Somewhere Over the Corn Row

Last Saturday night, one of the TV stations showed a fun movie: Jeepers Creepers II. (I have never seen Jeepers Creepers I). It had a weak story-line and it was largely predictable. In a nutshell, the movie consisted of a bus carrying the entire high-school football team breaking down on an isolated, desolate state highway that seemed to have no other traffic throughout. (I kept thinking that the film was set in Nebraska, or maybe Kansas, somewhere with lots of cornfields and crows. A lot of scary flicks seem to take place in settings with lots of crows and cornfields, but very few people.)be located somewhere like that.)

As the movie rolled along, one member of the football team after another got knocked off by a fascinating horse-size coal-black critter that seemed to be a cross between a giant absolutely black locust and a vicious crow with large, ugly teeth. The winged critter would stay out of sight for a while, and then swoop down from the skies, grab another victim from the football team, and then whisk away back up to the heavens.
The end of the movie turned out happily and more than a bit too syrupy. A couple of the guys from the football team even knocked the critter off, though I do expect him to show up again in a third installment of a trilogy. I hope so. The special effects were worth staying up late, very late, to see the movie. Hmmm...a lot of things in the movie could have come from the Wizard of Oz. I suppose a little plagiarism doesn't hurt a thing