The 80s saw a lot of Stephen King’s works adapted to various movies. Many of them were rather forgettable if not outright bad, to the point where I personally believed the only way to make a good Stephen King adaptation most of the time was to adapt one of his non-horror works like The Shawshank Redemption or Stand by Me. Yes, there were a few exceptions, but most of the time they came from exceptional directors. And when it comes to horror, there’s a reason why John Carpenter’s name is often referenced as a master of the genre: because he knows how to craft good genre movies.
True, his own attempt to direct a King work, Christine, met with poor box office at the time, but like The Thing, it’s been recognized a lot more as a quality movie since it first came out. Well, I finally got around to seeing it.
I actually was a big Stephen King fan back in my late teens and early 20s, but Christine holds a special place in my memory. Oh, not for a good reason. The book itself was fine, but my sister read it first, and she decided it was the height of hilarity any time she saw me reading it to ask if I got to some plot point that was always, like, five or ten pages ahead of where I was reading at the time.
But that’s neither here nor there. What about Carpenter’s movie? King’s novel doesn’t really say what made the car evil, and the movie doesn’t really either, simply showing it was maiming and killing people while it was still on the assembly line in the 1950s. Fast forward to 1978, and the car called Christine is a rusted out old junker for sale when it catches the eye of picked-on nerd high school Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon). Arnie has one friend, Dennis (John Stockwell), a football star, and despite his overbearing mother’s objections, Arnie signed up for ship class to learn to fix cars, bringing him into the focus of some of Stephen King’s less lethal bullies.
There are plenty of bullies in King’s works, but these guys, though awful, may be the first that don’t seem to just want Arnie dead so much as perpetually scared.
But something about buying Christine, over the objections of Dennis and his parents, changes Arnie. He seems to gain confidence, his efforts on restoring the car to its former glory seem to be going really well in ways that don’t generally make sense to anyone given the haphazard nature of the repairs and the fact that Arnie probably doesn’t really have much money for parts, and some of the repair work isn’t really all that accountable when it comes to stuff like the paint job. And while Arnie’s newfound confidence wins him a girlfriend in the form of new girl Leigh (Alexandra Paul), Christine is off-putting to just about everybody, and she seems to be alive. Before long, Christine is not only on the road on her own, taking down Arnie’s various enemies, but she also seems able to repair herself no matter what the damage. How do you stop a car that drives itself and doesn’t mind taking damage to get a kill in since it can self-repair?
Now, knowing the rough plot and all, I don’t know that I would call Christine all that frightening. If anything, it’s rather colorful. Christine roaring out of an exploding gas station while on fire is a rather striking image. There’s a dark comedy to the movie, particularly when Christine’s radio comes on, always playing an appropriate Golden Oldie to fit the situation. It’s hard to say what Christine does in some instances, like when Leigh starts choking on some food while sitting in the car, and I think I would have preferred spending a bit more time with the pre-Christine Arnie, just to further emphasize how much he changed from harmless nerd to cocky asshole, but Carpenter, as always, puts together a tight movie with some good scenes. It’s not among the director’s best, but it’s certainly worth a look for Carpenter’s fans.
Grade: B-
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