HALLOWEEN 2K20: John Carpenter Tribute - A Review of "Christine"

*THIS JUST IN*: 1958 Plymouth Furies have been recalled for spontaneously running down
teenagers against the driver's control. Please see your nearest Plymouth dealer for details.

Welcome back. I know I'm a couple days late! I am currently patching servers where I work late nights so there hasn't been quite a lot of time to for me to keep up with my blog posts for this October. With that shameless apology out of the way, let's continue on with our Halloween 2K20 tribute to John Carpenter, the man, the master, the maestro of mayhem; right here... on Spoiler Alert!

"Arnie, what's wrong?" "I'm just wondering who
the hell shot J.R."

So, we know for a fact that The Thing is arguably John Carpenter's magnum opus. You know... aside from that one movie that he made that definitely became the defining film on which all future horror movies would be compared to, fairly or unfairly. The following year after The Thing, 1983, John Carpenter would get another film in, and this one is actually based off of a Stephen King novel released the same year. In fact, at the time, Stephen King was so popular that the movie rights to this novel were sold before the novel was even published. This is Christine, a movie that teaches us you should never ever fall in love with your first car because it could try to self-drive and murder everyone who ever wronged you... and stood by your side... in your entire life. Similarly with the book, Christine tells the story of the changes in the lives of Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon), his friends, his family, and his teenage enemies after Arnie buys a classic Red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury named "Christine", license number CQB 241, a car that seems to have a jealous, possessive personality – and a mind of its own. Does the movie hold up as well as the book? Let's dig in through the plot and figure out what works and what doesn't!

"Christine, babe! Open up so I can pull my
fucking hand out! LIKE THIS!! LIKE THIS!!"

The movie opens in September 1957, at a Chrysler Corporation assembly plant in Detroit. During a routine inspection a line of brand new 1958 Plymouth Furies, the hood of a newly assembled, red-and-white model slams down without warning and crushes the hand of a line worker. Another worker climbs in to sit behind the wheel, letting the ash from his cigar fall on the front seat. At the end of the shift, the line supervisor notices the car's radio is playing music; when he opens the door to shut it off, the worker's corpse falls out onto the floor to the dulcet tones of Buddy Holly "Not Fade Away".

Twenty-one years later, in September 1978, Dennis Guilder (John Stockwell) picks up his best friend Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham (artistically to the tune of Tanya Tucker's cover of "Not Fade Away" (Nice detail), who is an awkward and unpopular teenager in Rockbridge, California. Arnie's life begins to change when he buys the used, dilapidated Fury from George LeBay (Roberts Blossom... the "South Bend Shovel Slayer" from Home Alone), whose late brother Roland had originally owned it. George tells Arnie several details about the car, including its name: "Christine". Since his parents will not let him keep the car at their house, Arnie begins to restore it at a do-it-yourself garage and junkyard owned by Will Darnell (Robert Prosky). As Arnie spends more of his time working on the car, he discards his glasses, dresses more like a 1950s greaser, and develops an arrogant, paranoid personality. Unbeknownst to Arnie, Dennis learned from Arnie's mother Regina (Ironically Christine Belford) that Roland actually committed suicide in the car. Confronted by Dennis, George admits that Roland's daughter had choked to death in the car and that his wife also committed suicide in it. George forced Roland to get rid of Christine after Roland's wife's death, but the car returned to him after three weeks. All by itself! *Eerie ghost noises*

"Boy, this car's seen better days." "Yeah, I
wonder if there's an Extreme Makeover: Car
Edition?"

During a football game, Dennis becomes distracted by the sight of Arnie kissing his new girlfriend, Leigh Cabot (Alexandra Cabot), in front of a now-perfect Christine and is tackled, suffering a career-ending injury. One night, while Arnie and Leigh are on a date at the drive-in, one of Christine's windshield wipers stops working. When Arnie gets out to fix it, Leigh begins to choke on a hamburger. The doors lock themselves, leaving Arnie unable to help her, but she frees herself and is saved when a man in a nearby car administers the Heimlich maneuver. Soon afterward, school bully Buddy Repperton (William Ostrander) - angry with Arnie over being expelled after a confrontation in shop class - vandalizes Christine with the help of his gang. Arnie is devastated and determined to repair Christine but is surprised to see her quickly restore herself... all spooky like. *Eerie ghost noises*

Christine then seeks out the vandals, crushing Moochie Welch (Malcolm Danare) in an alley, triggering a gas station explosion that kills Don Vandenberg (Stuart Charno) and Richie Trelawny (Steven Tash) and sets the car on fire, and finally running down Buddy himself. After the badly burned Christine returns to Darnell's garage, Darnell sits in the driver's seat and is crushed to death against the steering wheel when Christine pushes the seat forward. The next morning, Christine is back in its slot and fully repaired again. Creepily... all by herself without any intervention at all! *Eerie ghost noises*! State police detective Rudolph Junkins (Harry Dean Stanton) becomes suspicious of Arnie, having discovered paint from Christine at the scenes of two gang members' deaths. However, he has no direct evidence to implicate Arnie, who has an alibi.

