Christine (1983 film)

Christine (1983 film)
Christine (titled onscreen as John Carpenter's Christine) is a 1983 American supernatural horror film directed by John Carpenter and starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky and Harry Dean Stanton. The film also features supporting performances from Roberts Blossom and Kelly Preston.
Written by Bill Phillips and based on Stephen King's 1983 novel of the same name, the movie follows the changes in the lives of Arnie Cunningham, his friends, his family, and his teenage enemies after he buys a classic red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine, a car that seems to have a mind of its own and a jealous, possessive personality, which has a bad influence on Arnie.
Released in the United States on December 9, 1983, Christine received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $21 million at the box office. The film has since become a cult classic. A remake from Sony Pictures and Blumhouse is in development.
Plot
In late 1957, two incidents take place at a factory constructing a red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury. The car slams its hood shut on a worker's hand, and another is mysteriously found dead inside after dropping cigar ash on its seats. In 1978, nerdy high school senior Arnold "Arnie" Cunningham is bullied on the first day of school by a boy called Buddy Repperton, who pulls a knife on him and destroys his lunch, but Arnie’s best friend Dennis Guilder intervenes and calls the attention of a teacher, who sends Buddy and his gang to the principal’s office. After school, Arnie is being driven home by Dennis when they pass the yard of a run-down house, which contains the Fury labelled ‘for sale’. Arnie sees the car and tells Dennis to pull over so that he can enquire about purchasing the vehicle. The owner — the brother of the recently deceased original owner — tells them the car's name is Christine, and despite Dennis' objections, Arnie purchases the car for $250. Arnie's parents, however, refuse to let him keep the car at their house. Arnie begins to restore Christine at a garage/junkyard owned by Will Darnell, who offers Arnie a job. Arnie's appearance and personality quickly starts to become cockier and affects his relationships.
Dennis breaks into the garage at night to try and find out a little more about why Arnie is obsessed with Christine, and Christine starts playing music which scares him off. Upon investigation, Dennis learns from the seller that his late brother was also obsessed with Christine, that his 5-year-old niece choked to death in the car, and that his sister-in-law Rita and then his brother both committed suicide in it. Dennis tells the seller that Arnie would never have purchased the vehicle if he had known that.
Arnie begins a relationship with a new student, Leigh Cabot, who all the other boys at school had been rejected by. Dennis, while playing a football game, is distracted by the couple as they kiss on the bonnet of the now fully-restored Christine, causing him to have a severe injury that makes him permanently unable to play.
When Arnie and Leigh are in the car at a drive-in movie, Leigh almost chokes to death on her food, while Christine briefly locks her doors to keep Arnie from saving her. The incident scares her from being in the car again. After dropping her home, Christine won’t start until Arnie promises her that nothing has changed between them. Later, the car is vandalized by Buddy Repperton and his gang, but Christine starts to play music before her radio is smashed. Arnie, angered by the destruction, breaks up with Leigh and throttles his father when he confronts him about Christine after dinner.
The next day, Arnie returns to the garage alone, and watches as Christine repairs herself. The car, that evening, kills all members of Buddy's gang, destroying their car and blowing up a gas station in the process. Christine drives away in flames and returns to Darnell's garage, where she chokes him to death with the steering wheel, also turning on the radio as the incident happens. Christine is in perfect condition once again when the police find the body. Police detective Rudy Junkins questions Arnie about the death of Darnell and one of Repperton’s gang members, Moochie, but Arnie's alibis convince the detective.
Leigh and Dennis conclude that Christine is responsible for Arnie's personality switch up. They plan to lure Christine to the garage and smash her with a bulldozer, but Christine surprises them by emerging from a pile of scrap metal. Leigh flees on foot while Dennis battles Christine with the bulldozer. Arnie is now driving Christine, and in an attempt to run Leigh down, Christine crashes into Darnell's office and Arnie is thrown through the windshield, impaling himself on broken glass. He reaches out and touches Christine's front grille as he dies.
