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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 29th

"JEEPERS CREEPERS 2" released in 2003

"Every 23 years for 23 days... it gets to eat" You were warned in the first movie, but now, three days after those events, The Creeper (Jonathan Breck) is back and now has his sights on a stranded school bus carrying a high school basketball team and their teachers. One girl in the group however, Minxie Hayes (Nicki Aycox) begins to experience strange visions that just may be enough to save them from the Creeper's clutches, in Victor Salva's Jeepers Creepers 2!

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As the long spring comes to an end, a young boy named Billy Taggart (Shaun Fleming) is fixing the scarecrows in his father's cornfield. As he's working, Billy encounters the Creeper, disguised as one of the scarecrows. The Creepers abducts Billy right on front od his father Jack Taggart Sr. (Ray Wise) and brother, Jack Jr. (Luke Edwards), carrying his body away into the sky. The following day, a school bus carrying a high school basketball team and cheerleaders suffers a blowout. The chaperones inspect the tire and find it torn apart by a hand-crafted shuriken seemingly constructed from fragments of bone! Getting the bus back on the road, one of the cheerleaders Minxie Hayes (Aycox) has a vision of Darry Jenner (Justin Long) warning them to "go back!", just as the Creeper sprints out of the cornfield and throws another shuriken at the wheels of the bus, disabling it completely. As the students stay on the bus, the coach, Charlie Hanna (Thom Gossom, Jr.) and the bus driver, Betty Borman (Diane Delano) are killed by the Creeper, and then proceeds to attack the bus. Managing to keep him out, the students watch in horror as the Creeper points to a number of students - Dante (Al Santos), Jake (Josh Hammond), Scotty (Eric Nenninger), Bucky (Billy Aaron Brown), and especially Double D (Garikayi Mutambirwa) and Minxie. Minxie collapses and has another vision in which Darry explains the Creeper's nature: that every twenty-third spring, for twenty-three days, it emerges from hibernation and hunts for victims, from whom it selects specific organs and body parts which it then consumes in order to replace those of its own. After hearing numerous police reports, which imply that the authorities are aware of what is going on, the Taggarts' establishes radio contact with the students and Jack Sr. readies himself and his son to battle the Creeper using a makeshift spear with the bone-handled dagger dropped by the Creeper as a speartip. But as the Creeper begins to attack the bus again, the students decide to make a last desperate run from the bus to save themselves. Just who will survive after the Creeper has his "peepers" set on them?

[in Minxie's vision]
Darry Jenner: [voice speaking backwards, then normally] Every 23rd spring, for 23 days it gets to eat.
Minxie Hayes: Eat what?
[she turns to look at him again, his eyes are gone]
Darry Jenner: Eat us.

Top:   Billy Taggert (Shaun Fleming) encounters the Creeper (Jonathan Breck);

Above:   Minxie (Nicki Aycox) has a vision of earlier victim Darry (Justin Long)

Writer/director Victor Salva wrote the whole "Every 23 years for 23 days it gets to eat" rule in the first movie so there would be no sequel unless the movie was set in the future, and knew the studio wouldn't want that. However producer Francis Ford Coppola found an easy loophole in the rule for the sequel: set it during the same 23 days as the first Jeepers Creepers movie, setting the sequel on the 23rd day for the purpose of not making another sequel. For Jeepers Creepers 2, Salva originally wrote a story where Darry's sister Trish (played by Gina Phillips) and the psychic Jezelle (Patricia Belcher) would hunt down The Creeper, while a school bus full of teens terrorized by The Creeper was just a subplot. But the more Victor Salva worked on the script, the more the bus plot became more interesting and so he decided to scrap Trish and Jezelle story and concentrate the film on the bus instead.

Gina Philips turned down the chance to reprise her role from the first Jeepers Creepers movie, but Justin Long would film a cameo. Also returning from the first film was Jonathan Breck as the titular character, the Creeper. According to Salva the inspiration for the character of Jack Taggart Sr. was Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, casting Ray Wise as Jack Taggart Sr. (replacing Randy Quaid in the role). Interestingly enough, Meat Loaf was originally considered to play the bus driver (perhaps in part due to the film at one point having the alternative title of "Like A Bat Out Of Hell"!), before the role was filled by Diane Delano.

Minxie Hayes: It isn't dead. It's time ran out.
[Taggert Sr. stabs The Creeper again]
Taggert Sr.: It looks dead to me.

Top:   The teens on the school bus recoil from the Creeper!;

Above:   Jack Taggert Sr. (Ray Wise) is hell bent on revenge after his son's death!

The road scenes were all filmed on a small stretch of private road on the Tejon Ranch in California, while the interiors on the bus were filmed on a makeshift stage in an airport hanger. A total of four school buses were used for the production, including the converted sound stage bus for shooting the interiors; Salva jokingly referring to the school bus as the "Creepers Lunch Box". Salva would later comment that he nearly cut the scene were The Creeper 'flirts' with the teens on the bus, feeling that it might be too comical for the film. He was later glad that he didn't as it was a favorite scene with the screening audiences. In the scene where Izzy, Double D, and Rhonda try to escape The Creeper in the wrecked exterminator truck - Izzy accidentally puts the truck into drive instead of reverse when taking off. According to Travis Schiffner (Izzy) it was completely unintentional, but the take worked well enough that it was left in the film. Later the scene where Ray Wise was banging the hammer on an anvil, one of the sparks landed in his pocket and it caught fire. He performed the scene regardless, not putting the small flame out until Salva called "cut". Usually Salva makes a cameo appearance in all his movies, but because this film has no good spots for him to appear, his face can be seen very briefly on a magazine when the Creeper reaches through the roof of the bus.

One abandoned scene from Jeepers Creepers 2 was after the students abandon the bus and run away from the Creeper, some of the teens were to originally stumble upon an abandoned military bunker with a similar set up as the church from the first film. There, they'd stumble across the Creeper, who is in the middle of eating the dead body of an athlete. This scene was story-boarded and the set was even completely finished, but the scene was ultimately not shot.

GOOF:   When the Creeper is choosing his victims and he climbs sideways up the side of the bus, the guide wires holding him up are visibly seen above him.

Top:   Writer/Director Victor Salva (left) on set with returning actor, Justin Long;

Above:   Salva with the Creeper aka Jonathan Breck

Released in 2003, Jeepers Creepers 2 earned slightly more at the box office than it's predecessor, but was not as well received by the critics.  Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The sequel has got the creepy bits down cold but lacks a fair share of scares." Roger Ebert, writing for The Chicago Sun-Times, rated the film one out of four stars and said, "Victor Salva's Jeepers Creepers 2 supplies us with a first-class creature, a fourth-rate story, and dialogue possibly created by feeding the screenplay into a pasta maker." However Andy Klein of Variety wrote, "Few things are scarier than a sequel to a bad movie, but, in fact, Jeepers Creepers 2 is substantially better than its predecessor, even while staying strictly within the genre's well-defined boundaries." In September 2015, it was announced that production on Jeepers Creepers 3 would begin filming in April 2016, with a planned 2017 release. Victor Salva will return as the director, Jonathan Breck as The Creeper, and Gina Philips, from the original Jeepers Creepers, is believed to be returning for her first screen role in five years as Trish Jenner.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   23%