Victor Salva

VICTOR SALVA

Date of Birth: March 29, 1958

This native of Martinez, California was an avid filmmaker by his early teens. Before Salva graduated from high school, he had written and directed a number of short films and one feature. To finance his filmmaking hobby, he often held two jobs during the week.

In the late '80s, he completed Something in the Basement, which was a horror allegory. The film went on to win several national awards and caught the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola. With Coppola's help, Salva released his first theatrical film, Clownhouse, which was released on television. Although his next project, The Nature of the Beast, didn't get a chance to shine on the big screen, it was a success nonetheless, becoming the studio's biggest straight-to-video title of the year.

In 1995, Salva wrote and directed the critically-acclaimed Powder, a story about an outcast albino boy with strange powers. However, the film didn't do well at the box office, partly due to the efforts of a young man whom Salva had molested as a 12-year-old, who asked for a boycott of the film. A convicted child molester, Salva had confessed in 1988 to five felony counts of sexual relations with the boy whom he videotaped in sexual situations. Following Powder, he took a step back from the horror genre and made Rites of Passage, a more personal film that was not well received by critics or viewers.

With the turn of the millennium, Salva returned to horror, and released Jeepers Creepers (2001), which was a big enough hit to merit a sequel, Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003), which he also wrote and directed.

Filmography (director):

Peaceful Warrior (2006)
Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003)
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Rites of Passage (1999)
Nature of the Beast (1995)
Powder (1995)