Christine continues to attack, repairing herself more quickly than before, until Dennis and Leigh manage to corner her and flatten her with the bulldozer. The next day, Dennis, Leigh and Junkins watch as the remains of Christine are crushed into a cube at the junkyard. Junkins congratulates the teens for stopping Christine, but they regret not being able to save Arnie. The sound of a 1950s rock and roll song spooks them briefly, but it proves to be coming from a boombox carried by a junkyard worker. Unbeknownst to any of them, Christine's grille twitches slightly.
Cast
Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham, a nerdy boy who buys Christine
John Stockwell as Dennis Guilder, a former football player after injuries and Arnie's best friend
Alexandra Paul as Leigh Cabot, a new student
Robert Prosky as Will Darnell, a garage owner
Harry Dean Stanton as Detective Rudy Junkins, a police detective
Christine Belford as Regina Cunningham, Arnie's mother
Roberts Blossom as George LeBay, whose brother formerly owned Christine
William Ostrander as Clarence "Buddy" Repperton, a bully
David Spielberg as Mr. Casey, the high school shop teacher
Malcolm Danare as Peter "Moochie" Welch, one of Buddy's friends
Steven Tash as Richie Trelawney, one of Buddy's friends
Stuart Charno as Don Vandenberg, one of Buddy's friends
Kelly Preston as Roseanne, a friend of Dennis
Robert Darnell as Michael Cunningham, Arnie's father
Jack Faust as a referee in Dennis's football game
Production
Conception
Producer Richard Kobritz had previously produced the 1979 miniseries Salem's Lot, also based on a Stephen King novel. Through producing the miniseries, Kobritz became acquainted with King, who sent him manuscripts of two of his novels, Cujo, and Christine. Kobritz purchased the rights to Christine after finding himself attracted to the novel's "celebration of America's obsession with the motorcar."
Kobritz's first choice for director was John Carpenter, who was initially unavailable owing to two projects: an adaptation of another King novel, Firestarter, and an adaptation of the 1980 Eric Van Lustbader novel The Ninja. However, production delays on these projects allowed Carpenter to accept the director position for Christine. Kobritz and Carpenter had previously collaborated in the 1978 television film Someone's Watching Me!. Bill Phillips was Carpenter's choice for writer and was brought on shortly after Carpenter arrived. Carpenter was also joined by special effects supervisor Roy Arbogast, who had previously worked with Carpenter in The Thing (1982). According to Carpenter, Christine was not a film he had planned on directing, saying that he directed the film as "a job" as opposed to a "personal project." He had previously directed The Thing, which had done poorly at the box office and led to critical backlash. In retrospect, Carpenter stated that upon reading Christine, he felt that "It just wasn't very frightening. But it was something I needed to do at that time for my career."
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 of the car manifested itself on the day it was built. Other elements from the novel were altered for the film, particularly the execution of the death scenes, which the filmmakers opted for a more "cinematic approach."
Casting
Initially, Columbia Pictures had wanted to cast Brooke Shields in the role of Leigh because of her publicity after the release of The Blue Lagoon (1981), and Scott Baio as Arnie. The filmmakers declined the suggestion, opting to cast young actors who were still fairly unknown. Kevin Bacon auditioned for the role, but opted out when offered the lead in Footloose (1984). Carpenter cast Keith Gordon in the role of Arnie after an audition in New York City; Gordon had some experience in film, and was also working in theater at the time; John Stockwell was cast at an audition in Los Angeles.
Nineteen-year-old Alexandra Paul was cast in the film after an audition in New York City; according to Carpenter, Paul was an "untrained, young actress" at the time, but brought a "great quality" about the character of Leigh. According to Paul, she had not read any of King's books or seen Carpenter's films, and read the novel in preparation.
Filming
Christine was shot largely in Los Angeles, California, while the location for Darnell's garage was located in Santa Clarita. Filming began in April 1983, mere days after the King novel had been published. An abandoned furniture factory in Irwindale was used for the opening scene. The film's stunts were primarily completed by stunt coordinator Terry Leonard, who was behind the wheel of the car during the high-speed chase scenes, as well as the scene in which the car drives down a highway engulfed in flames. During that scene, Leonard wore a Nomex firefighter's suit complete with breathing apparatus.
