Watched: 10/09/2024
Format: Peacock
Viewing: Third? Fourth?
Director: John Carpenter
This spooky season, I'm mostly trying to check off movies I should have already watched - also movies I haven't seen since I was a kid, so I don't remember the films well at all. This isn't that - but Jamie had not seen Christine (1983), and I kind of consider it worth a viewing. So it's her version of that, I suppose.
I read the Stephen King novel when I was in 6th grade. But I didn't see the movie until some time later - maybe when I was fifteen. I've seen it a couple of times since, including in a hotel room during a conference over a decade ago. It's a bizarre movie - how compelling should a movie about a haunted car be? And yet.
Christine is a John Carpenter movie, and - I think - should be included in consideration of his run of solid work there in the 1980's. I know Carpenter seems grumpy about all of the movies he did as a work-for-hire director, but the pairing of his sensibilities with King really does work. I'd love to see someone re-do Christine without having to strip it down for a movie audience and make it as weird as the book, but as a movie - separate from the book but using the core of it - I think this movie works as a kind of horror, just not the horror of "oh no! A car will get me!" that you might guess on first blush.
To me, the horror of the movie is not so much about a killer, possessed car - which, fair enough (that is a problem!). Instead, it's about helplessly watching a friend go down due to a change in their life, be it addiction, a toxic partner, or some other obsession. This is two lifelong pals who went two different directions, and one of them goes off the deep end, and the other has to deal with the fallout as that person hurts other people.
That's not to say I don't love the plot or visuals of the film. Christine rolling down an empty road, en fuego, chasing down Buddy is *chef's kiss*. Or Christine's headlights coming on as Moochie walks a dark street. Even Leigh choking as the radio plays is really solid stuff.
I think it's also the best I've ever seen Keith Gordon, who was always good, but here he gets to play a lot of different things* as Arnie Cunningham, the "victim" of Christine in this movie. John Stockwell is really solid as Denis, and we get Alexandra Paul (the virgin Connie Swail herself) in an early role, where her breathy take works pretty well. I looked it up, and I was not crazy - the woman playing Arnie's mom is 12 years older than Gordon. Do we still do that?
Still, I think the casting is great. Harry Dean Stanton is perfect as the cop who is not going to figure any of this out, but is sure trying. And the four thugs are terrific.
And, of course, the visuals of Christine fixing herself work astoundingly well - all in-camera effects that seem almost impossible even though I know it's reversed film and a hydraulic pulling pieces inward. And, wow, it's almost upsetting knowing how many cars were destroyed to make the movie. But that's how we did things back then.
It's also a reminder of how weirdly disposable cars were from the 1950's to the 1990's. Common knowledge was that you *had* to dump a car after 7 years or 100K miles as it was basically trash by then. And this movie is firmly set in that world, where everyone has some comment about how crazy it is to even look at Christine as something to own, and that $250 is ridiculous to pay for the car (about $1200 now) - but we also would now see a 1958 Plymouth Fury as a rare collectible in repairable condition, not a destroyed POS (here's a site tracking sales of the same make and model, with one going for $176K this year).
As time marches on, and teens don't even want to learn to drive anymore (seriously... what is even happening with kids...?) a movie about 50's and 70's muscle car culture, fixing up your ride, and the freedom and danger a car can bring is likely as alien to today's youth as a movie about playing hoop and stick. And Christine is mostly forgotten, I'd guess. But was ubiquitous enough in 1992 that when I worked a fancy haunted house downtown Houston, I briefly was running the "Christine" room, where we had the front of a classic car, painted red, on a track, and we'd have to blare the horn and physically push a ton of Detroit steel at people, over and over. It was exhausting. But people loved it.
When people talk about their fantasy car from a movie and always leap to the @#$%ing DeLorean from BTTF, I have several cars I'd place in front of that, and Christine is right at the top of that list.
I guess before we get out of here - both Stephen King's book and the movie have this dialog representing how guys talk about girls... and, I can vouch for myself that that is not how dudes talk about girls. At all. It was this weird thing that happened in media for a while, and we're all better off it went away.
But all in all - I think this movie is weirdly solid. It shouldn't work. And yet... it does.
God... I hate rock and roll.
*Gordon went on to be a really solid TV director.
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