VICTOR SALVA (Writer/Director) was born in Martinez, California, twenty miles outside San Francisco. An avid filmmaker from the age of thirteen, he had written and directed over twenty short films and one feature length film (all on Super 8) before graduating from high school in 1976.
Often holding down two jobs to finance his weekend filmmaking, in the late eighties Salva’s 37-minute short Something in the Basement took first place in the fiction category at the Sony/AFI Home Video Competition. A horror allegory, it told the eerie story of a young boy awaiting his brother’s return from a bloody war and the evil presence in the basement who claims the young soldier is already dead. This highly acclaimed short went on to win several national awards (including a Bronze Plaque at the Chicago International Film festival) and brought Salva to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who was one of the judges at the Sony/AFI Contest.
Coppola then produced Salva’s first theatrical feature, Clownhouse, which Salva again wrote and directed. Using the talented cast of his award-winning short, Salva called the film “a campfire story.”
His next film brought him to Los Angeles. Written and directed by Salva, The Nature of the Beast starred Lance Henriksen and Eric Roberts and quickly became New Line’s biggest direct-to-video title of that year. The following year Salva made his first studio picture: Powder. Powder received much critical acclaim and made several top ten lists for the year.
The filmmaker describes Rites of Passage, released in 1999, as his most personal film, a unique, coming-of-age thriller starring Jason Behr (Roswell), Dean Stockwell and James Remar.
In 2001, Salva wrote and directed Jeepers Creepers, which was one of the year’s breakout hits. Jeepers Creepers 2 is Salva’s sixth feature film, all of which he has written and directed. He enjoys working with Coppola and American Zoetrope, who first championed him.
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