Review #900: 'Christine' (1983)

Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon) is a dorky high-school kid with only one friend in the world, jock Dennis (John Stockwell). Arnie is the type of kid who gets pushed around by bullies and has his glasses stamped on while teachers look the other way as they think it'll probably do him some good. Things change when Arnie stumbles upon a run-down Plymouth Fury and decides to buy it, against the wishes of his parents and Dennis himself, who feels an uneasy presence within the car. The car is named Christine, and as Christine's appearances improves, so does Arnie's - he slicks his hair, wears cooler clothes, and is generally more confidant and cocky. But when Arnie starts the date the school's hot newcomer, Leigh (Alxandra Paul), the car is thrown into a bloodthirsty fit of jealousy.

Made on the back of a hot streak that helped turn John Carpenter into a horror icon, Christine is a relatively minor work by his early standards, but is still infused with Carpenter's sense of style and atmosphere. Based on the novel by Stephen King, which went to lengths to explain Christine's psychopathic behaviour, the film instead establishes the red hunk of auto-porn as evil from the get-go as it kills someone before it's even off the assembly line. Perhaps trying to explain why a car was killing people in cold blood and how it possesses the ability to repair itself would somewhat remove the façade, choosing (or hoping) instead to let the audience simply enjoy the movie without the need for clunky exposition. And it works - Carpenter has it play out with a straight face and the film is very enjoyable for the majority of its 100 minute running-time.

The film takes time to develop its story and a supporting cast that includes Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Prosky and Roberts Blossom helps things move along nicely. When heads begin to roll, Carpenter delivers a couple of visually arresting set-pieces involving an attack on some bullies at a gas station and the chasing-down of a fat kid, both of which see Christine attack her sweetheart's aggressors with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. There's only so much you can do when your killer is a car, and it naturally takes a lot of bone-head's to let themselves be killed by it. No-one seems to move sideways, run up some stairs or enter a building (unless it's a flimsy gas station). But Christine does manage to somehow take on a personality of its own, and there's always something oddly satisfying about watching metal scrape, crash or burn on screen. It pales in comparison to the likes of Escape from New York and The Thing, which came the two years before, but Christine is a perfectly well-executed horror.


Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky, Harry Dean Stanton, Roberts Blossom
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie