Retro Review: John Carpenter's Christine

Retro Reviews is basically a column I’m going to start to do where I review an older movie. It’s pretty simple. There’s nothing epic or complicated about it. The first review is for John Carpenter’s 1983 Stephen King adaptation: Christine. Read the synopsis from IMBD below:

“High school geek Arnie Cunningham falls in love with "Christine", a bright red 1958 Plymouth Fury which has seen much better days. Setting himself the task of restoring the car to its original condition, his friends notice that the car is not the only thing that is changing. Arnie seems to spend more and more time with his car. He's also developed a sort of cocky arrogance that does not seem like the real Arnie at all. Soon things get worse and bodies been to pile up…”

Over the past month or so, I’ve been a huge Stephen King kick. I’ve read The Dark Half, Cujo, and, most lately, Christine. Much like the main character of Arnie Cunningham does with the car, I really fell in love with this book. As was my reasoning for buying Cujo, I bought the book because I was doubtful on how successful King could be with the source material. After all, how could a book about a killer, possessed car be good enough to keep my attention for five hundred pages? Well, once again, King showed me why he was so successful- he’s a damn good writer. Sure, there’s a some nice scare sequences with the car but, for the most part, the book is about being an outsider in high school and about the dangers of succumbing to obsession and addictions. The social commentary was there in spades and I ate it up. Plus, I just came to care about all the characters and the horrible situation that they were going through with Arnie and his falling apart after purchasing Christine. At times, it was really heartbreaking to read.

With all this said, I was pretty excited to find out that John Carpenter, one of my favorite horror directors, had actually directed the film adaptation of this book. Once I finished reading the novel, I went and rented Carpenter’s film version, wondering how he adapted King’s work onto the screen.

Overall, Christine works pretty well. It’s a nice hybrid between a John Carpenter film and a Stephen King novel. It has that feeling that you would have reading one of King’s books along with having that unique early 1980’s Carpenter horror film feel. This movie screams “drive-in movie.” It really has a nostalgic feel that most horror films don’t have today.

If there’s anything about this movie that truly works, it’s Keith Gordon’s performance as Arnie Cunningham. Gordon managed to take Arnie right out of the pages of King’s novel and made him feel real. Every line he delivers is just the way I imagined Arnie talking in the novel. His transformation from a nerdy, insecure kid to a cynical, evil lunatic was pretty believable and, at times, painful to watch. Much like reading the novel, it was like seeing one of your best friends becoming lost to the point to where you knew they’d never be the same again and you would never be able to reach them. The scene I felt that really captured this aspect the best was the car ride that Dennis and Arnie take on New Year’s Eve together. Along with Carpenter’s retro but haunting score, Gordon’s performance (along with John Stockwell’s reactions as Dennis) really gets across that Arnie is long gone and lost in his obsession to Christine.

As usual, John Carpenter’s direction is pretty stand out. The thing about Carpenter is that he usually keeps things very simple. Despite this, he definitely has a very unique style that can be seen just by looking at his framing and the way that he chooses to shoot a picture. That style is in Christine as well and it’s always refreshing to see in a horror movie. His handling of the horror sequences was pretty exhilarating and, at times, surreal. The image of Christine wheeling out of a flaming gas station, completely on fire, and still chasing down a teenage punk was haunting and hard to get out of my head afterwards. Another sequence where Carpenter’s direction was particularly innovative was when Leigh began to choke to death while in Christine at the drive-in movie theater. I remember wondering how he was going to translate Christine’s role in that scene after reading it in the book and he manages to do so by having a bizarre white light fill the car as the poor girl begins to choke. The image he manages to create is eerie and powerful, giving the car seemingly more power than it’s ever had before. Also, I found it interesting how Carpenter played up the sexual aspects of the relationship between Arnie and Christine. The scene where Christine re-generates in front of Arnie (also known as the “Show Me” sequence) was a good example of this aspect of their relationship. Sure, on one level it’s just a car re-generating. On the other, however, it’s the act of a woman showing herself off to Arnie. Carpenter’s seductive score and Gordon’s delivery of the line “Show me” all add to this strange but compelling aspect of the film.

It is also great to hear another awesome film score by Carpenter. There’s always been something special about Carpenter’s self-composed film scores. His score for Halloween was almost as scary as the film itself. His score for The Fog was just as moody and gave the film an eerie ghost-story quality. I just love the way the guy’s scores sound. They sound dated, but in a good way. There’s a reason that Robert Rodriquez and Quentin Tarantino originally approached Carpenter to do the score for Grindhouse (an offer he had to eventually turn down). They wanted that feeling his scores gave to his films to their movie. They recognized that almost indescribable feeling your body gets when you hear his music pumping out of the speakers. I miss it, but it was great to hear a new brooding and eerie score to go along with Christine. It really accompanied some of the surreal images that Carpenter filmed quite well and made the film a little more special (and retro) than it already was. It also helped add a lot of emotion to the film, especially in the case of Arnie and his heartbreaking descent into madness.

