Car Bunkle
By Michael S. Gant
"Body by Fisher, soul by the Devil," that was the tag line for John Carpenter's CHRISTINE, and every time the trailer ended the theater would erupt in laughter. Surrre, they would mutter how can a dumb car be scary, even if it is haunted, even if it is directed by John "HALLOWEEN" Carpenter, even if it is based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King, the scariest man in America not holding public office? Like, how can it?
Haunted car films fall somewhere between living brain stories and monsters at the summer camp epics. Who out there remembers THE HEARSE or THE CAR? How about THE BUS? Obviously, CHRISTINE is going to have a lot to answer for to be sufficiently frightening.
Well, cast those cobwebbed preconceptions aside, for CHRISTINE is one of the most enjoyable horror thrillers since Phillip "RIGHT STUFF" Kaufman remade INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, or Ridley Scott put haunted houses on ALIEN planets.
Now parked at the Aptos Twin, CHRISTINE concerns three truly American passions; cool cars, hot chicks, and driving rock and roll. Writer Stephen King has some kind of pipeline directly to our nation’s inner psyche, and though he may be charged with overwriting familiar plotlines with James Michener-esque verbosity, the results are always effective entertainment of literary merit. Transforming the 500-plus page bestseller into a tightly packed 110-minute movie while still retaining that distinctive King Americana, as well as his patented sense of terror, is not something to be taken lightly. Bill Phillips’ script manages to achieve this with seeming ease, and director Carpenter takes the ball over the goal line in style, instead of fumbling in the fourth quarter as with his remake of THE THING.
CHRISTINE was a book with a rock score (each chapter featuring a relevant song quote) and CHRISTINE is very much a rock horror movie, filled with great rock from the past, full of that teenager-with-his-first-car vitality, and spiced with enough genuine humor to keep the proceedings from getting too self-important, or too unrealistic. This careful balance of light heartedness and cold bloodedness, each setting the other off to maximum affect, is the key to the film’s success.
Keith Gordon, the kid hero in DRESSED TO KILL, plays Arnie Cunningham (The "Happy Days" reference is purely intentional), the nerdiest nerd in his high school, located in a nondescript Northern California community. He and his best buddy Dennis, now entering their senior year, are two unlikely friends as Dennis is the football hero who gets the girls, and apparently the only person who can see beyond Arnies’s four-eyed, pimply exterior to his basic good nature.
King's concept for CHRISTINE is by now well-known: namely, what if one of those metal chariots rolling off the Detroit assembly lines was just, you know, "born bad?" The film opens on the 1957 Plymouth assembly plan. As George Thorogood’s razor sharp voice rocks out "Bad to the Bone," we notice a certain Plymouth Fury looking a little different than all the rest. Something to do with the bright red paint job, something about the way accidents seem to happen around her. "Christine" has been born. Twenty years later, Arnie Cunningham discovers the car, now mummified in a forlorn backyard. Over the objections of Dennis, Arnie impulsively buys the wreck; changing his life, and the life of those around him, forever.
John Carpenter's direction here is much more focused and adroit than in any previous effort. The camera moves are terrific, the total look of the film gorgeous, and his ability to give a not particularly swell vintage of Detroit iron a strong personality, if not the starring role, is completely successful. It could be said that CHRISTINE the movie is the short story that "Christine" the book should have been, making it arguably the best King adaptation to date. Just don’t see it at a drive-in.
