﻿Hey guys, I’m Kya,
and today, we’re doing one of the most requested monsters in the history of ‘How to Kill:’
The Creeper.
No, I’m not talking about the DC superhero,
or the little guys in Minecraft,
I’m talking about my personal worst nightmare, the truck-driving terror from ‘Jeepers Creepers.’
We’ve been putting him off because frankly,
he’s still mostly a mystery.
Unlike, say, Jason Voorhees, who we got to know pretty well over the course of a dozen movies,
there have only been three films in the ‘Jeepers Creepers’ franchise,
and so far no one has been able to destroy this demon for good.
He was trying to warn all of us that this thing has been around for thousands of years and nothing has been able to kill it!
So keep your body parts firmly attached and don’t even think about singing that song,
while we attempt to figure out
How to Kill the Creeper
Jeepers creepers, where'd you get those eyes?
This is not going to be easy, people.
For one thing, the Creeper is one of the most formidable foes ever seen in a horror movie,
It just tore its head off!
He’s like if you asked a little kid to design the scariest, deadliest monster possible.
He’s got two giant bat-wings to swoop out of the sky and grab you,
Razor-sharp teeth, claws and talons to tear your flesh apart,
and telekinetic control over an arsenal of axes and shurikens.
Even worse, he’s smarter than your average slasher.
I mean, Michael Myers can drive a car,
but can he wait in line for a vanity license plate at the DMV? I don’t think so.
Can Jason Voorhees create works of art of out his victims stitched-up bodies?
Does Freddy Krueger have a favorite song?
My name is Freddy and I'm here to say, I'll wrap you up and take you away!
Okay, bad example, but still,
With all those tools at the Creeper’s disposal,
it’s a stretch to even survive with your eyeballs intact.
And if you want to kill him, well,
you’ve got your work cut out for you.
It’ll definitely take more than a
Hit and Run
Darry and Trish Jenner were driving home for Spring Break when they made the ultimate horror movie mistake:
They stuck their noses where they didn’t belong.
You know the part in scary movies where someone does something really stupid,
and everybody hates them for it? This is it!
After a bigass truck nearly drives them off the road,
they could have just kept on going.
But when Darry sees a mysterious man shoving bodies down a pipe,
his ass decides to convince his sister to turn back and investigate,
and soon they learn the Creeper’s secret.
Also, if you see a man shoving bodies down a pipe... Don't follow!
This your idea of a little adventure? This is why girls are smarter, okay!
Maybe he just didn't want to go home for spring break.
"I don't wanna go to Florida, it's just old people."
Then he dies.
The Creeper doesn’t just eat people because he loves the yummy taste of human flesh,
he consumes their body parts and uses them to replace his own.
Whatever it eats, becomes a part of it.
If he needs a hand,
he just gobbles one up and boom, it’s his, tattoo and all.
Vision getting a little fuzzy?
Just snag some new eyeballs.
There’s even a deleted scene where the Creeper gets the ability to speak after chowing down on a police officer’s tongue.
She don't smell too good, Darrius.
There seems to be no limit to his regeneration,
which is why no one’s even come close to killing him.
It’s like the crazy old lady says:
“I think it's eaten too many hearts for its own to ever stop.”
The best our heroes can do is run him over,
and over,
and over.
I think he's dead.
They never are.
But after a trip to an all-you-can-eat prison buffet,
the Creeper’s as good as new.
The story doesn’t have a happy ending,
but Trish learns a valuable lesson about the Creeper:
He’s only interested in fear,
and when she bravely stands her ground and tries to sacrifice herself to save her sibling,
the Creeper just takes her terrified brother instead.
Let him go and take me.
YOU LET HIM GO!!!
Does any of this sound familiar?
An all-powerful monster who likes his flesh tenderized with terror?
Tasty, tasty, beautiful fear.
But that’s not the only thing the Creeper has in common with Pennywise.
Just like It, the Creeper needs his beauty rest at regular intervals,
Every 23 years, for 23 days,
the Creeper emerges from his hideout and goes on a feeding frenzy.
Once he wakes, nothing can get between him and his breakfast,
and honestly, the best you can do is just
Wait it Out
Originally, the plan was to set the sequel in the future, during its next cycle,
but production problems forced the second and third movies to take place during the same timeframe.