"Arnie, we found paint matching Christine's at
the crime scene." "Detective, there are millions
of red cars in America." "Touché."

Junkins either does not know or cannot believe that Christine can drive herself. Following the choking incident and Christine's initial vandalization, Leigh breaks up with Arnie. Dennis and Leigh conclude the only way to save Arnie is to destroy Christine. They set a trap for it at Darnell's garage: Dennis waits at the controls of a bulldozer, while Leigh stands ready to close the garage doors and cut off Christine's retreat once it enters. However, Christine has been lying in wait under a pile of debris in the garage the entire time, and it strikes when Leigh takes up her position at the door controls. Christine crashes through Darnell's office in an attempt to get at Leigh. Arnie – who has been driving the car himself – is thrown through the windshield and impaled on a shard of glass, which kills him. Dennis and Leigh attack Christine with the bulldozer, but it continually repairs itself and strikes back. The battle continues until they repeatedly drive back and forth over the car, damaging Christine so much that it is unable to immediately regenerate... to the tune of "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay" by Danny & The Juniors. The next day, Dennis, Leigh and Junkins watch as Christine's remains are compacted by a car crusher in a junkyard and dropped on the ground as a solid block. Junkins praises Dennis and Leigh for defeating the demonic vehicle, despite them mourning the loss of Arnie and their inability to save him. As the camera zooms in slowly on the remains, a portion of the front grill begins to twitch... signaling that Christine may not be fully destroyed after all, and she may soon regenerate and hunt down more innocent victims! *Eerie ghost noises*

"Arnie, why is your car choking me?" "Relax!
I'll do the Heimlich!" "Pretty sure your car
called me a 'cheap alleyway slut' too!" "Oh... that
might be something else entirely."

Christine is a pretty great slasher movie, and unique that the killer in the film is a car. There's a similar car-related slasher film I haven't seen but it's been on Netflix called The Car. If you've seen The Car, leave a comment on this blog post and tell me how it is. Maybe I'll take a look at it as background noise one day during work. Despite that the film involved car related murders, there's surprisingly very little gore in the film. According to the film's writer Bill Phillips on the DVD/Blu-ray documentary, the movie technically didn't have enough violence to justify an "R" rating, but they were afraid that if the movie went out with a PG rating (PG-13 didn't exist yet) nobody would go to see it. So while writing the script he purposely inserted the words "fuck" and "cunt" and their derivatives in order to get the "R" rating. He then recalls that they were then criticized at the time for their use of the words. That's the downside of being a car related slasher movie, but the upside are the special effects. To simulate the car regenerating itself, hydraulic pumps were installed on the inside of some of the film's numerous Plymouth Fury "stunt doubles", a mock-up in plastic that looked more like metal on camera than actual metal as it bent and deformed. These pumps were attached to cables, which were in turn attached to the cars' bodywork and when they compressed, they would "suck" the paneling inwards. Footage of the inward crumpling body was then reversed, giving the appearance of the car spontaneously retaking form.

This is literally what my back does every
morning when I get out of bed.

As for me, I love Christine. It isn't exactly an accurate depiction of the events that take place in the novel. Of course, what movie made to this scale depicts everything exactly as in tune with the novel. The movie would be like four hours if it had to include everything in the novel. There are several differences because of this. Still, I think Christine is the perfect runtime for what it is, and includes many, many references to the novel. At least most of the key ones. I love the characters, though Keith Gordon's acting when Arnie turns evil is a little wonky. The car scene where he talks about love's never-ending appetite is actually masterful in my opinion, but elsewhere he just seems to mumble a lot and the scene where he dies and pulls a shard of glass out of his abdomen, the grunts he makes are outright hilarious. Kind of sucks the emotion out of the scene when he grunts like he's got something caught in his bum.

Sit down and watch Christine this October. You will enjoy it for its devout quirkiness, its automotive showcase of the classic '58 Fury, it's hilariously filthy dialogue, its clunky acting with some actually quite entertaining dialogue. It's not too short, not too long, and while it does seem a little tame considering horror movies that are made now, it's still got that John Carpenter touch on it. Give it a watch and let me know how you like it.