Jeepers, It's the Creeper

"Jeepers, It's the Creeper" is the fourth episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season two, and the twenty-first overall. It aired on October 3, 1970, on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

The Creeper attacks the gang while they are at their school barn dance.

Detailed summary
A bank guard driving through the evening countryside crashes into a log, and from out of the bushes a green-faced, monstrous figure rises and stalks him.

Meanwhile, the team is on their way to their school's barn dance. They happen upon the scene of the bank guard's accident. He has been knocked out and his car ransacked. The guard regains consciousness long enough to thrust a blank piece of paper at Freddy and mutter, "The flame will tell... the Creeper." The gang takes the guard to the nearby house of Mr. Carswell, the bank's president, who explains that the Creeper is a phantom who has been robbing the bank. He agrees to look after the guard and sends the kids along to the dance.

At the barn dance, everyone's having fun until the lights go out; not wanting to dance in the spooky barn, everyone drives off to the malt shop, except for the team who stay behind to clean up. But as Shaggy and Scooby are taking the garbage outside they run into the Creeper, who demands the "paper" of them. The Creeper chases the kids about the countryside; Freddy, Daphne, and Velma wind up in a ditch with a horse and cart, while Scooby and Shaggy crash into a hen-house. After the Creeper leaves, Shaggy and Scooby start to go, too, but a chick hatches and immediately attaches itself to Scooby. Meanwhile, Freddy and the girls have found a car hidden in the bushes; it has no identification papers, but they find torn-up photograph negatives on the floorboards.

After running into Shaggy and Scooby (still fleeing the Creeper), they find some footprints which lead to a rope bridge, spanning over a chasm and into a cave. The cave is the home to the "hermit of the hills" (whose cooking disgusts even Shaggy and Scooby). They escape from the hermit (who is all-too-eager for their company) and make their way back to the Mystery Machine, only to find the Creeper waiting behind the wheel for them. The Creeper chases them; everyone (except Scooby) falls into the hay-bale-making machine, leaving the Creeper (and the rest of the gang) neatly bundled up.

The Creeper is unmasked as Mr. Carswell, who had been robbing his own bank and using the Creeper disguise to throw people off track. But the security guard had secretly installed an infra-red camera that caught Carswell in the act, and so Carswell had acted to silence the guard. The blank paper was actually a photograph (activated by heat) that showed Carswell looting the safe.

Back on the road, driving to the malt shop, the gang realizes the chick still hasn't been returned. When Scooby returns the chick to the hen house and bids it farewell, he notices several other chicks hatching, who all see him as their mother.

Memorable quotes
Daphne: We got him, we got the Creeper! Velma: Correction, we've got Shaggy and Scooby. Shaggy: I know who's back you're on, but whose side are you on?

Shaggy: Oh, no! Scooby's become a mother hen all over again.

Characters

 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Bank guard
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Don Messick
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Creeper
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Casey Kasem
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Fred Jones
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Frank Welker
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Velma Dinkley
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Nicole Jaffe
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Daphne Blake
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Heather North
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Shaggy Rogers
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Casey Kasem
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Scooby-Doo
 * style="background-color:#clear"| Don Messick
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Mr. Carswell
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Casey Kasem
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Kids
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Don Messick
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Chick
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Don Messick
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Hermit of Hills
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Frank Welker
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Sheriff
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Casey Kasem
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Kids
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Don Messick
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Chick
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Don Messick
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Hermit of Hills
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Frank Welker
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Sheriff
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Casey Kasem
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Frank Welker
 * style="background-color:#d2d2ff"| Sheriff
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Casey Kasem
 * style="background-color:#aaffaa"| Casey Kasem

Organizations

 * Mystery Incorporated

Locations

 * Mr. Carswell's residence
 * Barn
 * Hermit of the Hills's cave
 * Bank

Objects

 * Scooby Snack

Vehicles

 * The Mystery Machine

Development
Credited writers are Larz Bourne, Tom Degenais, and Bill Lutz, while Joe Ruby and Ken Spears story edited.

Songs

 * "Daydreamin'" - performed by George A. Robertson Jr./written by Danny Janssen and Susan Steward

Behind the scenes

 * This episode is shown to have the most physical violence in the series:
 * The Creeper/Mr. Carswell attacks the bank guard (off-screen) and leaves him unconscious in the middle of the road (only to later tie him up and dump him in the basement).
 * During the school dance in the barn, Shaggy accidentally stomps Velma's left foot multiple times.
 * Shaggy and Scooby accidentally knock Velma to the ground.
 * As the gang runs from the Creeper for the first time (enveloped in a big mound of hay), they jump through and crash a house's window.
 * After crashing through the window, the gang (still inside the hay mound) blindly runs face-first into the outer wall of the barn's entrance, and the Creeper goes into the same wall as well.
 * Scooby kicks the Creeper twice.
 * Right after Scooby kicks the Creeper for the first time, Shaggy whacks his head on a wooden pole of the barn's hayloft.
 * Velma kicks the Creeper in the knee when he snatches her glasses.
 * Shaggy, Scooby, and the Creeper all hit themselves on the rake in the barn.
 * The wagon Fred and the girls are in crashes down a cliff and the wagon lands on top of them.
 * Just after the wagon disconnects, the unruly horse violently throws Shaggy and Scooby over the cliff, and they harshly land on the entrance of a nearby chicken coop.
 * Fred, Daphne, and Velma are hiding behind trees and jump on Shaggy and Scooby, thinking that they're the Creeper.
 * While being chased by the Creeper, Fred trips and falls on his stomach, and the Creeper trips on his feet as well.
 * And last but not least, the gang and the Creeper fight inside the hay before Scooby bounds them into hay bales.
 * In this episode, Scooby unmasks the villain; the previous being in "Decoy for a Dognapper".
 * The world's first computer virus, The Creeper, was named after this episode in 1971 (one year after the episode had aired).
 * This episode was one of four Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episodes (the other three being "A Clue for Scooby Doo", "Hassle in the Castle", and "The Backstage Rage"), that were selected for the 1998 VHS Scooby-Doo's Greatest Mysteries by being voted "Most Popular" by the fans.