Alexandra Paul's identical twin sister Caroline Paul wrote that she and her sister pulled a prank during filming, sending Caroline on set in place of Alexandra without telling Carpenter that they had made the switch until after he had shot a scene. She wrote, "My highly skilled clutch-pushing actually made it into the movie."
The car
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. John Carpenter placed ads throughout Southern California searching for models of the car, and was able to purchase twenty-four of them in various states of disrepair, which were used to build a total of seventeen copies of the film car. All cars were two door hardtops.
Total production for the 1958 Plymouth Fury was only 5,303, and they were difficult to find and expensive to buy at the time. In addition, the real-life Furys only came in one color, "Sandstone White" with a "Buckskin Beige" interior, seen on the other Furys on the assembly line during the initial scenes of the movie, though the car in King's novel was ordered with a red-and-white custom paint job. The original Furys had anodized gold trim on the body and Fury script on the rear fender. In order to bypass the problem of obtaining the rare trim, the cars featured the more common Belvedere "Dartline" trim. Several vehicles were destroyed during filming, but most of the cars were Savoy and Belvedere models dressed to look like the Fury. At least one '57 Savoy was used, its front end modified to look like a '58.
Some of King's details about the car were incorrect in the novel. The 1956-1958 Plymouth Fury was only available as a two-door coupe, while the book described it as a four-door sedan, which would have made it a Savoy or Belvedere model. During Leigh's choking scene, Christine is shown to have common vertical lock "buttons" on the inside door panels. Chrysler vehicles of this era were not equipped with such buttons. To lock the door, the door handle has to be pushed downward. King also mentions a shift lever for the automatic transmission, but in real life it had push-button controls.
Originally, Carpenter had not planned to film the car's regeneration scenes, but gave special effects supervisor Roy Arbogast three weeks to devise a way for the car to rebuild itself. Arbogast and his team made rubber molds from one of the cars, including a whole front end. One of the cars was stripped of its engine to accommodate internally-mounted hydraulics that pulled the framework inward, crumpling the car, with the shot then run backwards in the final film.
Twenty-three cars were used in the film. Initially sold as scrap metal after filming ended, one of the best known surviving vehicles was eventually rescued from the junkyard and restored. It was subsequently bought by collector Bill Gibson of Pensacola, Florida.
One of the Christines was auctioned off at an auto-auction in Florida in January 2020.
Release
Box office
Christine was released in North America on December 9, 1983, to 1,045 theaters.
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 in 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 response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Christine holds a 69% approval rating based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The consensus reads: "The cracks are starting to show in John Carpenter's directorial instincts, but Christine is nonetheless silly, zippy fun.”
Roger Ebert gave the movie three out of four stars, saying: "by the end of the movie, Christine has developed such a formidable personality that we are actually taking sides during its duel with a bulldozer. This is the kind of movie where you walk out with a silly grin, get in your car, and lay rubber halfway down the Eisenhower." Janet Maslin of The New York Times gave the film a middling review, saying: "The early parts of the film are engaging and well acted, creating a believable high-school atmosphere. Unfortunately, the later part of the film is slow in developing, and it unfolds in predictable ways." Variety gave the film a negative review, stating: "Christine seems like a retread. This time it's a fire-engine red, 1958 Plymouth Fury that's possessed by the Devil, and this deja-vu premise [from the novel by Stephen King] combined with the crazed-vehicle format, makes Christine appear pretty shop worn." Time Out said of the film: "Carpenter and novelist Stephen King share not merely a taste for genre horror but a love of '50's teenage culture; and although set in the present, Christine reflects the second taste far more effectively than the first."
