Victor Salva

Victor Ronald Salva (born March 29, 1958) is an American film director and convicted sex offender. He is best known for directing the films Powder and Jeepers Creepers.

Early life

Born in Martinez, California, Salva had written and directed over 20 short and feature films before graduating from high school. To finance his filmmaking hobby, he often held two jobs during the week. His biological father abandoned the family and Salva stated that his stepfather was often drunk and physically abusive.

Like a lot of children growing up in the East Bay town of Martinez in the early 1970s, the adolescent Salva was very much interested in horror and sci-fi. His favorite monster movie was Creature from the Black Lagoon. In 1975, the local newspaper reported that a child (Salva) had sat through Jaws a record 55 times. Salva was expelled from the family at eighteen when he acknowledged his homosexuality to his mother and stepfather.

Early career

Salva describes his films as "atmospheric and macabre, with no happy endings, but not to be taken totally seriously". In the mid-1980s, his 37-minute short film Something in the Basement (1986) took first place in the fiction category at the Sony/AFI Home Video Competition. A horror allegory about a young boy awaiting his brother's return from a bloody war, the highly acclaimed film 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 then produced Salva's first theatrical feature, Clownhouse (1989), which Salva again wrote and directed.