Victor Salva and the Foxconn Demons

It was one of those ill spent evenings. There's no taking back the hours of life lost watching the SyFy channel, but I've a soft spot for bad horror movies and most especially when they offer allegories for the fin de siecle of American cultural experience. The film was that latterday B film classic Jeepers Creepers (2001). The story centers around a winged demonic creature that comes forth every twenty-three years to feed (on humans) for twenty-three days. The brother-sister team of Darry and Trish Jenner are returing from spring break, driving through rural Florida in their 1960 Chevrolet Impala when they spot the demon creature disposing of a body in a culvert pipe that leads to an old church basement. Here I will abbreviate the synopsis and cut to the chase. The demon creature knows that it has been found out and the rest of the film centers on its pursuit of the siblings, but most crucially and specifically - its pursuit of the brother Darry.




The first 45 minutes of the film are what raise it above the most horror movie schlock. Unfortunately, after the genius of the film's climactic scene , writer/director Victor Salva allows his superb psychodrama to fade into the usual horror movie cliches and dimwittery. You see, Mr. Salva is a convicted child molester - had been for years before he made this film, and he still continues to get work every three or five years directing. Evidently the patronage of Francis Ford Coppola goes a long way for a convicted pedophile. The scene in question occurs outside a little diner/gas station on a Floridian blue highway. While Darry and Trish explain to the police what happened, a waitress watches out a window while the Creeper (he appears human to her) ransacks their Impala while its parked at the pump. The cops and Trish and Darry run out into the parking lot, but the demon is gone. The waitress reports that the Creeper had been sniffing their laundry, and sure enough, it is strewn about the backseat of the car and on the ground. The waitress says the he really seemed to be enjoying it. Darry is distraught and picks up his tightie-whities, complete with his name scrawled on them, and despairs that the Creeper has sniffed his Fruit of the Loom, and now 'knows' his name. So convincing is Darry's outrage, the righteous outrage of the victim, that one wonders if Victor Salva did not molest him too.







As mentioned above, the film degenerates after this scene. Poor Victor Salva will find no salvific in his genre exersize. He can't bring himself to kill the creature, and the films pathetic denouement features Trish offering herself in place of her brother to no avail. This demon likes boys, and he will fly off into the night carrying Darry to his horrific death. Salva may have paid his debt to society, but he knows something many don't: He isn't, can't, won't be 'cured' of his pedophilia. Anything is possible with God, but this man consorts with demons.







The years pass. Salva is reported to be at work on Jeepers Creepers 3. The actor who played Darry, Justin Long, has gained a passing fame portraying the Mac character in Apple's Mac vs. PC television ads. PC is portrayed as a slightly dumpy version of Bill Gates - and he sort of looks like Victor Salva with glasses. Jeepers Creepers opened at theatres on Labor Day weekend 2001. It broke all (then) records for a Labor Day opening, and thus, by the vulgar definition that defines greatness for the American public (ie, the social proof of a bunch of idiots laying out good coin to see a movie, read a book, or buy a product because everybody else is) it must qualify as the last great artifact of the pre-9/11 (the towers would fall eight days after its release) world by those who subscribe to such infantile notions - here we must kick to the curb the great Lardass Glenn Beck and his coterie of nabobs and AARP members. They protest too much. The the 9/12 world? Same as the old. A battle for brand loyalty and franchises. Apple vs. Mac, Coke vs Pepsi, Christianity vs. Islam, America vs. The Other ad nauseum.





Mac shows no signs of his former violation by the demon. His soft irony when dealing with the pudgy little Gates avatar is endearing. Buy Apple, and stand down the big corporate demon. No need to bet nasty about it, just affect a posture of bemused tolerance for the lumbering corporate giant and all its iniquities that are the phenomena of Microsoft (PC). It will eventually go away a loser. And yet, I'm not convinced. I saw what the Creeper demon did to Mac. The odds were stacked against him from the beginning. The victim becomes a victimiser. Its how monsters are born.



Eight and a half years later the demon finds himself some twelve thousand miles away in Guangzhou, China. He has taken Mac along for a ride. At the Foxconn manufacturing facility there have been a spate of suicides. Twelve hour shifts of putting iPhones together for the western world and beyond takes it toll on the spirit - especially when you have to live in the plant too. We're talking 350,000 human beings living and working in the same factory. Mac, and his friends Dell and Hewlett Packard, put pressure on their contractor, Foxconn, to do something about the suicides. It's bad press, and we can't have Americans feeling bad about themselves as they furiously text in their laps on the way to the local cineplex or shopping mall. Terry Guo, chairman of the Foxconn group, must have taken one look at Mac and knew what he was dealing with. He called in the exorcists.