Jeepers Creepers 1.5 (Despite The Fact That They Called It Part 3) Crashed And Burned Badly!

I waited like every other fan of the series did for nearly 20 years anticipating what in the world Trish Jenner would do to the Creeper, once she catches up to him, and would Jack Taggert Sr., be in any shape to help her finally take down the creature who took away both her brother Darry, and Taggert Senior's son, Billy. WELL.. Sadly to say, but it looks like that's NOT going to be an option due to the situation of bad planning calls laid out for the entire movie production itself. And then there's the "whole controversy," involving the movie director (Victor Salva's) previous dark history which has stained the franchise, and ultimately leading to it's failure to satisfy long-time fans of the series.

All in good fun of course, but let's digress from the silly 2D comedic strips, and focus on some of the key issues with the film and it's director.

The movie itself caught a lot of BAD SLACK before it even hit the ground running unlike its previous brethren films before it. The first 2 installments where masterpieces in their own right, they had a solid story, it had the right mix of [CGI] elements, NOT TOO LITTLE, NOT TOO MUCH OVERKILL.

The most cohesive aspects to both of them was that they left you with that ever so enriching cliffhanger, letting you know that it's more to come when unraveling the complete plot about the Creeper's secretive origins, why it does what it does, and what does it ultimately hope to accomplish after all its rein of terror has finally come to an end by the hands of a VERY P'ed off Trish Jenner, and Jack Taggert Sr., who both lost their family members to this thing 23 years prior to third installment's creation.

The reason why the story was left so incomplete, the CGI element a complete joke, and the fact that the film is shot in the daytime, would be thanks to Salva's dark past. Victor Salva was accused of having inappropriate relations with a young male minor back in the late 80's (it was said he even filmed the inappropriate encounter one time with the underage boy who starred in one of his films back then), and now years later after 2 of the Jeepers Creepers movies have come and gone producing mass success in their initial releases, 3 would NOT be so fortunate, and that's from a direct result stemming from Salva's past which would suffer greatly doing it's public release that was heavily deterred by movie critics to keep it from seeing the light of cinematic movie day.

I don't know how both parts from the beginning didn't get pushed back then, unless his secret was suppressed, and kept under wraps in the world of Hollywood (I mean what doesn't get pushed on the back burner when rising stars are dealing with fame, fortune, and the darker side of Hollywood many stars choose NOT to discuss outright.) In Silva's case, he was REALLY facing a firestorm of controversy which lead to other found discoveries after he was convicted of the crime committed, and it landed him in jail in 1988, where he served 15 months of a 3-year sentence. In 1992, he finished his parole and time served in prison, and started back making movies such as "Powder" in 1995, and would ultimately take him to the project of the first "Jeepers Creepers", which could easily have been a HUGE miss for him because of the damaging conviction from his past that follows his career.

To sum it up, Jeepers Creepers 3 was doomed from the get go because of this, and Salva no doubt was very desperate to get a hit movie off before his career really went cold, thus the quick one-night only release for the 3rd installment. But the problems for this sequel after a prequel would DEFINITELY leave a sour taste in every fan who watched and loved the first two films, and in turn dump more truck loads of dirt at Salva's doorstep.

Yeah, about the oddly-corny CGI people bring up constantly as this movie is slashed, hacked, and diced to pieces in mere minutes of an ACTUAL review is very embarrassing to say the least. This is just a mockery effort used to tell the viewer to basically go screw themselves for spending their hard earned cash on this piece of s--t probably an hour and 21 minutes of ACTUAL movie run-time (and if that even because it didn't seem that long at all), and it just seemed like everything was just crammed in at the last minute like that one kid in class who didn't study for the next day test, and decides to cram through their books to see if they can pull away a few key answers just before the Teachers says those 2 magic words..

"And Begin!"

So the movie got shot down before lift off, which pretty much made it clear that the budget was NOT getting any attention from high-prominent movie critics whatsoever. Without the extra funds, it would be no way Salva could come up with the cash on his own accord. And the movie industry production companies didn't want to touch any of Salva's past issues or any future projects he may had in mind to make into a cinematic creation. And this is what leads to problems such as bad visual effects, bad special effects that should have NEVER BEEN AN OPTION to implicate into the movie script period, and then you have the actors and actresses that give skittish performances, or VERY under performing efforts to stabilize the movie's believable story it's trying to tell to get out to the long time fans of the series that waited so long for this movie's return to the silver screen.

So scenes where you see the Creeper appearing different in its look, wearing a red sweater (which I didn't understand one damn bit and thought that was a cheap wardrobe ripoff that came out of Freddy's dusty old closet LOL.)

The wings looked silly and fake (and yet he flies around with no problems because I'm thinking the wings looked rather weak and unsupportive, but yet are able to keep him flying straight without any veering around in odd circular patterns?) LOL, I just wasn't feeling how he used the power of flight in this entry, but expected MUCH MORE ZOOMS, and SWOOSHES convincingly in the previous movie titles of 1 & 2.

