Retrospective Film Review

Jeepers Creepers (2001) • 20 Years Later

A brother and sister driving through rural America are threatened by a sinister figure in a truck, and soon discover a horrifying secret.

Back in the 1990s, a magazine company I worked for published a highly-regarded horror title called Fear, from which I recall one short story for its final line: “make it one for my baby, and one more for the toad.” The whole piece had been building up to that magnificently cheesy, but also horrifying, pun.

Thinking of that story always reminds me of Victor Salva’s Jeepers Creepers, the first and by far the best of the movies bearing that name. Its entire 90-minutes might have been conceived solely to give an outrageously grim double meaning to Johnny Mercer’s lyric at the end of the film (performed here by Paul Whiteman): “Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those peepers? / Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those eyes?”

The concluding shot that accompanies that lyric is macabre and hilarious in equal measure, and the same goes for most of Salva’s film. The…