but I thought it was perfect.  Movies shouldn't feel the need to fully resolve because sometimes real life isn't like that.  It didn't go for the cheap, sell out, happy ending.  The ending was one of the spookiest, best parts, and I loved it.  It also leaves things open for a sequel, which hopefully will be made.  I think that its worth seeing at least once, because this movie marks the start of the return to old school horror.

[Scott]

Brock you may have sold me by mentioning "old school horror". They need to return to some simpler formulas. People are to into the visual. Think of Frankenstein as just one example. They put together body parts and brought it to life. Its quite an extreme idea.  People are bored to easily. Films need to stop distracting away from the story with slash/blood. They should set some real atmosphere and with a strange tale to tell.

[Skaboi18]

Great damned film!
Love the ending.  Terrific stuff :o)

[Andrew]

I should point out that Joe Bannerman just posted a review of this over at his site:

http://www.stomptokyo.com/otf/Jeepers/Jeepers.htm


Joe is currently en route from his home in TN to visit and watch movies for a day or two.  No idea what's on the menu, but I just finished checking out my "Planet of the Vampires" DVD and look forward to whatever we inflict upon ourselves.

I'm going to see if he wants to check out the drive-in shows playing at the Starlight (they've been having a b-movie weekend) tomorrow night.  If anyone sees us, both of my vehicles have DE plates with "BMOVIE" and "BMOVIES," feel free to say hi.  Here's the info on the Starlight:
http://www.starlightdrivein.com/



Andrew

[Guitarwolf]

James, I hated it worse than you and I paid for it. I love B-movies, but this movie sucked. It was alright for the first 40 minutes or so, but the ending p**sed me off. There are plenty of good horror movies that mix humor and horror(Dawn of the Dead, Dead Alive, American Werewolf in London, Creepshow, Evil Dead 2, Poltergeist, etc.) but Jeepers Creepers isn't one of them.

The film did have it's moments. The special effects were good and there was some tension at times. But there were way too many jokes. Jokes that weren't funny I might add. Not to mention I didn't like how the monster was doing flips and running up and down the car like Jackie Chan in Twin Dragons. This is one of those movies that I truely wish I had never seen. Not to mention, if you pay to see this movie, your supporting the director, who just happens to be a convicted child molester. That's more disturbing than anything in this flick.

[Brock]

I've had to fight this battle other places, and I really didn't want to go there, but...

The child molester thingy is the stupidest freaking thing I've ever heard.

If you go to see someone's movie, you are supporting their movie, period.  It's not like I'm throwing little boys at him.

He's been convicted, he's paid his debt to society, he doesn't do it any more.  Deal with it.

[AndyC]

This movie was worse than bad, it was disappointing. It throws all kinds of good stuff at the audience early on - the creepy old truck, a man in an old-fashioned coat and hat dumping bodies down a pipe, an old abandoned church in the boonies, a chamber full of hundreds of weirdly mutilated and stitched up bodies, old cobweb-covered equipment, bottles of blood, etc. I'm sittling there thinking, 'oh boy, I can't wait to find out what's going on here.'

What dark history does this old church have? What secret is this community guarding? Who is this mysterious man, what's his story, and what bizarre experiments/rituals is he conducting?

Then I find out that most of what I had been show is, for the most part, irrelevant. The church and the bodies are abandoned for a killer chasing the protagonists down the highway, a la The Hitcher. We get the same tired old psychic woman cliche basically giving us all the information directly - what little there is. The killer turns out to be a run-of-the-mill demon, looking like every other hook-nosed, pointy-eared, pointy chinned movie demon (these guys should read some Lovecraft). His purpose for stealing the bodies is far too simple and seems largely ripped off from an old X-Files episode.

I also agree that the ending, which I kind of liked, comes just as things are starting to happen.

Overall, my imagination supplied a better story, until the real story ruined it. I could probably pull a better movie out of my ass.

[James Anderson]

I have no problem with an ending that isn't touched by the golden hand of hollywood.  This was ridiculous though.  The plot had as many holes in it as a friggin brick of swiss cheese.  The special effects were herendous.  There was a close up shot of the monsters eye near the end and it clearly shows that he's wearing contacts.  If it was a throw-back to the old school days... they should have relied more on effects that are real  not computer crap.  This movie was so unevolved... I felt like picking up bones and screaming while i beat another primate with them!  I can see how they would use an older song to create an eerie presence  but there is nothing eerie about jeepers creepers   Nothing!  This was a good short story at best.  and there are reasons why some short stories aren't made into movies.

James Anderson

[me]

This is from Scifi Wire :

************************************************************

MGM/UA, which distributed the hit supernatural horror film Jeepers Creepers, is already talking a sequel, Variety reported. The scary movie topped the Labor Day box-office rankings with a record $15.8 million bow, the trade paper reported.

"We're already in talks" for a sequel, MGM/UA distribution and marketing president Bob Levin told Variety. "We're very interested in doing a sequel for a picture like this that performs so well." The studio and co-production partner, Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, hope to rehire director Victor Salva to shoot the sequel, the trade paper reported.

MGM paid $2.5 million for all North American rights to the movie, which cost an estimated $10 million for Zoetrope to produce.

************************************************************

Looks like all you guys can look forward to another Jeepers movie!!! :) lol

[Brock]

Damn straight.  I'd like a prequel better, thoough...they really set up some good material to work with.

[Jim Hepler]

"they should have relied more on effects that are real not computer crap. "

Uh, what are you talking about?  You claim to of seen this, but evidently you saw a different movie then I did.  The only CGI that I noticed was the creepers wings in that certain shot where they're first visible, and when the creeper is flying at the very end.  They simply didn't have the budget to do a lot of CGI - it costs more to do good CGI then traditional effects.  The creeper leaping, climbing on walls, eating, on the car, all of the stuff in the police station...  Think all that was real life stuff.

Oh yeah, and is it me or does the Creeper's face look like the prisoner pilot from Con Air?

[Chadzilla]

As far as the molestation goes..the director will be paying his debt to humanity for the rest of his life, just as his victim (the child star of Clownhouse) will have to "deal with it" and live the with scars.

I have issues with movie and its maker, but will probably see it nonetheless.

[AndyC]

Actually, a prequel, done right, could be a better movie. The old church, the hundreds of bodies, and the other cool things that were wasted could figure more prominently. Perhaps some history and folklore could be thrown in, instead of the cop-out line about not knowing exactly what it is or where it's from.

Sure, I like movies with a big unknown, but they have to be done better. A good movie can present an ancient evil in a way that offers many possibilities of it's age and origin, and encourages the audience to speculate. In Jeepers Creepers, it's obvious the filmmakers simply designed a demon and thought up something disturbing for it to do, and didn't really think any further than that.

Actually, I thought it would have been better if the killer hadn't been a demon at all, but rather some sort of abnormal human.

[Brock]

I'd like to refer you guys to something that pretty much explains my standpoint on this.

http://www.kithfan.org/work/transcripts/two/jam.html

It's a terrible crime, but to hold it against them for the rest of their life, if its irrevlevant to the situation (such as making a movie) then it's just ludicrous.  On the other hand, it's not like I'd invite him to entertain at a kid's birthday party.