“You better watch what you say about my car. She’s real sensitive.”

Drake’s rating: It’s coolsville, Daddy-O

Drake’s review: John Carpenter’s The Thing had not done well at the box office. That in itself is a horrifying statement, since The Thing is unquestionably Carpenter’s greatest movie, but it’s true. Audiences in 1982 had stayed away from the Lovecraftian nightmare-fueled film in droves, and it took some years for the movie to find its audience.

In the meantime, however, John Carpenter was still directing, and after the critical and popular pummeling of The Thing, he was looking towards a Stephen King adaptation. Initially he was slated to direct Firestarter, but with Carpenter’s latest box office receipts waning, that project was given instead to Mark L. Lester and Carpenter was given the consolation prize of Christine.

In fairness, Carpenter was the first choice for producer Richard Kobritz, who had already produced the Tobe Hooper-directed Salem’s Lot, but Carpenter had a multi-picture deal with Universal. Right up until The Thing bombed and the studio bought him out of the contract, that is, leaving him free to make Christine at Columbia Pictures.

Carpenter has long referred to Christine as just “a job,” but I think he’s underestimating both himself and the movie. The tale of a misfit who suddenly finds that he has power, only to find out that the power is in turn using him, surely must have struck a chord with the director, especially at that point in his career.

And I think we all probably know the story on this one: Arnie (Keith Gordon, Jaws 2) is the worst thing you can be in high school: a social outcast. His only friend is Dennis (John Stockwell, My Science Project), who is Arnie’s opposite in nearly every way. But Dennis stands up for Arnie, even as the other boy comes to the attention of Buddy and his gang of bullies.

Even Dennis can’t talk Arnie out of his infatuation with a junker of a car, though. A ‘58 Plymouth Fury has caught Arnie’s eye, and he buys it on the spot. Forbidden by his parents from keeping the car at his house, Arnie stores it at a local garage with plans to fix it up there.

It’s a good plan, and if it was a normal car Arnie might well have fixed it up and had the coolest ride in town. But Christine, the name given to the Fury by her previous owner, is not a normal car. She is in fact a 3,600-pound demon spawn made of chrome and steel, and she’s about to take Arnie on a ride to Hell.

Christine had a lot going for it at the time of release. Stephen King was at the top of the bookseller charts with each and every new novel, and America is practically wedded at the hip to the automobile. It’s that celebration of car culture that draws in Arnie. He’s fascinated by Christine because she promises something he’s never had: freedom. She speaks to him of open roads leading out of town and away from the misery of his life, and Arnie is an attentive listener.

But Christine demands a grisly price, and the cost keeps rising. Arnie’s okay with Christine tracking down Buddy and his gang and sending them on their last ride, but the ‘58 Fury is a jealous sort, and targets Arnie’s new girlfriend Leigh (Alexandra Paul, Dragnet) as well. In the end it becomes a race, as Dennis and Leigh band together to try to save Arnie from the clutches of Christine before he becomes yet another in her long line of victims.

Christine was a success for Carpenter and for Columbia, and he directed Starman for them a year later. He finished out the ‘80s with a slew of strong pictures, but as the ‘90s dawned his work fell off. Never a sure thing at the box office, Carpenter failed to have anything resembling a hit after They Live, and his filmography from 1992 on is filled with disappointing misfires and out-and-out duds.

Carpenter’s first fifteen years, though? They were an embarrassment of riches, and Christine deserves to be sitting among them, right out there on the showroom floor.

Intermission!

• The production bought 23 (!) Plymouth Furys, spending a full five percent of the budget to get them. They were then customized to be identical.
• Most of the cars were scrapped after the film, although a couple survive to this day and are in private collections.
• Stephen King himself did not care for the movie, and labeled it “boring.” Maybe that was because it didn’t have an AC/DC soundtrack and a Green Goblin Mack truck trying to run everyone over.
• There’s been talk of a remake, but honestly it’s kinda been done already. Watch Halloween Ends and tell me I’m wrong.