bnorthup
10-01-2001, 11:23 AM
Jeepers Creepers (R)
Dad: 1 star
Daughter: 2 stars
Headline: On the wings of a monster
By Brent and Katherine Northup
Daughter and I had a very unusual night at the movies last weekend. We had two choices for movies to review: “Bubble Boy” or “Jeepers Creepers.” We mulled it over and decided that we’d prefer to avoid the R- rated horror film, so we headed out to the Disney film.
We bought our popcorn, sat down and watched the boy start bouncing down a highway inside a bubble – headed to Niagara Falls to woo the girl he loves. Aside from being a tasteless exploitation of people with immune system disorders, the movie was certifiably dumb. Then came a scene in which some unfunny Jewish jokes appeared.
Katherine looked at me. I looked at Katherine. Even a bloody horror film had to be better than this. After fifteen minutes of bubbling, we took our popcorn and headed uptown to the Gaslight.
Within a few moments, I knew we had traded a bad PG-movie for a bad R- rated movie. Alas, they blessedly let us bring our popcorn with us. From dad’s view, “Jeepers Creepers,” produced by Frances Ford Coppola, is a cheap, badly acted, badly photographed horror film which finds a monster with wings killing young people and nailing their bodies to the ceiling of his cave. It was pointless, unscary and technically primitive.
Katherine was slightly more forgiving.
“ “Jeepers Creepers” was a fairly good horror film,” she began. “I love a good scary, teeth-chattering, fingernail-biting horror film once in awhile. The movie didn’t go for the terrifying theme as much as it did the gross- out and surprise factors.
“It’s really hard to come up with something that is truly terrifying these days because; it’s all been done. I loved the way the film writers came up with the House of Pain. I didn’t like that it featured torture, but I appreciated that it was an original idea.
“But I found it amusing, and slightly irritating, that while the creature was eating a live human’s intestines the police who were supposed to be killing the beast just stood there watching. I guess it’s hard to act fast when unexpected things happen.
“In true horror films, the monster doesn’t die – and that’s what happens here. The boy didn’t get away, and in the final scene the monster was grinning like it had just inhaled body-preserving fumes.
“I noticed something that made me smile during the movie, though. There were many ravens around the House of Pain. In many nature- based religions, ravens symbolize the presence of spirits. That made sense because of all the dead people lining the creature’s walls. One other thing I liked was that, for once, humans weren’t the all-powerful forces that could destroy anything.
“Humans get too locked into the idea that they are invincible and nothing can dominate the human race. I think that it’s good, once in awhile, to contemplate the idea that we aren’t the supreme intelligence in the universe.”
Dad: 1 star
Daughter: 2 stars
Headline: On the wings of a monster
By Brent and Katherine Northup
Daughter and I had a very unusual night at the movies last weekend. We had two choices for movies to review: “Bubble Boy” or “Jeepers Creepers.” We mulled it over and decided that we’d prefer to avoid the R- rated horror film, so we headed out to the Disney film.
We bought our popcorn, sat down and watched the boy start bouncing down a highway inside a bubble – headed to Niagara Falls to woo the girl he loves. Aside from being a tasteless exploitation of people with immune system disorders, the movie was certifiably dumb. Then came a scene in which some unfunny Jewish jokes appeared.
Katherine looked at me. I looked at Katherine. Even a bloody horror film had to be better than this. After fifteen minutes of bubbling, we took our popcorn and headed uptown to the Gaslight.
Within a few moments, I knew we had traded a bad PG-movie for a bad R- rated movie. Alas, they blessedly let us bring our popcorn with us. From dad’s view, “Jeepers Creepers,” produced by Frances Ford Coppola, is a cheap, badly acted, badly photographed horror film which finds a monster with wings killing young people and nailing their bodies to the ceiling of his cave. It was pointless, unscary and technically primitive.
Katherine was slightly more forgiving.
“ “Jeepers Creepers” was a fairly good horror film,” she began. “I love a good scary, teeth-chattering, fingernail-biting horror film once in awhile. The movie didn’t go for the terrifying theme as much as it did the gross- out and surprise factors.
“It’s really hard to come up with something that is truly terrifying these days because; it’s all been done. I loved the way the film writers came up with the House of Pain. I didn’t like that it featured torture, but I appreciated that it was an original idea.
“But I found it amusing, and slightly irritating, that while the creature was eating a live human’s intestines the police who were supposed to be killing the beast just stood there watching. I guess it’s hard to act fast when unexpected things happen.
“In true horror films, the monster doesn’t die – and that’s what happens here. The boy didn’t get away, and in the final scene the monster was grinning like it had just inhaled body-preserving fumes.
“I noticed something that made me smile during the movie, though. There were many ravens around the House of Pain. In many nature- based religions, ravens symbolize the presence of spirits. That made sense because of all the dead people lining the creature’s walls. One other thing I liked was that, for once, humans weren’t the all-powerful forces that could destroy anything.
“Humans get too locked into the idea that they are invincible and nothing can dominate the human race. I think that it’s good, once in awhile, to contemplate the idea that we aren’t the supreme intelligence in the universe.”