This week on the B movie docket is Jeepers Creepers   

 

Hello good people. And welcome to 50 B Movies: The Sequel. It’s bigger, better, and badder.  The original 50 b Movies covered a wide range of B Movies. There was everything from Thankskilling 3 to The Void. Some films were funny. Some were unintentionally funny. And some were mainstream with far-out concepts like zombie tigers. All in all, it was a hell of a list.

Why make a sequel? Because narrowing down a list of 50 B Movies To See Before You Die was arduous. With so many movies to watch, one can never really know if the movie is good. Sure sometimes 5 minutes in, you know it is a real stinker. Other times it might take a half an hour before one realizes they will never get that half hour back to their life. Poof. Gone. But all in all there are many great B Movies that didn’t make the original list.

So welcome back if you are a LRM reader and welcome if it’s your first time here. Be forewarned we will be treading deep into the bush to pull these B Movies. We aren’t rehashing anyone’s previous 50 or 100 or 1000 B Movies list. Nope. So, prepare yourself for 50 B Movies To See Before You Die: The Sequel. Bigger. Better. Badder. Oooh yeah.

WEEK 9 – Jeepers Creepers (2001)

This week’s movie is a classic that may not get mentioned as much on people’s B movie lists. Maybe because it presents camp in a refined manner. Everything about Jeepers Creepers should be corny, cheesy, and laugh-out-loud gut-busting funny. But instead, it’s all presented so smoothly it seems like any run-of-the-mill horror movie. The strength of this movie is a testament to the cult fan base it has generated.

Synopsis

After making a horrific discovery in the basement of an old, abandoned church, Trish (Gina Philips) and her brother Darry (Justin Long) watch their routine road trip home from college turn into a heart-stopping race for their lives. They find themselves the chosen prey of an indestructible force that relentlessly pursues them and gives a new and chilling meaning to the old song “Jeepers Creepers.”

That was the synopsis I found online. I usually rejigger the synopsis for each of these B movies. But the original synopsis here is right on the money.

The Monster

I must commend a film that is three deep into a trilogy. And that despite two uninspired sequels has conjured up an iconic movie monster that can stand head-to-head with classics like Friday The 13th’s Jason Voorhees, and Nightmare On Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. I can probably count the number of iconic movie monsters on my digits, and one of those digits belongs to a great white shark.

The others are King Kong, Godzilla, Candy Man,  Halloween’s Michael Myers, Frankenstein, Alien’s Xenomorph, Predator’s Sports Hunter, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, Saw’s Jigsaw, It’s Pennywise, Child Play’s Chucky, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but certainly not a lot of iconic easily recognizable villains. Just try dressing up this Halloween as a Crawler from Neil Marshall’s The Descent and see how many people can identify that monster without using google.

I sure don’t mean to take anything from a brilliant oh-so-satisfying movie like The Descent. But let’s be clear, most people would not know you were dressed as a Crawler without you providing some bit of context to them. There are tons of good B horror movies out there, but most of those characters are hard to identify to the casual movie consumer. Would most people recognize someone dressed up as Leslie Vernon from Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon? And that is a terrific horror movie and is still one of the best in years.

So, that’s why I must give the Creeper from Jeepers Creepers its props. Besides if you want even more proof of how iconic the monster is, consider that toymaker Mego turned him into a collectible action figure in a lineup that includes, who else but Leatherface, Candy Man, Freddy Krueger, and Frankenstein.

The Creation

We all probably know by now that director Victor Salva has no place around a movie set or within five hundred yards of kids. But making a movie is a huge communal effort where actors, writers, producers, and an entire staff of people invest time and energy into making something for entertainment. They hope it will bring some joy, pain, or fear in a purely entertainment-based package to the audience. They help spice up life in a no-consequence deal for the viewer.

Think of it, for two hours or more these days, you sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers to laugh together, cry together, cheer, and jeer. It’s a luxury to be able to participate in the film experience whether you are a filmmaker or a patron. I do appreciate the labor of love the rest of the film’s talent poured into making this iconic B horror movie.

The Cast

Jeepers Creepers main stars are Tusk’s Justin Long, and Gina Phillips who I mostly remember from an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine.  But if you were around back then, you may have seen her in an episode of Blossom where she played Tracy in one episode. Tusk was also covered in the original 50 B Movies To See Before You Die.

Patricia Belcher plays the psychic. If you are a child of the nineties, you may have seen her in a myriad of any of the TV shows she’s been in such as Married With Children, Sister-Sister, Martin, Cybil, NYPD Blue, Step by Step, Seinfeld and other millennium shows like Malcom In The Middle. So, chances are you’ve seen her before.

B Horror

There are a lot of things that don’t add up in Jeepers Creepers, but the first installment maniacally breezes over those things and brilliantly leaves a lot to the imagination. So much so that the Creepers backstory has even been explored in comic book form where its origin is traced back to some very nasty Mayans. Yes, The Creeper was worshipped as a God at one time in fictional history. And in typical B movie fashion, he dresses like a modern farmer to disguise himself, and drives an old, supercharged beater that rips through the roads as if it were tuned by Dominic Toretto.

Furthermore, the license plates of said beater truck read as “BEATNGU”. Why? Because despite being some ancient human-eating lizard man, the Creepers retains his B movie sense of humor. He wants his quarry to know that after he blazes by you in a Hemi-powered 1941 Chevy COE that there is a very high chance that despite just having survived having the s*** scarred out of you that you might also be lunch for later. Is he salting the meat?

RELATED: The Killer Eye | 50 B Movies – The Sequel – Bigger – Better – Badder

The revelation opens a can of Riddler worms, where each is a question mark. Where’d the Creeper get those vanity plates? Did he walk into the DMV? Did he further disguise himself to do so? Like by wearing fresh human skin? Or can he remotely control reanimated corpses of his victims, then send zombie victims to handle the vanity tag registration? Does he ever drag race his 1941 Chevy COE? Does he know a guy named Dom?

Meta

I am not talking about Facebook’s Metaverse. I mean meta in the self-referential sense. The filmmaker wrote the script based the name on the famous song from 1983; Jeepers Creepers. The song is used humorously to signal impending doom as explained by the movie’s psychic that shows up in time to deliver some backstory to the protagonists. She explains that the song is kind of like the high alert mode from Metal Gear Solid. If you hear that song, Jeepers Creepers then the Creeper is coming right for you.

Cheese

A lot of the movies on the B movie list are cheesy. But not all are gourmet-level cheese. For the first time viewer, Jeepers Creepers conjures up comparable levels of tension such as that found in horror movies like Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes and its precursor Haute Tension.

Why?

Most horror movies seem to revolve around the element of the monster getting defeated, sealed away, or buried in the film’s climax. Thankfully Jeepers Creepers joins the ranks of the movies brave enough to let the viewer leave the theater knowing the good guys did not survive.

Watch it where?

Jeepers Creepers is available up until February 13 on Amazon Prime Video. If you have an Amazon account, check it out.

How To Enjoy It

Just watch the dang thing with the lights out at night and get it over with will you. Or maybe make it a double feature and watch this and Cabin In The Woods.

  FOR FANBOYS, BY FANBOYS Have you checked out LRM Online’s official podcasts and videos on The Genreverse Podcast Network? Available on YouTube and all your favorite podcast apps, This multimedia empire includes The Daily CoG, Breaking Geek Radio: The Podcast, GeekScholars Movie News, Anime-Versal Review Podcast, and our Star Wars dedicated podcast The Cantina. Check it out by listening on all your favorite podcast apps, or watching on YouTube! Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts |  Spotify |  SoundCloud | Stitcher | Google Play