Christine (1983 film)

Christine
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Carpenter
Produced by	Richard Kobritz Larry J. Franco
Screenplay by	Bill Phillips
Based on	Christine by Stephen King
Starring	Keith Gordon John Stockwell Alexandra Paul Robert Prosky Harry Dean Stanton
Music by	John Carpenter Alan Howarth
Cinematography	Donald M. Morgan
Editing by	Marion Rothman
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	December 9, 1983 (1983-12-09)
Running time	110 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$9.7 million
Box office	$21,017,849

Christine is a 1983 American horror thriller film about a sentient automobile named "Christine" and its effects on its teenaged owner, adapted from the novel Christine written by Stephen King and published in 1983. The film was directed by John Carpenter and set in 1978.

Synopsis

In 1957 Detroit, several off-white 1958 Plymouth Fury models are shown lined up on an assembly line. In the middle of the line of cars, a lone bright red and white Fury stands in contrast to the others. The Plymouth's malevolent character is established when one worker is injured when the car's hood slams shut on his hand while he is working on the car, and another is apparently choked to death inside after dropping some cigar ash onto one of the seats.

21 years later, in 1978, Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham (Keith Gordon) is a nerdy teen boy with only one friend, a childhood companion and popular jock named Dennis Guilder (John Stockwell). Arnie's life begins to change when he is confronted by the school bully Buddy Repperton (William Ostrander), who threatens Arnie with a switchblade and gets expelled. Arnie's life also begins to change when he buys the rusty red-white Fury from crusty bachelor George LeBay (Roberts Blossom) for $250, even though the vehicle is in serious need of repair. Dennis fruitlessly attempts to dissuade Arnie from purchasing the car (which LeBay has informed the pair is named "Christine"), pointing out that the odometer reads 93,495 miles, which Dennis surmises is likely half the actual total. Enamored, Arnie ignores his friend and hastily writes LeBay a check, and he proceeds to drive home with Dennis following in his blue 1968 Dodge Charger. After his parents refuse to let Arnie park Christine in the family's driveway, as punishment for not informing them he was going to buy a car, he is forced to store her at a local garage, run by the grouchy Will Darnell (Robert Prosky).

As Arnie begins to restore Christine to her original beauty, Arnie sits behind the wheel and the radio, which only seems to play 1950s era rock and roll, begins playing the Johnny Ace song "Pledging My Love", assuring Arnie that his feelings of admiration for Christine are requited. Those in his life notice changes in his attitude and appearance as he spends time with the car. Initially shy and timid, Arnie develops a cocky arrogance and takes on a somewhat sinister appearance; he no longer wears his thick glasses and begins dressing in all black clothing. Dennis' concern for his friend deepens when George LeBay informs him that Roland's sister-in-law (George's brother's wife) died in Christine of carbon monoxide poisoning and Roland's young daughter had been killed in the car.

During a football game, Dennis spies a newly restored Christine and is shocked to see Arnie with Leigh Cabot (Alexandra Paul). The distraction causes him to be hit while leaping for a pass, and he is seriously injured by another player, placing him in the hospital. After Buddy sees Arnie in Christine at Dennis' football game, he becomes extremely jealous. The gang follows Arnie back to Will's garage, where they severely vandalize and crush the newly restored Christine at night, and one of them, Moochie, relieves himself on the dashboard, leaving her totally ruined. Arnie sees the wreck of Christine the next day and is shocked that all the work he put into restoring the car has been destroyed. Although his parents want to buy him a new car as he has become obsessed with Christine, Arnie is determined to restore the car again. The next day, as he looks the wreck over, he turns his back and hears metal creaking behind him; he turns and sees that Christine's engine is fully restored. Stepping away, Arnie smiles and says, "Okay...show me." Christine's headlights flicker on, and she then comes to life and fully restores herself to mint condition.

The next night, Christine chases and kills Moochie, by crushing him against a wall. A few days later at school, Arnie receives a visit from Detective Rudolph Junkins (Harry Dean Stanton) who suspects Arnie killed Moochie in a fit of revenge against those who vandalized Christine. However, he is unable to produce adequate proof because, although Christine is badly damaged in the attack on Moochie, she regenerated herself to showroom quality afterward, whilst Arnie himself had a strong alibi. Christine then seeks out and gruesomely kills individual members of the gang who destroyed her, one by one. The spree climaxes when Christine confronts the last three remaining gang members: Don Vandenberg (Stuart Charno), Richie Trelawney (Steven Tash), and Buddy himself, at a service station. Christine pushes Buddy's grey 1967 Chevrolet Camaro into Richie, who has sought refuge inside the garage, and its fuel tank ruptures in the collision and spills gasoline onto the floor. Buddy's Camaro catches fire which quickly ignites the fuel on the floor, setting the building ablaze and killing Don. Terrified, Buddy flees the station on foot and, as a burning Christine gives chase, she runs over the station's gas pumps, causing the building to explode. In one of the film's more memorable sequences, Christine, still in flames, chases Buddy down and runs him over, leaving his burning corpse on the road. After the attacks, Christine returns to the garage and subsequently kills Will Darnell by crushing him against the steering wheel, asphyxiating him. After an incident in which Arnie's girlfriend Leigh almost choked to death in Christine at a drive-in theater, she beseeches Dennis for help. Leigh and Dennis resolve to try and save Arnie, unaware that Christine is unwilling to give up Arnie without a fight.

