Christine
By the early 1980s, Stephen King had become so proficient at his own personalized brand of junk food horror that even his preliminary manuscripts were being shopped around to film production companies actually BEFORE they would reach the publication stage. This 1983 release was one such story of his, and in many ways it represents the junkiest of horror concepts: an evil car which can not only drive itself but can also completely alter the personality of its given owner from who they were before. In bringing this particular story to the screen, the producers were at least perceptive enough to make the best possible choice to hire on as the director: John Carpenter, cinema legend extraordinaire and also a guy who was not above doing some mercenary, for hire work outside of the usual string of classics which were entirely his own concepts that he would churn out on a regular basis. While certainly not his best work, Carpenter did manage to make a watchable piece here despite jettisoning a number of elements from the King novel including much of the backstory for the car itself , particularly the idea that it was the original owner who had induced the evil nature of the vehicle and had gone on to possess the main character of the story (Arnie) which in turn had accelerated the change in personality and demeanor that he adopted after purchasing it. But, nope. Carpenter decided to make the source of the car’s evil spirit ambiguous, even throwing in a prologue (not from King’s story) which showed Christine rolling off the assembly line in 1958, injuring one auto worker and killing another in the process. We are introduced to the two main characters and best friends: Dennis (John Stockwell), an All American kid and star wide receiver on the high school football team and Arnie (Keith Gordon), a creepy nerd who seems to have made a serious investment in brylcreem hair products while living under constant pressure and harassment from his beautiful yet strident mom (Christine Belford) and even worse, a flock of grease monkey bullies who love picking on him in auto shop class and become even more interested in tormenting him when he buys the actual Christine car (a red 1958 Plymouth Fury) which he has to keep stored in a dilapidated old garage because his mom won’t allow him to keep it parked in their driveway (because he hadn’t consulted with her about it before the purchase). The car really is quite the beauty though and can even directly communicate and interact with people through its playing of specifically particular songs over its radio (easily the corniest element of this entire enterprise). For some reason, Carpenter somehow glosses over what would appear to be the most important character development angles in the story as Arnie buys the car and two scenes later, he’s already stopped wearing glasses and in the next scene, is not only breaking out of his “nerd” phase into being a seemingly cooler person, but is SUDDENLY dating the hottest girl in the school (Alexandra Paul), with no pretense whatsoever and without even staging any kind of a scene where he even asks her out! A bad idea since her character becomes a key component of the story, worrying about Arnie’s obsession with the vehicle and even targeted as a possible victim by the car since Christine has the ability to kill passengers through either carbon monoxide poisoning or by somehow inducing choking fits. But the sadistic bullies who had made Arnie’s life hell are definitely fair game, with an epic kill scene by the car at a local gas station turning out to be one of the most visually impressive of Carpenter’s entire career especially with the car careening down the road in the dead of night while covered in flames in order to take down one last straggler. While we get some extremely reliable character acting work here from the likes of Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Prosky and Roberts Blossom, it comes down to the two male lead actors to decide the overall quality of the film, and it turns out to be a mixed bag. Stockwell as the football star best buddy (who suffers a career ending injury on the field) gives a terrible, passive performance, never connecting with Gordon’s Arnie on even a basic, friendship type level and really looking bad during any of his “I’m worried about you buddy” type scenes. As for Gordon himself, he obviously knew going in that this was going to be a make it or break it role in his career and pretty much goes all out in showing us Arnie’s deadly passion for his beloved car, laughingly casting off his super hot girlfriend for feeling uncomfortable (and possibly jealous) around Christine and feeling little to no remorse for the wasteland of dead bullies left in her wake, along with the occasional piece of dialogue which successfully gives us some insight into his tortured psyche. The biggest question of all still remains: was Arnie actually behind the wheel (and thus complicit) in the deaths of his enemies or was he really elsewhere while the car literally drove itself on its revenge rides? Carpenter smartly leaves this ambiguous as well when it comes to Arnie being either an accomplice to multiple murder or just indifferent about what had happened (keeping in mind that he was fully aware that Christine was self sufficient), as we see that Christine can not only drive on her own but can also sustain enormous amounts of damage all while being able to also completely and flawlessly repair herself (using 1983 era special effects that still look great today). Combine all this with the equally baffling conceit that Carpenter actually REDUCED the body count here from what it was in King’s original story (which probably would have made the entire thing bleaker yet better) makes this what it is, a disposable fast food entertainment from a writer who specialized in it and a legendary director who knew exactly what type of material he was working with and even incorporated the use of George Thorogood’s Bad To The Bone as the opening and closing themes with that exact attitude in mind so even if we don’t take the story all that seriously and are certainly not haunted by it, at the very least we can definitely testify to having been entertained…
7/10