Tagline
“She's bad to the bone. And she runs on premium.”
The Review
John Carpenter's Christine adapts Stephen King's novel about a 1958 Plymouth Fury that is alive, jealous, and murderous. Keith Gordon's transformation from nerdy Arnie Cunningham to leather-jacketed sociopath — corrupted by Christine's possessive influence — is the film's real horror. Carpenter stages Christine's self-repair sequences with beautiful menace: the car rebuilding itself from wreckage, metal uncrumpling, headlights blazing in the dark. The highway chase sequences are spectacularly staged. Carpenter proves that the most American of objects — the automobile — can be made genuinely terrifying.
Fun Fact
Carpenter purchased 24 Plymouth Furys for the production and destroyed most of them during filming. The self-repair scenes were achieved by pre-crushing the cars and then pulling them back into shape with hydraulics, then reversing the footage. Keith Gordon actually learned to drive for the role.
Score Breakdown
Total Score
19/30
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