Jeepers Creepers Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

Jeepers Creepers Blu-ray Movie Review

It's that time of year again...

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater September 24, 2012

Yes, it's that time of year again, when the studios look deep into their back catalogs to find a few horror films to trot out for Halloween, hoping to convince DVD-owning fans to double dip for the Blu-ray. Today, we'll be taking at look at the new high definition reissue of Jeepers Creepers, the 2001 creature feature from executive producer Francis Ford Coppola and writer/director/convicted-sex-offender Victor Salva, the man behind Powder. Now, don't let the prestige generally attached to Coppola's name throw you off here; Jeepers Creepers is no arthouse fright film, and it definitely lives up to its cheesy horror movie title, which was originally a less-blasphemous, minced-oath euphemism for "Jesus Christ." Of course, most people know the phrase from the jazz standard by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, popularly performed by Louis Armstrong. The film works the song into the plot—which is about a bogeyman who harvests human organs to keep himself alive—but having the monster whistle the tune to himself while he terrorizes his prey is a bit of a cornball move on the part of the filmmakers. I want to see the hypothetical prequel, where the winged demon beast first discovers his love of 1930s jazz.

Jeepers Creepers was a rare beast when it came out in 2001. It wasn't a "prestige" horror film like The Others, it was no teen slasher a la Jason X, and it had none of the winking, meta-genre spoofing of Scary Movie 2, all of which were released around the same time. Instead, it's something of a throwback to the monster movies of yesteryear, drawing inspiration from the classic Universal ghouls—Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman—but updating the form with a more vicious, violent, and demonic baddie: The Creeper.

But let's back up a second. The film starts off quietly, with brother and sister college students Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry (pre-"Mac vs. PC " Justin Long) driving the former's vintage Chevy Impala home for spring break. As they coast through rural, middle-of-nowhere Florida, they bicker and banter as only siblings can, and director Victor Salva lets this idle chatter go on for nearly five minutes—ages in horror movie time—before much of anything happens. He simply gives us a few moments to get to know the characters and understand their relationship, and this thoughtful intro sequence feels like it belongs to a better movie than what Jeepers Creepers devolves into by the end.

The first half is actually quite good—suspenseful and dark and genuinely threatening. In a scene borrowed from Steven Spielberg's Duel, the siblings are run off the road by an enormous truck that roars past them. Later, they spot the truck parked outside a sunken clapboard church and watch with morbid curiosity as the hulking driver drops what looks conspicuously like a body—wrapped in a bloody sheet—down a corrugated iron pipe. Darry's conscience won't let him drive on without checking to see if he can help somehow, and of course this is his undoing. "You know the part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid and everyone hates them for it?" his sister asks. "This is it." Darry slides down the pipe into a subterranean cavern and discovers a grim menagerie of preserved corpses, splayed out and pinned to the wall like some nightmare Hieronymus Bosch painting. Among them, he finds the bodies of a pair of high school classmates who were thought to have died in a drunk driving accident. Their dismembered body parts have been crudely stitched back together— obviously their deaths were no accident.

The whole grotesque setup is effectively disturbing, but instead of sustaining this level of creepy dread, Jeepers Creepers opts to go way over the top, getting more ridiculous and hokey as it goes along. Kooky local psychic Jezelle (Patricia Belcher) informs the kids that they're being pursued by the aforementioned Creeper (Jonathan Breck), a "demon or a devil, or just some hungry thing from some dark place in time" that's allowed—by whom?—to feast on human prey for twenty-three days every twenty-third year. He apparently survives by replacing its organs with those of its victims, making him a kind of living, monster version of the Ship of Theseus paradox. Is The Creeper fundamentally the same over the ages even if all of his component parts have been replaced? Unnecessary food for thought.