The daytime factor was laughable at best, you REALLY didn't see the Creeper get down and dirty until nighttime came about (AND YEAH EVEN THAT WAS MADE INTO A OVERLY LONG STHRECHED LAUGH-IN MOMENT AS THE FANS WERE LITERALLY CRYING THEIR EYES OUT FROM THE B.S. CGI FAIL EFFECTS), yeah he would do the mysterious swoop down like an eagle while casting a huge down shadow, then pull hard upward back into the sky with his new victim to be screaming like it's no tomorrow as the Creepers carries them off to who knows where.

And this is what made the movie what it was then a BONAFIDE TERROR / HORROR GENRE, that plugged into your mind with the worst of worst possible outcomes for the victims who the Creeper decides to snatch up making them a new addition to his collection of petrified wood art gallery theatre he constructed below an old church house "House of Pain" Darry discovers in the 1st flick.

The previous entries were just so much more relevant, were as the 3rd entry (which is why I decided to name this title for what it should have been called in the first place -- "Jeepers Creepers 1.5," since it supposedly takes place between 1 and 2 would seem to fit the bill), was just so rigid, constrained to death, and when it seemed like it might finally jump on track, it skips over a couple of tracks instead, and thus again loses it navigational way LOL.

The one thing that REALLY got on my nerves, was the blatant ripoff of the Batmobile in the later version of the Batman franchise (and NO NOT talking about that 1966 B.S. Batman Show, sorry West your show sucked moth balls badly LOL.) I'm thinking even the Michael Keaton version was a bit laggy in terms of today's time now in 2017, Christian Bale had the best Batmobile gadgets tricks to boot, but the Creeper Mobile tried to take a chunk out of that movie's page book and throw it in the mechanics of the truck itself.

"YOU NEVER BITE OFF ANOTHER MOVIE'S TRADEMARK CGI WORKABLE S--T!!"

Jonathan Breck did his part in playing his alter ego Creeper self very well, and some of the scene shots had the potential to be believable, but it's just the fact of working on a low-end budget will just kill any stellar ideas off quickly leaving a seemingly finished plan scripted part of the movie crappy and laughable. That's just like the scene where you had people hiding under trucks, and other massive stationary objects, as people were desperate in trying to avoid becoming the Creeper's next pick of the day (this is the part where the boy Buddy tells Addison that he is willing to help her buy hay for her horse,) the two are now aware of the people hiding under vehicles and fixtures, even a guy in his truck like they are at the moment.

And that was the best image I could craft off of what I was working with so my bad if it was a bit-blurry, because the only workable images came from cell phone movie productions! LOL.

But knowing the Creeper, he will basically rip open any vehicle to get at his prey which is what he does when going for Addy by smashing through the truck's passage window, overturning the truck on it's side with its superhuman flight force as he aggressively snatches Addy away and flying her off as the pick of the day.. Buddy watches helplessly to stop the targeted attack.

It's not much else to really get into in terms of "worthy mentionable" scenes (it was even silly to see the Creeper crying like a baby after he finds out that the people of the town now knows what he is, and his weakness), which will quickly bring us to the final conclusion of what should be done to TRY to save this train wreck of a cinematic nightmare, that should be tossed in an open ditch and buried away in the deep-dark dirt regions of Earth, and left there NEVER to retrieved by ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

Let's face it, Victor Salva SHOULD NOT HAVE even bothered to put any of this together to bring to the silver screen.

At best.. The movie is a JOKE, a big fat stain left on the franchise, and CANNOT be removed with the strongest Mr. Clean stain remover one could possibly use, and that's putting things rather mildly.

The best thing to do to try to make up for the massive damage done to one of the last of its kind of great horror flicks, would be to sell the rights to another production company.

So this is Salva basically cutting a deal to have it taken off his hands completely, I mean a full-break from the franchise signing EVERYTHING OVER where he can't comeback later with any stipulations to have the movie postponed if he later tries to demand a bigger cut from the movie's profit intake.

If another director takes it back to where it should have been alongside the previous titles 1 and 2, and in this I'm talking about the ACTUAL Jeepers Creepers 3: Cathedral, because after all this was suppose to be the entry between the two previous entries. Hence the title I refer to in this article post "Jeepers Creepers 1.5" LOL.

So basically, salvage what can be taken (innovative ideas from the first two, do some good thought out theories in implicate into the next installment, because it will be Trish's return this time and SHOULD BE DONE GRACEFULLY with a meaningful script in place to support the DAMN story, with proper CGI antics that work during the day and night scenes), and you should have a winner at that point.

But I digress from the rest of this, and hopefully some director comes along to pick up the pieces to put Humpty Dumpty back together and this time tougher!