Review #99: Christine (1983)

Cast/Notable Credits:
John Carpenter (Director): Halloween

Keith Gordon (Arnie): Jaws 2 (1978), Back to School (1986)

John Stockwell (Dennis): Top Gun (1986), Eddie and the Cruisers (1983)

Alexandra Paul (Leigh): The Paper Boy (1994), Baywatch T.V. series

Robert Prosky (Will): Gremlins 2 (1990), Hill St. Blues T.V. series

Harry Dean Stanton (Rudolph Jenkins): Alien

Kelly Preston (Roseanne): Spacecamp (1986), From Dusk til Dawn (1996), Sky High (2005)

Christine Trailer:


Plot:

Based on a Stephen King novel:

A geeky high school kid (Arnie) finds an old, beat up, red 57' Plymouth Fury in some one's front yard while riding with his friend Dennis home from school. Arnie and Dennis stop to inquire about the car and Arnie ends up buying it for $250 bucks. Arnie names the car Christine. He takes Christine home, and his parents flip out over his purchase of the car and tells him that he cannot park it at the house. With the help of Dennis, Arnie takes Christine to a junkyard garage shop to store and rebuild.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Arnie restores Christine to mint condition. Arnie becomes obsessed with working on Christine and undergoes major personality changes. Arnie goes from a pushed around loser geek to "Joe Cool" greaser bad boy. Arnie even manages to snag the school's most popular girl, Leigh. Dennis sees the changes in his best friend and goes back to old guy that sold Christine to Arnie. Dennis learns that Christine's previous owner died of carbon monoxide poisoning inside the car. Also mysterious deaths surrounded Christine and the previous owner became obsessed with Christine.

Dennis becomes seriously injured in the football game that the newly restored Christine makes her first appearance in public. Arnie's new girlfriend starts to take a disliking to Christine, as Arnie spends more time him Christine than her. One night at the Drive-In, Christine attempts to kill Leigh by suffocating/choking her when Arnie stepped out. Leigh gives Arnie a choice, "It's me or the car."

Later that night, Arnie parks Christine at the garage and heads for home. A couple of high school punks who dislike Arnie decide to break in the garage and do their best at smashing up Christine. Arnie comes back with Leigh and they find Christine all smashed up and vandalized. Arnie and Leigh break up over it, and Arnie becomes dark and evil as Christine fixes herself up amazingly and they go off and hunt down the hoodlums that smashed Christine. One by one they pick off the punks.

After the first kid dies, the police become interested in Arnie and his car. Detective Jenkins questions Arnie about the kids smashing up Christine, and is amazed how quickly she was fixed up. Arnie defends Christine and down plays how bad Christine was smashed. Jenkins finds Arnie's tales and lies hard to believe as he continues his investigation and more punks die off.

Dennis gets out of the hospital towards the end of the year, and Leigh calls him up to talk about Christine. They both agree that Christine is evil, and they head down to the garage to destroy her. Unfortunately Christine doesn't want to die and has plans for them. Caught up in the middle of the Car-boy-love-affair is Arnie who is reluctant to let Dennis and Leigh destroy Christine.

During the era of film and T.V. where cars ruled the world, Christine has got to be close to the top of the list of best car shows. Of course there are other cool cars on that list. Within the review, I'll be going over my top 5 cars and their flicks (during the early 80's era).

5. 80's GMC Sierra 4x4 pick up - The Fall Guy. I loved this show for some reason. Probably because of the cars and Heather Thomas (Pictured left). Lee Majors (Colt) the famous stuntman drove the brown 4x4 pick up during his adventures. Co-star Heather drove a white camaro. I remember having a 8" toy replica truck as a kid that I used to play around and run over all my other toys with.

Christine is a smart, sleek horror film. Many people can relate to the flick. Not in the "crazed maniac car" sense, but many of us have named our cars and have developed special bonds to them. After all, we spend a lot of our time traveling in them, and we also depend on their durability and safety. Some people are obsessed like Arnie and spend the majority of their time fixing them up making them a little bit better than before. After all, how many horror movies have run the killer car plot dry? Not many.

4. Mr. T's van - The A-Team. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! It was a metallic black GMC Vandua van with a red stripe down each side. It was the ultimate bad ass van. No "mini" used in that phrase. How can we forget the show that turn Vietnam vets into underground mercenaries helping the weak in Los Angeles. There was always a segment during the show where they used the MacGuyver skills and built some tank or bomb out of the scraps laying around. I pity the fool to mess with that van!

As far as the characters of the movie, I wasn't overly impressed, but not disappointed. I took me forever to place the main character Arnie, Keith Gordon. He looks like a typical 80's movie geek. Once I researched the characters and found out where I've seen him before, it just clicked. He played one of the teen sail boaters in Jaws 2. Christine was Baywatch's Alexandra Paul's (pictured right) first featured role in a film. I think she looks better with longer hair, rather than that butch-cut she supported during Baywatch. Alien alumni Harry Dean Stanton played the role of the lead detective. It took him a while to show up in the movie but it was worth it.

3. Christine - Christine. Pretty self explanatory in this article. Just in case you missed it, she was a red 58' Plymouth Fury with white side panel stripes.

The film lacked in the TNA department, but that's all right. Some times horror films don't need all that to succeed. Not that I don't mind it, but in this case, it didn't hurt the film too much.Kelly Preston (pictured left) had a small role in the film as the school's slut. She was the hot chick from Spacecamp and the MILF from Sky High. Obviously she was younger back then, but she's still looking good!

2. General Lee - Dukes of Hazzard. We all know that car. You have to have been living underneath a rock if you don't. Just in case, you're not a car guy, it was a 69' Dodge Charger. During production they used Charger models from 68' and 69' to fit the car, but it is listed as a 69' Charger. That was the #1 reason to watch the show or #2 if you watched it for Daisy and her Daisy Dukes. It was a close race for me. I was a younin' so the car did hold some power over my pre-hormone years.

Christine is a classic horror movie that stands up through the years of time. Sure some of the outfits and hair do's are out of date and silly, but the rest of the film holds true to the test of time. The film used the "KISS" method...uh oh...did I just reference K.I.S.S.? We all know what that means...pictured left...and not the "Knights In Satan's Service" acronym, but "Keep It Simple Stupid". The film kept it simple. Killer car kills everyone who is a threat between her and Arnie. All background is explained in a line or two here and there. Bottom line: killer car movie. Not much more needed explaining. It didn't have a traumatizing psychological youth. Nor did we get some black magic stowed upon it. We just got to accept that it came from the gates of hell to kill.

1. KITT - Knight Rider. The famous black 82' Pontiac Firebird Trans Am with the glowing side to side red light on the hood. KITT stood for Knight Industries Two Thousand and was voiced by William Daniels (ABC's Boy Meets World). And lets not forget the Hoff!
* Honorable mention: 74' Dodge Monaco (Blues Brothers), Dixie~80' White CJ-7 Jeep (Dukes of Hazzard, 77' Pontiac Trans Am (Smokey & the Bandit 1 & 2) *

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on December 9, 1983 and made $21.2 million at the Box Office ($3.4 million opening weekend)
-Scott Baio, Kevin Bacon, and Brooke Shields were considered for the lead roles
-The car is mentioned as a 58' Plymouth Fury; although there is speculation that it is a 57' Fury. 13 or 16 Fury's were smashed during the film and 25 used to film. There were a mixture of year makes
-Detective Jenkins drives a 77' or 78' Plymouth Fury
-License plate is "CQB" which stands for Close Quarters Battle