You may have seen her before in some way. She's evil and will drive you crazy. She's death on four wheels. She's Christine. A 1983 horror thriller movie that is considered one of the best works of John Carpenter, the movie will drive you crazy and make you wonder what love and obsession can look like.
Starring a seminal young cast that would eventually diverge into different directions, the movie was essentially based upon the novel written by Stephen King, who is otherwise a master of horror in the literature world.
John Carpenter's 1982 horror movie The Thing bombed at the box office, due to an unavoidable box-office clash with 1982's ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. However, The Thing has developed a cult following and is now considered one of the finest horror movies ever. The failure of "The Thing" compelled him to do this movie after Columbia Pictures hired him to direct the film. Stephen King and John Carpenter have been associated for a very long time and it is due to their association that the movie came into existence. The film was made on a very tight schedule from December 1982 to January 1983 while additional parts were filmed in April 1983. Some cars used for the film were not Plymouth Furies but Plymouth Belverdales, which was pretty shocking when I learned about them.
The movie was released on 9th December 1982 and grossed over 21 million dollars at the box office turning out to be a cult classic over the years. Through the years, Christine has been released on several physical media formats such as the VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, and most recently a special edition 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray. To give you a brief idea some pictures have been pasted below for your sake...Please have a look--
Christine DVD
The basic plot of Christine follows the story of a clumsy high school teenager Arnie Cunningham who is unpopular and gets bullied very often until one day he comes across an abandoned Plymouth Fury named Christine, which has a wicked past with its previous owner. As Arnie buys Christine and spends more time restoring her, a sudden transformation takes over him that drives everybody around him crazy, thanks to the sudden change in his confidence and attitude. With a series of murders in the town, the film becomes a nail-biting climax that tells the tale of a devil on 4 wheels who will suck the life out of you at the end.
Themes of fear, anger, obsession, and most specifically love have been strongly portrayed and depicted in this horror thriller. Christine is one of the many horror movies of its own time that featured an automobile antagonist, similar to other movies like The Car(1977) and Duel(1971).
The special effects of this film deserve a standing ovation. Considering this was made in an era where CGI wasn't born and movies like Jurassic Park(1993) were a decade away, practical effects were the only way to pull off a film made at this scale. Remember this scene? A complete example of excellence and vision beyond one's own time-
This scene is a classic example of using traditional film magic to fill in the gaps where special effects were still in their infancy. While some of the effects in this film haven't aged well, considering the breakthroughs we've achieved in CGI and animation, this particular scene from the movie still holds its ground even after all these years.
The Cinematography and Dialogue
Christine Kills Buddy Repperton
The movie has your typical John Carpenter feeling, the budget constraints evident in the locations, and the overall feel and look of the film. Donald Morgan has done a fantastic job of showing a dark and dull side of LA, which could also be seen in the 1984 sci-fi flick The Terminator, although it had a more noir-like feel. The costume department has also done a great job making each character distinct from the other. Keith Gordon's wardrobe after his transformation is reminiscent of popular 50s fashion, similar to the book. All the die-hard fans might notice a strange thing here- many dialogues in the film are copy-pasted from the novel, taken word-by-word from the book. As a film lover, I saw this in Jurassic Park and its sequel. Complete scenes and lines were straight-off lifted from the novels, although Christine diverges from the book and goes in its unique direction while keeping some key events in the book intact. I like the dark and dull atmosphere in the film, which is the classic John Carpenter style as seen in movies like Escape From New York(1981) and The Fog(1980). Another highlight is the usage of long shots, which is dead in the modern Hollywood landscape, as it's always about jump-cuts and shaky cams (Yes, superhero movies, I'm talking about you). One memory that will stay fresh in my mind is the highway scene towards the end, where Arnie and Dennis talk about love as they speed on the highway.
Arnie Talks About Love
This scene is hands down, the best scene in the whole film. Shot inside a mount of the Plymouth Fury, which was attached to a truck that hauled the actors as they were talking to each other, and Arnie, now completely possessed by the vengeful spirit inside the car, talks about love having a voracious appetite and how there's nothing good being behind the wheel of your car - except, maybe for... you know the rest 😂. The camera work, the dialogue, and the soundtrack- all 3 elements are in perfect sync, giving you that haunting feeling I remember having when I first saw this movie in June of 2021(Such good times they were). This same dialogue was used by George LeBay, the brother of the car's original owner, whom we see at the beginning of the film, further giving an eerie vibe about how Arnie was able to remember such a random dialogue, considering he was acting like a little geek in that scene, completely enamored by Christine( car guys, assemble). We'll discuss the soundtrack in the next few sections of the review, we're just not there yet.
