We’ve been trying to reach you about your cars extended warranty: The Movie.
Christine may be the only Stephen King adaptation where the car has more interior life than the protagonist, but long before Tesla made self-driving cars that burst into flames and commited the occasional homicide, John Carpenter brought King’s killer car to the screen with more than a few after-market modifications.
When awkward teen Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) spots a decrepit 1958 Plymouth Fury for sale in an overgrown driveway, it sparks something in him – a mote of rebellion against his domineering mother, an ember of a way to redefine his identity, the sense of a kindred spirit, neglected and discounted. But as he works to restore the car to a showroom sheen, there’s a malevolence in the car that’s tarnishing him in return.
In King’s novel, Christine charts a psychological unravelling shaped by obsession, repression, and the corrosive idea that the things we own can end up owning us. Christine’s former owner, Roland D LeBay, is a pivotal, malign presence in the novel, his reluctant sale of the car to Arnie the start of a much darker transaction. Arnie begins as awkward but decent, caught between overbearing dysfunctional parents, social rejection, and his own festering resentment. As LeBay’s malign influence takes hold through the car Christine, Arnie’s identity starts to erode and what initially manifests as a newfound confidence and swagger sours into callousness and resentment, alienating him from his best friend and new girlfriend as he’s slowly but inexorably subsumed by LeBay.
In bringing Christine to the screen, John Carpenter, strips it back to the chassis and rebuilds it with the intent on racing it through the beats of King’s story. Gone is the upholstery of LeBay’s malignant presence, replaced by a ghost in the machine that makes Christine evil from the moment she rolls off the assembly line. She still passes through the LeBay family’s hands, but the film casts Roland as just another victim rather than villain of the piece. Christine is bad to the bumper and from that point on it’s pedal to the metal as we race through to the point where the rubber really hits the road in King’s story. Character arcs are shortened or turbocharged. Arnie’s mother isn’t the complex, controlling character of the novel, she’s just an outright bitch. Arnie’s transition from timid teen to arrogant jerk races through the gears at test track speed, and the character of Dennis, Arnie’s best friend and narrator of most of the novel, is left idling in the layby most of the time.
Carpenter’s Christine is a stripped-down, souped-up coupe of carnage, Michael Myers in motorised form and while purists may lament the loss of King’s metaphorical mediation on intergenerational rage and the rot of the American dream, Carpenter plays to the monster truck carmageddon crowd with the tale of an unstoppable killer car; Knight Rider as nightmare.
The cast are serviceable enough. Keith Gordon does what he can to sell Arnie’s too-abrupt descent into darkness while John Stockwell and Alexandra Paul look on helplessly as his best friend and girlfriend respectively. The gang of bullies are more fun to watch, though, with William Ostrander’s Buddy looking like the dark half of Travolta’s Danny Zuko as he struts and pouts his way through the film until his lightning’s greased permanently (speaking of Travolta, Kelly Preston makes an appearance as one of Arnie’s classmates). Buddy’s gang also features a classic of “oh where do I know him from?” in Rich, played by Steven Tash (the answer is: he’s the gum chewing guy who gets fed up with Venkman’s psychic test at the start of Ghostbusters). Veteran character actors Robert Prosky and Harry Dean Stanton are deployed to bring a little gravitas to the mostly unknown cast but even they struggle to make much of an impact thanks to a screenplay that has its headlights on full beam for its main character. This is Christine’s movie, and the human cast are just along for the ride.
And what a star Christine is. While the film may be a bit of a bumpy ride, you can see where the money and attention were really spent. The practical effects, overseen by Roy Arbogast who had worked with Carpenter on The Thing, are – still – astonishing. Watching Christine regenerate herself from a crumpled wreck remains one of the most satisfyingly chilling moments in 80s horror cinema. The sound design – all revving menace and nostalgically arch radio needle drops (predating Michael Bay’s use of the same gimmick to give Bumblebee a “voice” in Transformers) – give the car a personality that’s genuinely unnerving. Christine may lack the novel’s emotional depth but as a monster movie of metal on wheels, it’s a hell of a drive.
