50 Fun Facts About Jeepers Creepers

Victor Salva, who wrote and directed Jeepers Creepers, earlier made which 1995 Disney drama about a pale outcast with strange powers?

Powder took about $31 million in US cinemas, but his biggest hits came later with the first two Jeepers Creepers films, each of which earned roughly twice that worldwide.

Which two actors play siblings Trish and Darry Jenner in the first Jeepers Creepers?

Gina Philips and Justin Long. Philips auditioned twice alone, then read with a shortlist of would-be Darrys, and called Long a no-brainer because he felt like her own younger brother.

Who plays the Creeper in the first three Jeepers Creepers films?

Jonathan Breck woke his roommate at 3 a.m. on audition day to shave his head, then told the casting director the character wouldn't have hair, and got the part.

Which star first sang the 1938 song 'Jeepers Creepers' on screen, to a racehorse?

Louis Armstrong plays a horse trainer in the comedy Going Places who sings the tune to calm a wild racehorse that is itself named Jeepers Creepers.

In Jeepers Creepers 2, who has psychic visions of the Creeper's earlier victims?

A cheerleader, Minxie Hayes, dreams of Darry Jenner and a missing local boy frantically trying to warn her, and it is Darry who tells her how the monster feeds.

The song 'Jeepers Creepers' lost the Best Original Song Oscar to which tune from a Bob Hope comedy?

Thanks for the Memory: Hope first sang it in his feature debut, The Big Broadcast of 1938, and it became his signature tune.

In the first Jeepers Creepers, Trish and Darry are driving home from college for what?

Spring break: to pass the miles the siblings play a game of decoding vanity licence plates, until an old truck with a plate of its own tries to run them off the road.

What is the truck driver doing beside the church in Jeepers Creepers?

Dumping bodies wrapped in sheets down a pipe: Darry talks Trish into going back to look, slips down the pipe and lands in a cellar whose walls are lined with stitched corpses.

In Jeepers Creepers, the missing couple Kenny and Darla are said to have vanished after which event in 1978?

Their senior prom: Darry laughs the story off as a tale told to frighten teenagers about drink-driving, then finds the pair stitched into the wall of the Creeper's lair.

In each of the first two Jeepers Creepers films, the Creeper stands motionless outdoors, posing as what?

A scarecrow: in the first film the cat lady snaps 'That's not my scarecrow' and fetches her gun, and the sequel opens with one turning its head to watch a young boy.

In Jeepers Creepers, how does the Creeper choose which people to take?

By the smell of their fear: the psychic says it needs to frighten people to find what it wants, and a waitress sees the truck driver sniffing the laundry in the siblings' car.

Which actress, later prosecutor Caroline Julian on Bones, plays the psychic Jezelle in Jeepers Creepers?

Patricia Belcher's psychic rings a diner payphone to warn the siblings that they will meet a cat lady and hear an old song, and both come true before she reaches them in person.

Which veteran actress plays the cat lady in the first Jeepers Creepers?

Eileen Brennan, an Emmy winner as the tough captain in Private Benjamin, plays the old woman whose cats raise the alarm before the Creeper gets into her house.

At the climax of Jeepers Creepers, what does Trish do when the Creeper corners her and Darry?

Offers herself in his place: the Creeper has already sniffed them both and thrown her aside, and it still flies off into the night with Darry.

What does the Creeper look through in Jeepers Creepers' final shot?

The holes where Darry's eyes used to be: the actor who plays Darry stood in as the Creeper for that one shot, so that the eyes peering through the dead boy's face would be his own.

The opening of Jeepers Creepers closely mirrors a real 1990 Michigan murder case as re-enacted on which TV series?

Unsolved Mysteries showed two witnesses catching sight of Dennis DePue and then being tailed by his van; he died after a police chase within about a day of the broadcast.

The role of the Creeper in Jeepers Creepers was originally written for which actor, who dropped out?

Lance Henriksen had starred for the same director in the thriller The Nature of the Beast; when he dropped out, the part went to a little-known stage actor instead.

Which famous director was executive producer of Jeepers Creepers and helped get it made?

Francis Ford Coppola had bankrolled the director's first feature, the killer-clown film Clownhouse, and his company American Zoetrope went on to produce both Jeepers Creepers and its sequel.

Why was the original finale of Jeepers Creepers, with the Creeper's truck hitting a freight train, scrapped?

A sudden budget cut shortly before filming killed the stunt, so the director built a quieter ending out of improvisations by his two lead actors.

In Jeepers Creepers, what does the truck's plate BEATNGU turn out to say?

Be eating you: Darry reads it as 'Beating you', and the psychic on the phone tells him to think about the plate again. The truck itself is a rusted 1941 Chevy.

Which classic monster movie did the director of Jeepers Creepers name as his personal favourite?

Creature from the Black Lagoon stayed with him: he announced news of the third Creeper film under the heading The Creeper Walks Among Us, a title that echoes the Gill-man sequel The Creature Walks Among Us.

In Jeepers Creepers, what happens to the old church before the police can search it?

It burns down: two officers are escorting the siblings back when word comes that the church is on fire, and soon afterwards the Creeper kills both of them on the road.

On roughly what budget was the first Jeepers Creepers made?

$10 million: the film earned all of that back, and nearly $6 million more, over its opening holiday weekend alone.

The first Jeepers Creepers set a new opening-weekend record for which US holiday?

Labor Day: its $15.8 million four-day opening was the holiday's biggest yet, and the film that took the record away two years later was its own sequel.

In Jeepers Creepers, what bursts through the driver's coat after Trish runs him over?

A giant wing: Trish drives over him again and again outside the cat lady's house, the wing tears free of his coat, and the siblings run him down once more as they flee.