The Action and Choreography
Christine pushes all the limits of your average horror movie by doing things that were probably unspoken of at the time. Take, for instance, the usage of the "F-word" over 50 times in a movie, something that didn't sit well with the critics back in the day. The scene where Buddy Repperton and his gang vandalize Christine is perhaps a celebration of barbarism and wickedness in about 10 minutes or more. If you were a superfan like me, you'd notice the deleted scenes of this movie where the vandalism sequence played out in a much more dishonorable fashion, with the character of Moochie Wells taking a shit on the dashboard for real. The next morning, when Arnie finds out about this, he's enraged and completely frustrated, the dialogue in this scene matches word to word with the novel here, and also in other key scenes of the film. Now, the most important part i.e. the murders.
For the sake of service, we'll cover the murders in the exact sequence they occur in the film.
Sometime at night, when Moochie is dropped off by a truck, Christine calmly waits at the parking lot, teasing him with a 50s song, that comments on his obesity( back when obese jokes were funny). For some eagle-eyed fans, you might have noticed the black glasses on the car during all the night sequences, which was done to hide the driver inside and to instill suspense in the audience regarding who the real killer is- Arnie or Christine herself. I genuinely miss those days when low-budget movies had great ways to compensate for creativity when there was a lack of money and technology(yes, big-budget movies, I'm calling you out here). Nevertheless, the sequence moves on with Christine chasing Moochie around town as he's panicking at the moment, his death waiting just minutes away. As she corners him in a dead-end, the car pushes herself into the narrow passage, even damaging herself in the process as she brutally murders the kid. They used a bulldozer to shove the Plymouth inside the gap and due to the technical constraints at the time, the production team ended up destroying a lot of the cars in the movie, no wonder why only 2 or 3 have survived in the last 4 decades, with over 17 of them biting the dust.
The deaths of the rest of the bullies are horrific and unimaginable in reality. Imagine being run down by a car, burnt alive, and being crushed under a car. It reminds me of Final Destination to be honest and I'm not going to lie about that. The sequence pans out a few days before New Year's Eve, 1979 when Buddy and his gang are out for their usual bully stuff when Christine intercepts them at a gas station.
This shot is probably visual poetry in motion. Just look at the Fury burning, as if the devil is out of hell and driving on 4 wheels. The gas station was a giant movie prop, that was blown up for the movie, thank god they didn't have CGI then, or else it would be butchered like the airport scene from Berlin in Captain America, Civil War. As Buddy is running for his life, Christine slowly approaches him and does the job coldly and brutally, that traumatized me the first time I saw this movie in 2021.
Now coming to the final garage showdown, for those of you who have not remembered the scene, let me tell you how it goes- Dennis and Leigh wait inside the garage, sitting in a bulldozer and waiting for Arnie, as they plan to crush his car and save him. But, this is a horror movie, and suddenly out of the rubble, Christine emerges and attempts to run Leigh over, who manages to cling to a board above. This sequence is notable because here, you see the car gradually transforming into a devil. The aesthetics are so impressive that even to this date, I've never seen a car that was sensationalized to this point. Look at the image below, hats off to the creative team for creating an image that will scar my psyche for the rest of my life😂.
Right after this scene, Arnie is impaled by a glass shard and he dies moments later, but not before admiring the car in his dying breath, to which Christine plays another 50s song heard earlier in the movie. Shortly after this, Dennis uses the bulldozer and crushes Christine into a cube, but not before we see that maybe Christine is alive after all, though it differs from the novel, which takes a darker turn than the movie.
The Soundtrack
As a John Carpenter fanboy, I've always admired the soundtrack in his movies. Be it They Live, Escape From New York (the scene where Duke is introduced to the audience), Big Trouble In Little China, or even his later works like In The Mouth of Madness and Ghosts of Mars, all of his films had that characteristic Carpenter score imprinted on them- a catchy rhythm, a great starting and the fade out ending. Christine's soundtrack is a love letter to the 50s culture- the cars, the fashion, and the music numbers. A particular song "Bad To The Bone" that plays out in the opening scene in the factory, also remembered by fans for playing out in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, is the show-stealer if you ask me.
Final Thoughts
Christine is one of the biggest achievements in John Carpenter's career and sincerely speaking, I don't have many hopes with the Blumhouse remake, because, let's get real, most of the Stephen King adaptations were products of their own time, and now that CGI and AI have completely changed the movie landscape, it's hard to get a movie as raw and as intense as this. The superhero genre is a blatant example of what I'm implying right now. While the film has some flaws, the magic and eerie vibes you get once you start watching it are endless and it shall take you on a ride of your life.
As a John Carpenter fanboy, I've always admired the soundtrack in his movies. Be it They Live, Escape From New York (the scene where Duke is introduced to the audience), Big Trouble In Little China, or even his later works like In The Mouth of Madness and Ghosts of Mars, all of his films had that characteristic Carpenter score imprinted on them- a catchy rhythm, a great starting and the fade out ending. Christine's soundtrack is a love letter to the 50s culture- the cars, the fashion, and the music numbers. A particular song "Bad To The Bone" that plays out in the opening scene in the factory, also remembered by fans for playing out in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, is the show-stealer if you ask me.
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