A terrifying true story partially inspired the 2001 horror movie Jeepers Creepers. The film, written and directed by Victor Salva and executive produced by the legendary Francis Ford Coppola, features then-starlets Justin Long and Gina Philips as sibling duo Darry and Trish Jenner. The morbid truth behind Jeepers Creepers, alongside its popular cast and a stellar prerelease campaign, saw the movie break the highest Labor Day opening weekend sales record at the time, grossing $59 million worldwide in the process.
In Jeepers Creepers, Darry and Trish become the targets of a demonic creature known simply as "the Creeper" after witnessing the monster loading bodies into a truck. The Creeper relentlessly hunts the siblings in a taut game of cat and mouse played out across the desolate Florida countryside. The savage ending of the film, in which Darry has the back of his head and eyes removed, sets up important "Creeper" canon and ensures the spawning of several equally popular Jeepers Creepers sequels.
While The Creeper's supernatural background and horrific appearance is, of course, a work of fiction, much of Jeepers Creepers' central plot is grounded in reality. The true elements of Jeepers Creepers are derived from a series of Michigan-based events in the summer of 1990, with the Jenner's chance meeting with The Creeper drawing eery parallels to the crimes of Dennis DePue. The disposal of DuePue's wife's body coupled with his subsequent, protracted manhunt are clear influences on the final Jeepers Creepers backstory.
In 1990, Michigan resident Dennis DePue was the target of a police manhunt after he murdered his wife and disposed of her body behind an abandoned school house. Different elements of the case were added to the fictionalized narrative of Salva's story, and while the movie is still too strange to be considered close to a real account, the DePue case certainly leaves an impression on the Jeepers Creepers franchise.
Ray and Marie Thornton, a brother and sister, (like Darry and Trish) were eyewitnesses who saw DePue dumping his wife's carcass, with their sworn testimony the primary source material for Jeepers Creepers' true crime-based story. As in Jeepers Creepers, the real Thorntons stated they saw DePue disposing of a body, before he turned and noticed them in their car. They testify DePue then proceeded to tail them in his van for several miles, mirroring the taut chase scene in Jeepers Creepers. A 1991 episode of Unsolved Mysteries covers the DePue case in great detail, with the piece by piece re-enactment of the Thorntons' story presenting eerily similarly to the corresponding Jeepers Creepers scenes.
Dennis DePue's real crimes do not deserve to be memorialized, with the heinous murder of his wife spawning a manhunt that would ultimately end in DePue's death. Perhaps then, this is why Salva added several fictional elements to the Jeepers Creepers movie, reimagining DePue's nefarious aura as The Creeper: a terrifying winged creature described by movie residents as a "bat out of hell". While the truth behind the film remains a dark tale of infidelity and evil rationale, Jeepers Creepers blends these wholly human elements into a supernatural story which retains the creeping chill of the true crime on which it was built.
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