Imagine Duel with a monster driving the truck. If you can do that, you can pretty much imagine Jeepers Creepers. The infamous Victor Salva wrote and directed this tale of terror and no matter what you think of the man himself, you have to admit he made a damn fine movie... well, at least 2/3 of a damn fine movie. Siblings Derry and Trish are on their way home from college when they piss of the wrong truck driver and soon find themselves speeding to save their lives. When the movie sticks with the bratty teens, it is pitch perfect. It's when it drifts away from them and starts bringing in extra and unnecessary characters that it begins to lose steam. When it reaches it's finale at the police station it's stopped dead in its tracks by a host of paper-thin characters who do nothing annoy us and die.

Salva has a flair for creating tension as every "on the road" scene demonstrates. His visuals are oftentimes stunning and his "wink wink" sense of humor is welcome in many spots. But what begins as a great suspense flick dissolves into a monster movie at the 2/3 mark. And I like monster movies, but the change of pace is so glaring and so sudden that it pulls the viewer right out of the movie. Gore is fine but you don't see much. There's no nudity either so the flick definitely doesn't succeed on an exploitation level.

Performances from Trish and Derry are excellent but the supporting players all phone it in with cheesy, distracting work. That can't be blamed solely on them however, as the script doesn't give them anything to do. Jeepers Creepers is definitely worth seeing if for nothing more than it's great first hour. If they only could have figured out the right way to end it they might have had a horror classic.