In 2023, John Carpenter reflected on the movie:“I love my cast in that movie. Keith Gordon was fabulous, and Alexandra Paul was… I believe she’d been a model, and she’s just a terrific actress. And the great character actor Harry Dean Stanton was on that. Harry Dean is quite a character, I really loved him. But it was a fun movie to make and easy — nothing tough about it. And it did OK, you know, it opened alright. So people were kind, which is nice.“
King's reaction
While he was promoting the film adaptation of Dreamcatcher in 2003, Stephen King mentioned Christine as one of two film adaptations of his work that had "bored" him, stating:
"I may just be the most adapted novelist in modern times... and I don't say that with pride so much as with a kind of stunned bemusement. Several honorable adaptations have come from this thirty-year spew of celluloid... and the best of those have had few of the elements I'm best known for: science fiction, fantasy, the supernatural, and pure gross-out moments... The books that do have those elements have, by and large, become films that are either forgettable or outright embarrassing. Others -- I'm thinking chiefly of Christine and Stanley Kubrick's take on The Shining -- should have been good but just... well, they just aren't. They're actually sort of boring. Speaking for myself, I'd rather have bad than boring."
Home media
The film was released on VHS by Columbia Pictures, and on DVD on August 4, 1998, and re-released on DVD in 2004. On March 12, 2013, Twilight Time video released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in a limited edition run numbered at 3,000 copies. On September 29, 2015, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment re-released the film on Blu-ray. The film was released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on September 11, 2018.
Soundtrack
Two soundtracks were released, one consisting purely of the music written and composed by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, the other consisting of the contemporary pop songs used in the film.
Score
Songs appearing in film
The soundtrack album containing songs used in the film was entitled Christine: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and was released on LP and cassette on Motown Records. It contained 10 (of the 15) songs listed in the film's credits, plus one track from John Carpenter and Alan Howarth's own score. The track listing was as follows:
George Thorogood and the Destroyers – "Bad to the Bone"
Buddy Holly & the Crickets – "Not Fade Away"
Johnny Ace – "Pledging My Love"
Robert & Johnny – "We Belong Together"
Little Richard – "Keep A-Knockin'"
Dion and The Belmonts – "I Wonder Why"
The Viscounts – "Harlem Nocturne"
Thurston Harris – "Little Bitty Pretty One"
Danny & The Juniors – "Rock 'n' Roll is Here to Stay"
John Carpenter & Alan Howarth – "Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury)"
Larry Williams – "Bony Moronie"
The following tracks were not included on this LP release, but were used in the film and listed in the film's credits:
ABBA – "The Name of the Game"
Bonnie Raitt – "Runaway"
Ritchie Valens – "Come on, Let's Go"
Tanya Tucker – "Not Fade Away"
The Rolling Stones – "Beast of Burden"
Remake
In June 2021, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Blumhouse Productions announced the development of a remake of the film with Bryan Fuller penning the script and directing and Jason Blum, Vincenzo Natali and Steve Hoban producing.
Cultural references
The film Taarzan: The Wonder Car by Indian filmmaking duo Abbas–Mustan is loosely based on Christine.
The film is parodied in the Futurama episode "The Honking", wherein a metamorphic Bender-turned-car haunts the crew.
The film is referred to in the song "Autopilot" by Allison Ponthier.
David Gordon Green said his 2022 film Halloween Ends is a love letter to Christine and John Carpenter's body of work in general.
See also
List of films about automobiles
References
Bibliography
External links
1983 films
1983 horror films
1980s horror thriller films
1980s mystery horror films
1980s supernatural films
1980s teen horror films
1980s teen romance films
American horror thriller films
American mystery thriller films
American romantic thriller films
American supernatural horror films
American supernatural thriller films
American teen horror films
American teen romance films
Columbia Pictures films
Films about automobiles
Films based on American horror novels
Films based on urban legends
Films based on works by Stephen King
Films directed by John Carpenter
Films scored by John Carpenter
Films scored by Alan Howarth (composer)
Films set in 1957
Films set in 1978
Films set in California
Films set in Detroit
Films shot in Los Angeles
American mystery horror films
Phantom vehicles
American romantic horror films
Teen mystery films
1980s romantic thriller films
Films about curses
1980s English-language films
1980s American films