The stranded teenagers in Jeepers Creepers 2 are heading home from a championship in which sport?

Basketball: the Bannon Bantams are singing their fight song as new champions when the first tyre blows, and the Creeper carries off the driver and both coaches before it turns to the players.

Which actor plays Jack Taggart, the father who hunts the Creeper in Jeepers Creepers 2 after it takes his son?

Ray Wise, Laura Palmer's father in Twin Peaks, plays a man who watches the Creeper fly off with his younger boy and bolts a home-made harpoon gun to his pickup to go after it.

After a javelin pierces its skull in Jeepers Creepers 2, how does the Creeper repair itself?

It takes a victim's head: the Creeper decapitates the player Dante, tears off its own ruined head and sets his in its place, where it reshapes into the monster's face.

At the end of Jeepers Creepers 2, where is the hibernating Creeper kept?

As a sideshow on a farm: 23 years on, the Taggarts charge visitors to see their 'Bat Out of Hell', while old Jack sits beside it with a harpoon and says he expects it to stir in about three days.

Many of the stranded-highway scenes in Jeepers Creepers 2 were filmed on a set built inside what?

An aircraft hangar at an old Boeing airfield held a full stretch of fake country road, with asphalt, grass verges, gnarled trees and a painted horizon, copied from the real ranch location.

Jeepers Creepers 2 left Florida behind for a remote ranch in which state?

California: a private road at Tejon Ranch, north of Los Angeles, plays the lonely highway where the team's bus breaks down, though the story is set only days after the first film.

Jeepers Creepers 3, released in 2017, is set when in the timeline?

Between the first and second films: its story picks up just after Darry is carried off, and before the epilogue one teenager boards the very bus the Creeper attacks in the sequel.

In her cameo at the end of Jeepers Creepers 3, set 23 years later, what is Trish Jenner doing?

Writing an open letter: at her computer she warns that the Creeper is about to return and vows revenge for her brother. The film was first planned around her character, then rewritten.

How was Jeepers Creepers 3 originally released in US cinemas?

As a one-night-only Fathom Events showing on 26 September 2017; a second night was added the following week, and the two screenings together took $2.3 million.

What object in Jeepers Creepers 3 reveals the Creeper's ancient origins to anyone who touches it?

Its severed hand, hacked off years earlier and buried by the boy who found it, lifts whoever touches it into a trance; the sheriff comes out of his shaken by how old the creature is.

Jeepers Creepers 3 was due to shoot in which city in 2016 before actors there were warned off its director?

Vancouver: the local performers' union urged members not to audition because of the director's criminal record, the casting calls came down, and the film was shot a year later in the American South.

Which Iron Sky director made the 2022 reboot Jeepers Creepers: Reborn?

Timo Vuorensola kept an online diary of the shoot, which the pandemic split in two: a first block ending just before Christmas 2020, then a return early the next year to finish.

In Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, the couple Chase and Laine travel to which event in rural Louisiana?

The Horror Hound festival is holding its first event in the state, and Chase, a fan of local legends, brings his reluctant girlfriend along just as the Creeper wakes.

Why does the Creeper specifically target Laine in Jeepers Creepers: Reborn?

She is pregnant: Laine has kept it from her boyfriend, and her visions show the baby ringed by the cultists who worship the Creeper and bring it victims.

In Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, what do Chase and Laine win in a prize draw?

A night in an escape room, set up in an old plantation house and themed on the Creeper: the organisers turn out to worship it, and the draw is how they deliver its victims.

Which production company sued over Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, saying it was made without its knowledge?

Myriad Pictures, which backed the second and third films, said its contract gave it rights over the distribution of any further sequel, and that the reboot had been shot without its involvement.

Which critic wrote that Jeepers Creepers 2's dialogue seemed to come from feeding the script into a pasta maker?

Roger Ebert panned the sequel, yet the same sentence of his review granted it 'a first-class creature' stuck in 'a fourth-rate story'.

Which 1988 Siouxsie and the Banshees single had to credit the writers of 'Jeepers Creepers' for its similar chorus?

Peek-a-Boo's chorus echoed the old song's opening lines so closely that, to head off legal action, the band gave Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer a co-writing credit.

Where in the first Jeepers Creepers do Trish and Darry finally learn what the Creeper is?

At a police station, where the psychic Jezelle meets them face to face and explains the creature; that night it breaks in and feeds on prisoners in the cells to heal its wounds.

How did the two leads of Jeepers Creepers stay afraid of the Creeper on set?

They avoided its actor off camera: one lead has said the pair kept away from him on purpose, and the director wrote that the man in the suit was under orders not even to say hi to them.

Which character from the first Jeepers Creepers returns in the third film as one of the team hunting the Creeper?

The sergeant, Davis Tubbs, who called the psychic delusional in the first film, joins a small task force made up of people who have lost relatives to the Creeper.

In Jeepers Creepers, whom does Darry find still alive in the cellar beneath the church?

A dying boy with a line of stitches down his body tries to speak to Darry and dies; only then does Darry take in what covers the walls and ceiling around him.

Which Jackie Chan film finished runner-up to the first Jeepers Creepers on its opening weekend?

Rush Hour 2 was in its fifth week when Jeepers Creepers opened at number one, a debut that also knocked the reigning champion, American Pie 2, down to third.

In Jeepers Creepers 2, what disables the school bus by blowing out its tire?

A hand-crafted shuriken: the driver pries the ornate throwing star out of the shredded rubber, and after dark a second one takes out another tire and leaves the bus stuck for good.

In Jeepers Creepers 3, what do police learn about the Creeper's truck when they try to search it?

It is booby-trapped: spikes shoot out of the back and injure an officer, and when the truck is towed toward the impound the Creeper swoops down and carries off the driver.