Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Directed by Victor Salva
On a desolate country highway, two homeward-bound teens are nearly run off the road by a maniac in a beat-up truck, and later spot him shoving what appears to be a body down a sewer pipe.
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12 films that influenced Jeepers Creepers
What critics say influenced Jeepers Creepers
Shades of Steven Spielberg’s debut film “Duel,” they’re pursued by a mysterious truck with shaded windows.
Jeepers Creepers is an old-fashioned spooker that owes as much to Steven Spielberg's Duel as it does to Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre .
While yet another rip-off of Steven Spielberg's "Duel" - much like the upcoming "Joy Ride" - the early moments are nevertheless still rather effective.
In a scene reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's "Duel", the truck tries to run them off the road, terrifying the pair and leaving them to puzzle over its bizarre number plate: BEATINGU.
They're in the middle of nowhere when an old, driverless truck tries running them off the road an obvious suggestion that writer/director Victor Salva has seen Steven Spielberg's career-establishing, behind-the-wheel suspense drama Duel a couple dozen times.
Admittedly, the first third of the film is somewhat tense, though it borrows heavily from Steven Spielberg's "Duel," as well as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
The chase scenes are reminiscent of Duel; the bloody scene set in backwoods police station may remind you of Assault On Precinct 13; and the killer himself is a Frankenstein of everything from Leatherface to the creatures in Gargoyles (with a little Creature from the Black Lagoon thrown in).
Someone must have grabbed the costume out of wardrobe storage for the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and given it a face-lift along with a set of wings to think that it would scare the audience.
From that point on, the rest of the film follows the "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Terminator" plots of people trying to flee from an immortal being that's determined to find and kill them.
The movie is part urban legend, part horror comic book, with subtle nods to "Night of the Living Dead."
The first "movie" is very reminiscent of all of my favorite horror films, from Phantasm to Psycho to Night of the Living Dead to Rear Window to Silence of the Lambs to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Genre fans will find plenty to gnaw on: The opening scene brings to mind the 1977 auto-schlocker The Car, while later passages obliquely reference everything from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the beloved but little-seen Seventies TV movie Gargoyles.
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The first "movie" is very reminiscent of all of my favorite horror films, from Phantasm to Psycho to Night of the Living Dead to Rear Window to Silence of the Lambs to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It blends the postmodern sensibility of Wes Craven's slasher satire and the rawness of Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" to fearsome effect.
As far as the film's few other parts, Eileen Brennan ("Private Benjamin," "Clue") is appropriately spooky as an older lady the siblings encounter, but Patricia Belcher ("Heartbreakers," "Message in a Bottle") comes off as second-rate playing a psychic who's "seen" the upcoming mayhem.
The work of writer/director Victor Salva ("Nature of the Beast," "Powder"), the film tries to use the Oscar nominated title song - first heard in the 1938 film "Going Places" and which contains the familiar refrain: "Jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers?
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These B grade films range anywhere from An American Werewolf in London to Bride of Re-Animator to The Creature From the Black Lagoon to Fright Night to Pumpkinhead.
From that point on, the rest of the film follows the "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Terminator" plots of people trying to flee from an immortal being that's determined to find and kill them.
Suffice it to say that what Darry finds when he explores the pipe is an absolute masterpiece of uncanny, hellishly creepy production design, that the driver isn't exactly human, but a magnificently-designed winged thing, with spiky bits all over, and that Victor Salva has clearly seen The Terminator and The Hitcher , and pilfers those film's respective police station sequences with unabashed joy.