On New Year's Eve, Dennis and Leigh reason that the only way to stop Christine and save Arnie is to destroy the car. Dennis then says that he is going to Arnie's, and Leigh urges him to be careful. After she leaves, Arnie pulls up to Dennis' house in Christine, picks him up, and the pair drive off. During the ride to Arnie's house, Arnie displays erratic and reckless behavior (drinking beer while driving, playing chicken with other motorists, and taking his hands off the wheel), and tells Dennis about how strong the bond is between Christine and him. During the ride, Dennis sees that the odometer now reads less than 58,000 miles and is still rolling backward.

The next day, Dennis goes to the school parking lot and scratches "Darnell's Tonight" into Christine's hood, and drives off with Leigh. The pair go to Darnell's, where they wait in a bulldozer. Dennis tells Leigh to wait in the office so she can shut the door after Christine arrives, trapping the vehicle. When Leigh exits the bulldozer and heads for the office, Christine's headlights suddenly blaze out of the darkness from under a pile of garbage, and the car charges at Leigh. As Christine crashes into Darnell's office in an attempt to kill Leigh, Arnie is ejected through Christine's windshield and is impaled on a shard of glass, fatally wounding him. He survives just long enough to admire Christine one last time and lovingly caress her front bumper. Enraged, Christine proceeds to attack Leigh. Dennis counters in the bulldozer and he proceeds to fight Christine, who is playing "Pledging My Love" at top volume on her radio. As she is launching her final assault on Leigh, Dennis drives the bulldozer up on to the car's back, stopping her and apparently killing her. Leigh climbs into the cab and she and Dennis embrace, but Christine springs back to life and again begins to heal herself. Dennis then finishes driving over her with the bulldozer, and her headlights flicker and then go out for good, finally killing her.

The scene cuts immediately to the next day; Dennis and Leigh are seen along with Detective Junkins at a wrecking yard, where Christine has been crushed into a cube by a metal compactor, apparently finally destroying her. Leigh and Dennis lament that they were unable to save Arnie and as they reflect on the events, loud 1950s rock music begins to play. Startled, Leigh and Dennis look up and see a worker in a hard hat playing the music on a boombox as he walks into view from behind some other wrecked cars. Leigh exclaims "God, I hate rock and roll." The film ends with the camera zooming in on the crushed cube that was formerly Christine and a piece of the grill slowly begins to bend back into place, implying that Christine's consciousness is still intact.

Production notes

A red-and-white 1958 Plymouth Fury.

King's novel, the source material for Carpenter's film, made it clear that the car was possessed by the evil spirit of its previous owner Roland D. LeBay, whereas the film version of the story shows that the evil spirit surrounding the car was present on the day it was built.

Although the car in the film is identified as a 1958 Plymouth Fury—and in 1983 radio ads promoting the film, voiceover artists announced, "she's a '57 Fury"—two other Plymouth models, the Belvedere and the Savoy, were also used to portray the malevolent automobile onscreen. (Total production for the 1958 Plymouth Fury was only 5,303, and they were expensive to buy at the time.) Several vehicles were destroyed during filming, but most of the cars were Savoy and Belvedere models dressed to look like the Fury. Of the twenty cars used in the film, only two still exist; one vehicle was rescued from a junkyard and restored by collector Bill Gibson of Pensacola, Florida.

