Victor Salva, a filmmaker born in Martinez, California, 20 miles outside San Francisco, had already written and directed over 20 short and feature-length films before graduating from high school. 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. This highly acclaimed short film, a horror allegory about a young boy awaiting his brother's return from a bloody war, 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.
Coppola then produced Salva's first theatrical feature, Clownhouse (1989),which Salva wrote and directed. Using the talented cast of his award-winning short film, Salva described the film as "a campfire story." However, his early career was derailed by the revelations of sexual misconduct with one of the film's underage stars, and he was tried, convicted, and spent a year in state prison. He described this period as "a dark time in my confused young life, but also a time when I took responsibility for my own arrested development and the ramifications of growing up in a deeply dysfunctional family."
After his release from prison, Salva relocated to Los Angeles and wrote and directed The Nature of the Beast (1995),which starred Lance Henriksen and Eric Roberts and became NewLine Cinema's biggest direct-to-video title of that year. Salva's next film, Powder (1995),was a strange tale about an albino boy with special powers that ironically make him an outcast. "Powder" received much critical acclaim and made several top-ten lists for the year.
Salva then made Rites of Passage (1999),a coming-of-age thriller starring Jason Behr, Dean Stockwell, and James Remar, which dealt with a homophobic father who unwittingly pushes his gay son into the arms of a psychotic killer. In 2001, Salva wrote and directed Jeepers Creepers (2001),which was one of the year's breakout hits and set a world record for largest Labor Day box-office in history, up until that time. Salva followed this up with his sixth feature film, Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003),breaking his old record and setting another Labor Day milestone.
Salva's next film, Peaceful Warrior (2006),was an adaptation of Dan Millman's best-seller "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior." This film was significant to him because of the year he spent in prison, and it starred Nick Nolte and Amy Smart.