Errors

 * When Mr. Carswell is telling the gang about how the Creeper is a phantom and walks through walls, Daphne's pantyhose are missing.
 * Right before unmasking the Creeper, part of Scooby's neck turns the same shade of blue as his collar.
 * Fred's entire line of how the case is over and now they can go to the malt shop has two mistakes; in the first half of his line, his mouth doesn't move, and in the second and final half, Daphne's scarf is purple instead of green.
 * When Daphne asks Velma if she is okay (after Shaggy and Scooby knock her down) her pantyhose are missing.
 * The bank guard says he better move the tree, then begins trying to roll it further along the road -- to move it, he would either need to lift it or push it in another direction and not from the middle of the trunk.
 * This episode is poorly executed:
 * Why would the bank guard have Mr. Carswell's personal address? In case he needs it? It's possible he saw the evidence on the photo of him stealing the money and he hastily rushed straight to Mr. Carswell's to confront him about it, which would leave him in a vulnerable position due to Mr. Carswell's violent temperament (and proved true when he ended up locking him in the basement), instead of going straight to police. But if he had just found out that the security camera took a picture and wanted to tell Mr. Carswell right away it would have still left him in the same danger.
 * Mr. Carswell's address also seems to have been written in to get the gang there to create the mystery otherwise they would've just had to wait for the guard to come to and reveal it himself, with the police just going to his home and arresting him there.
 * The guard must have some serious trust issues if he didn't tell the bank president about setting up the security camera. Either that or he had forgotten to say or wasn't his top priority which still makes him unreliable. If he had been told immediately, Mr. Carswell could've worn his Creeper costume from the start and avoided the whole situation although he might've still been caught changing, and doing it during the night would've have made him harder to find. (Also, the bank guard may well have suspected the President too.)
 * It's unknown how long Mr. Carswell robbed from his bank. It was apparently long enough to get the story out of it, but exposition at the end neither implies the one day (which might make it slightly more plausible for Mr. Carswell not knowing about the camera and hastily having the need to violently knock him out and ransack his car) or more.
 * Mr. Carswell should have been more alert to the mysterious paper that the guard was so concerned about. If he had he could've asked for the paper from the gang because it was of the bank's matter, but of course, that would've removed them from the mystery.
 * If the bank had been robbed for a few days one would wonder if they had more guards on duty at night. That's if they wanted to be there when a so-called phantom would be.
 * Following on from that, if the public was already aware of the Creeper then it makes one wonder what the woman was doing just standing alone outside the bank at night. Even if she hadn't heard reports of it, when she does see the Creeper, she's barely alarmed and just watches him walk away. Granted it's from the back, but that doesn't hide the features from the back of a creepy-looking hunchbacked figure.
 * Why does Fred automatically assume the man in a suit in the middle of the road is a bank guard?
 * When the outside of the barn is first seen there are no cars parked, but the next time it is when the teens prepare to leave for the malt shop the Mystery Machine and three other cars are parked right at the front, facing away from the barn.
 * Due to its size the incriminating photograph is always referred to as "paper".
 * When the photo reveals Mr. Carswell stealing from the safe, Fred calls him the Creeper. While that's true it's still not who's shown. (He is phrasing it in the context of the riddle)
 * The Sheriff seems to know exactly where to find Carswell and the Gang after being unable to find him at his house- presumably the "message" the gang left was the one when they phoned at the beginning of the episode when they were told he was out of town. It is not explained how he found the barn–the bank guard may have informed him, however, he was barely conscious when last seen.
 * With the case wrapped up, the gang is ready to join their friends at the malt shop (and if the episode went any longer it would've been shown), but they're a little presumptuous that they would still be there since it was already dark when the party at the barn started and it would've been even later by the time they got there as the case would've at least taken a couple of hours. There's nothing to say that the party didn't go on for hours after; especially if Daylight Savings are involved. The gang seems to have no concept of time anyway as they're usually always at the malt shop in the evenings, like in the previous episode, "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright", and in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo -- they can spend all night solving a mystery as in "The Sludge Monster from the Earth's Core" and "Night of the Living Burger" (although in the latter Pup episode, Scooby did feel tired and yawn at one point).

Everlasting influence
This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:
 * Golden Books' Jeepers, It's the Creeper!
 * The Creeper is turned into a video game character in the fourth direct-to-video film, Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase.
 * In Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, a quasi-sequel/reboot, the episode "The Legend of Alice May" flashbacks back to an almost identical capture of the Creeper. Alice May used a female version of the Creeper costume, while falsely claiming to be the daughter of Carswell (renamed Deacon Carswell).
 * State Farm's Scooby-Doo

Just like the Creeper, the Doombringer says "Paper, paper" at one point in a similar manner in the Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? episode "Hollywood Knights!"