Although Christine has another great John Carpenter score, it also has a lot of other rock music as well (much more than the usual Carpenter film). However, for anyone that read Stephen King’s novel, this aspect would be pretty much imperative. After all, King starts each new chapter of the book with appropriate lyrics from a rock n’ roll song from the 1950’s era. Songs such as “Little Bitty Pretty One” by Thurston Harris, “Not Fade Away” by Buddy Holly, and “Pledging My Love” by Johnny Ace all add to the 1950’s feel that takes over when Christine is around and really capture this aspect of the novel. I really liked how Carpenter used “Pledging My Love” as an unofficial love theme for the relationship between Arnie and Christine. I particularly liked its use near the end of the film at a very pivotal moment (I won’t go into it as it contains spoilers). Despite all these song usages, Carpenter uses George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” as Christine’s main theme (well, honestly it’s only used at the beginning and end of the film, but still, I got this feeling from its usage). I know that hearing this song in a movie today is almost a cliché but, back in 1983, this was a pretty new thing. Despite all the connotations that are associated with this song’s usage in film today, it really works well in Christine. Christine’s introduction to this song while moving on the assembly line in a 1950’s car factory (with some really slick direction by Carpenter and a clever use of Fuji film as opposed to Kodak) is probably one of my favorite moments in the film.

Aside from all the great acting, directing, and music in this film, the special effects are pretty much amazing. As I have stated many times before, I’ve always preferred practical, physical effects to computer generated ones. The result always looks more realistic and you can tell that more work and creativity went into the final product. Well, computer generated effects just didn’t exist back in 1983 and, because of that, all the effects in Christine look awesome. Ever seen a crashed, beaten up car re-generate itself back into mint condition? Well, now you have. I still don’t know how they pulled those re-generations off. They look flawless. And how about a flaming car shooting out of an exploding gas station after a terrified kid? Yeah, that happens too. It’s all practical and physical effects. Because of this, it really makes you believe in the situation that is occurring, no matter how insane it originally seems.

Is anything else that I liked? Well, for me, it’s always good to see Harry Dean Stanton show up in any movie, especially a John Carpenter film. The guy’s a great character actor and it was nice to see him play a good guy for once. There wasn’t really that much to Junkins in the novel so he really brought out some nice humor and intelligence in the character.

Despite all the things that I liked about the movie, it definitely had its share of problems. While it is true that I may have not had these problems if I had not read King’s novel first, I find it impossible to not make a comparison between the two. First off, the film made a huge diversion from the novel by pretty much excluding the character of Roland D. LeBay (the original owner of Christine) almost completely. In the book, he sells Arnie the car and, after his death, he becomes one of the main villains of the story (other than Christine) as he begins to possess Arnie. In the film, George LeBay (who was a much different character in the book) sells Arnie the car, only mentioning his brother. Since Roland LeBay was basically one of the main villains of the book, it was pretty surprising to see him pretty much let go from the movie, having George LeBay work as a hybrid between him and the original George LeBay from the novel. Carpenter’s reasoning for excluding this character was that he wanted the car to be the star and main source of evil. I can understand that and, for the most part, it works well. However, having read the novel first, it was painful not to see Roland D. LeBay on film.

Another aspect of the novel that did not really get much screen time was the love triangle between Arnie, Dennis, and Leigh. While Arnie and Leigh’s relationship is displayed on screen, it feels slightly rushed and doesn’t have the depth of the one displayed in the novel. While most of this is due to the lack of time to do so (it’s hard translating a 500 page book into a two hour movie), I feel that some of it has to do with the range of Alexandra Paul’s acting skills. While she worked for me most of the time, a lot of the time she just feels like a deer in headlights. Leigh felt very defined in the book and I did not feel like Alexandra reached this depth in the film. Also, the relationship between Dennis and Leigh is completely side stepped in the film. This was a pretty strong point in the novel as Dennis betrays Arnie, his best friend, and begins a relationship with Leigh. It was one of the catalysts to the final battle at the end of the novel and, because of its exclusion, I felt that the final showdown was lacking a sense of build in the film.

Another thing that was strangely lacking in the film was gore. Now, don’t get me wrong, I honestly prefer leaving deaths to the imagination as I feel that it is scarier. Carpenter succeeded by doing this in Halloween, which contains little to no gore. However, after reading King’s novel (which is fairly gory, like all of his stuff), I was surprised to find this movie pretty dry. I’m not sure what it is, but it just felt like this movie needed gore. It feels like a drive-in horror film and that would have just added to that feel of the movie. It just lessened the impact of some of the kills in the movie. Carpenter has stated that the reason he did not use much gore in the film was because he had used a lot in The Thing and had gotten a lot of criticism for doing so. He also stated that he still did not know if his choice to not use much gore in Christine was the right choice. While it definitely worked for Halloween, Christine felt like it’s violence (and thus the shock and impact of that violence) was avoided too much. Also, the screenplay by Bill Phillips changes the deaths of some of the characters. While the same characters still die, the ways that they do die (with one exception) lacks the shock and inventiveness of the deaths in the novel. There was one death in the novel particularly that was really insane in its build and execution. I couldn’t wait to see how it was translated on film. To my dismay, however, it was completely changed and the result, in my opinion, was pretty weak.

In the end, Christine is a pretty good film adaptation of Stephen King’s original novel. While it betrays the novel with the exclusion of Roland D. LeBay, relationship angles, and its use of violence, the film still manages to capture the heartbreaking downfall of Arnie Cunningham and the horror of Christine herself. Carpenter’s direction is exceptional as usual and Keith Gordon’s performance as Arnie is pretty spot on. No one makes a horror movie like John Carpenter. Heck, he doesn’t even make them like this anymore. I really miss this kind of film. Christine is not perfect but it has too many good things about it to be ignored.

7/10