So, just a few days after gouging out Justin Long’s eyeballs,
Jeepers creepers, where'd you get those peepers?
the Creeper traps a bus packed with high-schoolers in ‘Jeepers Creepers 2.’
It’s the cannibal equivalent of Wendy’s dollar menu,
and the Creeper stuffs his face with a feast of jocks and cheerleaders.
If you're a joke or a cheerleader in a horror movie, you're gonna die.
Once you put on that football jacket and have a pom pom, you are dead.
Allright, bring your coats and stay in a group!
If you're a high school stereotype you're dead.
Be yourself!
You're not a stereotype, just be you!
‘Shoot it in the head’ is one of the oldest tropes in horror movies,
If you had a gun, shoot 'em in the head, that's a sure way to kill 'em.
If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat 'em or burn 'em, they go up pretty easy.
but not even a full-blown cranial catastrophe could stop the Creeper.
He gets impaled through the eyeball with a javelin,
which would easily stop your average antagonist.
But even with half a head,
the Creeper decapitates a kid named Dante,
rips off his old dome and regurgitates a brand new one.
Snot-nosed teens are no match for the Creeper,
but two townsfolk from the Taggart family have been preparing for this battle for 23 years.
Having lost a loved one during the last cycle,
they fashion a homemade harpoon out of his flesh-seeking shuriken,
and weld it to the hood of their own tricked-out truck.
They blow off an arm and a leg,
but come on,
the Creeper just lost a head and kept on killing,
you think a little dismemberment is gonna slow him down?
Now stand aside, worthy adversary!
'Tis but a scratch!
He hops after his prey,
but another harpoon knocks him on what’s left of his ass.
That gives Taggart Sr. the opportunity to go to town.
35 stabs later, the Creeper still isn’t dead,
but it just so happens that the timer runs out on his 23 days of terror.
The movie ends 23 years in the future,
just before he awakes again,
but instead of moving forward,
‘Jeepers Creepers 3’ returns to his original killing spree.
It takes place between the first and second movie,
so we already know he’s not gonna die.
But you can scare him off if you
Expose His Origins
The Creeper is one of the most mysterious monsters in all of horror.
Which is probably why he’s one of my faves.
I like mystery. The less you tell me about the monster, the better.
That's why I like 'It Follows' so much. You get the basic rules of the game, and then you're scared because you don't know what it is.
We have basically nothing to go on besides what’s revealed in the movies,
and they really don’t reveal all that much.
It's not much, but it's all we know.
You can spend hours diving through YouTube theories and wild mass guessing about whether he’s a former human cursed with immortality,
or a demonic entity with a taste for human flesh.
But honestly, we don’t know a thing about where the Creeper comes from,
and he wants to keep it that way.
We know that he’s old,
like, really old,
It's ancient.
and we know he has a temper.
Pro-Tip: Don’t urinate on giant, scary, booby-trapped trucks filled with dead bodies!
Once again, horror movies teach manners.
But if you really want to piss off the Creeper,
just start snooping around about his origins.
In the third film, the Creeper is on the hunt for one of his discarded hands,
because when you touch it, it tells you his terrifying backstory.
Nothing can get between him and his hand,
not a semi-truck,
not a pipe through the head,
not even a zillion bullets from a minigun,
It turns out, the pen is mightier than the sword,
because all it takes to stop him in his tracks is a simple sign:
‘We know what you are.’
(and it ain't good).
That’s enough to freak out the Creeper,
and he calls off the hunt,
But we never learned what she saw when she touched the hand.
We’re gonna have to wait for ‘Jeepers Creepers 4’ to discover the truth,
and given how hard it was to get the third movie made,
we might be in the dark for a long time.
Say... 23 years?
Still, maybe we’re better off not knowing all the Creeper’s secrets.
Maybe it’s not a bunch of body parts keeping him alive,
maybe it’s the mystery.
The less you know about what’s about to kill you,
the scarier they are.
CTA
Thanks for watching guys,
Of all the monsters we’ve done on How to Kill,
the Creeper scares me the most.
What’s the scariest slasher for you guys?
Let me know, and if we haven’t covered them,
maybe we’ll tell you how to kill them someday.
So stay tuned, and please subscribe to NowThis Nerd.