Unfortunately, Salva falls victim to the same fatal flaw of many a horror filmmaker—he reveals his monster too early and, worse yet, let's us get too good of a look at him. The Creeper is scary in theory but not at all in execution. Part of it is the makeup; his vaguely reptilian demon face is a Halloween mask cliche, and weirdly reminiscent of the dinosaurs in the awful Super Mario Bros. film. We see him bite the tongue out of a decapitated head, rip the heart out of a cop, and feed on a prisoner in a jail cell, but while this is all plenty violent, none of this registers as terrifying. The sequence in the police station—where Trish and Darry are supposedly being kept safe—turns into an absurd, guns a'blazing shoot-out, which also has a hand in ruining the movie's previously haunting mood. A better film would've brooded a bit longer. That said, Jeepers Creepers does at least deserve some credit for being different in an era—the early 2000s—when the horror genre was in snooze-inducing lull. I can understand why it has its cult fans, fans who will perhaps be happy to learn that a third installment in the franchise—after the so-so Jeepers Creepers 2—is on its way in 2013. Here's hoping Salva gets it right, but I'm not holding my breath.

Jeepers Creepers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Don't expect miracles, but for a horror movie from the early 2000s, Jeepers Creepers looks pretty good on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation that's true to source and a decent bump up from the long-outdated DVD. 20th Century Fox has left the film's 35mm image alone, and although grain is occasionally heavy and patchy, it at least hasn't been smoothed out unnaturally by digital noise reduction. There's no noticeable edge enhancement here either, and no significant compression concerns. (You will spot a few white and black specks, but no other print damage.) I wouldn't necessarily call the picture sharp—the combo of spherical lensing and a chunky film stock inherently affect the level of clarity—but there's never any doubt that you're seeing a newly minted high definition transfer. Compared to the DVD, everything is tighter and cleaner, with much finer detail in the areas where you tend to notice it. Although black levels are occasionally oppressive in the darkest scenes—you'll also notice some chroma noise in the shadows—color seems accurate, with balanced skin tones and sufficient density. The picture quality alone certainly doesn't warrant a blind buy, but the Blu-ray is certainly the best way to watch the film now. Whether or not it's worth the price of the upgrade, however, is up to you.

Jeepers Creepers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like a lot of horror movies, Jeepers Creepers is overly dependent on its sound design for spooks, but hey, at least that results in a beefy DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. The multi-channel mix is fairly engaging, with a strong sense of ambience and the occasional cross-speaker effect. Crows caw all around you. Water drips ominously in the Creeper's subterranean cavern. Freaked out cats emit low, suspicious growls. And when the film devolves into a police station shoot-em- up, loud gunshots blast from every direction. All this is set to an almost ridiculously bombastic score by Bennett Salvay. (Who— for an odd bit of trivia—wrote the theme songs for most of ABC's TGIF comedy lineup, including Full House, Step By Step, Family Matters, and Perfect Strangers.) The music and effects have plenty of verve and clarity, with a kicky low end and clear highs. Dialogue is always easy to understand, and there are no hisses, thumps, clicks, or pops to be heard. For those that need or want them, the disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, along with French and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 dubs.

Jeepers Creepers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Director Victor Salva enthusiastically guides us through the film's creation, his personal influences, and key production decisions. The same track that graced the previous DVD edition.
• Behind the Peepers - The Making of Jeepers Creepers (SD, 59:44): If you owned the DVD, you'll also remember this hour-long, six-part making of documentary, which covers the casting and creature design, the creation of the score and the use of vehicles, and the night shoots and the makeup application.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (SD, 16:41): Ten cut scenes, including an alternate opening and a different ending.
• Photo Gallery (SD, 7:55): A self-playing gallery guiding us through production stills, publicity photos, and more.
• Director's Cameo (SD, 00:24): A blink-and-you'll-miss-him shot of director Victor Salva pinned to the wall.
• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 1:55)

Jeepers Creepers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'll give this to Jeepers Creepers—at least it's not a remake or a reboot. Victor Salva's film draws inspiration from the creature features of yore, but dusts away the cobwebs and gives the genre a bit of a spruce up, with modern characters and more gruesome violence. It definitely has its shortcomings—the demon makeup looks dumb, to be frank, and we see way too much of it—but the movie does have its cult apologists, who should be pleased by Fox's new Blu-ray, which provides a decent upgrade in picture quality and sound from the practically antiquated DVD. I'd advise a rental for newcomers and a purchase only for hardcore franchise fans.