Christine's license plates read "CQB 241". CQB is a military acronym for "close quarters battle", where targets are engaged at very close range, very swiftly and usually very violently, leaving the victim with little chance of withdrawal and/or survival. The "241" on the license plate may be read "Two for One" indicating a fight of two (Arnie and Christine) against "one" (the next victim).^{[citation needed]}

Cast

• Keith Gordon as Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham
• John Stockwell as Dennis Guilder
• Alexandra Paul as Leigh Cabot
• Robert Prosky as Will Darnell
• Harry Dean Stanton as Detective Rudolph "Rudy" Junkins
• Christine Belford as Regina Cunningham
• Roberts Blossom as George LeBay
• Kelly Preston as Roseanne
• William Ostrander as Clarence "Buddy" Repperton
• Malcolm Danare as Peter "Moochie" Welch
• Steven Tash as Richard "Richie" Trelawney
• Stuart Charno as Donald "Don" Vandenberg
• David Spielberg as Mr. Casey

Kevin Bacon was originally offered the leading role, but he left it to do a screen test for Footloose, at the time a risky move for him which paid off in the end.

Release

Christine was released in North America on December 9, 1983 to 1,045 theaters.

Box office

In its opening weekend Christine brought in $3,408,904 landing at #4. The film dropped 39.6% in its second weekend, grossing $2,058,517 slipping from fourth to eighth place. In its third weekend, it grossed $1,851,909 dropping to #9. The film remained at #9 its fourth weekend, grossing $2,736,782. In its fifth weekend, it returned to #8, grossing $2,015,922. Bringing in $1,316,835 it its sixth weekend, the film dropped out of the box office top ten to twelfth place. In its seventh and final weekend, the film brought in $819,972 landing at #14, bringing the total gross for Christine to $21,017,849.

Critical reception

Based on 22 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Christine has an overall 68% approval rating from critics, with an average score of 5.8 out of 10.

Soundtrack

Christine: Music from the Motion Picture
Film score by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth
Released	June 1, 1990
Genre	Soundtrack
Length	33:14
Label	Varèse Sarabande
Producer	John Carpenter and Alan Howarth

All tracks written and composed by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth.

Christine: Music from the Motion Picture
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Arnie's Love Theme"	1:15
2.	"Obsessed With The Car"	2:07
3.	"Football Run/Kill Your Kids"	2:42
4.	"The Rape"	1:10
5.	"The Discovery"	1:30
6.	"Show Me"	2:36
7.	"Moochie's Death"	2:25
8.	"Junkins"	3:33
9.	"Buddy's Death"	1:27
10.	"Nobody's Home/Restored"	1:44
11.	"Car Obsession Reprise"	1:53
12.	"Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury)"	2:30
13.	"Talk On The Couch"	1:23
14.	"Regeneration"	1:25
15.	"Darnell's Tonight"	0:13
16.	"Arnie"	1:01
17.	"Undented"	1:54
18.	"Moochie Mix Four"	2:26

See also

• Two Black Cadillacs, a music video by Carrie Underwood, in which two cheated women team up to murder their loved one with the help of a car with a mind of its own.
• The Wrecker, a 1924 stage play by Arnold Ridley about a possessed steam locomotive
• "A Thing about Machines", a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone
• "You Drive", a 1964 episode of The Twilight Zone in which the car of a hit-and-run driver hounds him to confession
• My Mother the Car, a 1965 television sit-com series
• The Love Bug, a 1968 comedy film about an anthropomorphic 1963 Volkswagen racing Beetle
• Killdozer!, a 1974 made-for-TV horror movie based on a short story of the same name by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Car, a 1977 film about an anthropomorphic customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III
• The Hearse, a 1980 horror movie about a possessed hearse
• Knight Rider, a franchise—begun in 1982—featuring an anthropomorphic car named KITT (Knight Industries Two-Thousand)
• Nightmares, a 1983 movie consisting of four separate story segments; the third segment, "The Benediction", features a traveling priest (played by Lance Henriksen) attacked on the highway by a demonic pickup truck
• Maximum Overdrive, a 1986 horror movie; and Trucks, a 1997 made-for-TV remake film; both based on the short story Trucks by Stephen King
• The Wraith, a 1986 film starring Charlie Sheen, who plays a man murdered by a gang of car thieves who gets revenge upon his killers by returning as a phantom car and driver set out to eliminate them
• "The Honking", a 2000 Futurama episode in which the robot character, Bender, is possessed by a were-virus, transforming him into a murderous car every night at midnight. The curse could only be lifted by destroying the originator of the virus, a project-Satan car located at the "Anti-Chrysler" building. The car that hits Bender is actually a 1958 Plymouth, just like the one in Christine.
• "Road Kill, a 2010 Australian supernatural thriller about a group of teenagers menaced by a driver-less road-train in the harsh Australian outback.
• "Super Hybrid, a 2011 Science Fiction Horror thriller film about a malicious shape shifting sentient car that devours its victims by tricking them into its cab.

External links

• Christine at AllRovi
• Christine at Box Office Mojo
• Christine at the Internet Movie Database
• Christine at Rotten Tomatoes