CHRISTINE
Christine is a movie about a car that kills people. It’s directed by John Carpenter and is based on the novel by Stephen King who really sometimes just writes Goosebumps For Grownups. Although if R.L. Stine had written Christine it would be called A Car Ate My Best Friend! Reader beware, you’re in for references to the 1950s and absent fathers. So many King books could have a Goosebumps For Grownups rebrand. The Shining would become Attack of The Dad and Cujo retitled The Big Dog of Doom.
John Carpenter had an incredible eight-year run. Starting in 1978 with Halloween and running right through to Big Trouble In Little China in 1986, along the way churning out The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing and Starman, with Chrsitine smack damn in the middle in 1983.
Lots of folks seem to really enjoy this film about a car that gets jealous but I am not one of those people. And to be honest, I also think Escape from New Yorkisn’t great either. It reeks of Gen X forcing their childhood on everybody else – “I saw a movie where Kurt Russell had an eye patch when I was ten and I still think that’s cool!” – and if nobody listens to me when I tell them Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is amazing then I don’t have to listen to anybody talk about Snake and his adventures being brilliant.
Christine follows a nerd named Arnie who loves cars. One day him and his best mate Dennis, stumble across a 1958 Plymouth Fury all beat up and dilapidated in a crazy old man’s yard. Despite the old man’s warnings that the previous owners met an untimely end, Arnie is able to twist the man’s arm into selling him the car. Arnie does it up, but doesn’t fully comprehend that the car has a secret. And that secret is that the car has a personality of its own. The car also causes Arnie to act and dress like a 50s greaser – which I suppose is a power that a demonic car can have.
But most importantly, the car kills people. It can kill people who are inside the car, but it can also drive around on its own and run into people. How does the car kill people who are inside it? Say you’re in the car, and you’re eating some food, well, you might start choking on the food and then Christine will lock all of its doors and people won’t be able to get into the car to help you. That’s how a car would kill you.
How would I fit into Christine? A movie set in 1978 about a teenager who loves cars so much he’s willing to overlook the fact that his dream car has a rap sheet. Well, one of Christine’s big tricks is that the car can repair itself. By the end of the film Christine has been crushed into a solid block but hasn’t been killed. So, would there be room for a post-credit sequence set thirty years in the future? In 2008? When Peter Jones might be in the market for a car of his very own?
IF I WERE IN 'CHRISTINE' I WOULD: BUY A CAMRY
