Strong and Moving!

hyped garbage

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Story about a car killer is just one of those scripts that Carpenter built his career on, so the ''Christine'' fits in his portfolio like a glove. All the elements of the '80s trash horror will be there, poor acting, lame plots and some fine movie aesthetics. However, the bad elements will overcome the good ones and not in a good manner, leaving this flick as one of the weaker ones legendary John signs. Even if you are a automobile fan, ''Christine'' won't be a decent horror.

Despite John Carpenter is one of my favourite directors of horror he's had a pretty hit and miss career from the late 1980's onwards, however, this challenging Stephen King adaptation is one of his best. Christine, named after the car which is the star of the show is a red and white 1950's Plymouth fury. The car possesses, however, owns it and becomes as jealous as the most dangerous of girlfriends. It sets its sights on young high school geek Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon in one of his best performances) Arnie is best friends with High School Jock Dennis (John Stockwell)A victim of serious bullying, Dennis intervenes when Buddy Reperton (an excellent William Ostrander) has a knife to Arnie's throat. When Arnie purchases the Christine from the owner, the car becomes his focus in life. As he transforms the car back from the dead, so the car transforms his confidence and Arnie succeeds in dating High School heartthrob Leigh (Alexandra Paul) despite his best friend being interested in her affections. Arnie stores and repairs his car at the garage of no bullshit owner Will Darnell (played by old hand Robert Prosky. When Buddy Reperton is expelled, he and his gang exact their revenge on the car but the car has a strong sense of self- preservation and soon it and Arnie exact their revenge. Can Dennis save his friend from the car's evil before its too late?Christine still holds up well as an eighties horror film. What makes the movie so strong here is Carpenters direction and the performances he gets from his leads especially Stockwell and frankly just an incredible performance from a very Keith Gordon. Back in the days when horror films depended more on a sense of fear that outright gore this film comes highly recommended and was pleased to see it still holds up well after all these years and remains as one of Carpenters best. It may well not be a patch on the book, which is far more detailed but those looking for a good old school horror film will not be disappointed.

Back in the mid-80s, novelist Stephen King was prolific and it seemed that barely a few months went by that a new film adaptation was not making its way to the screen, often with varying degrees of success. Christine was one of his more popular books of the time taking that old nutshell of the possessed car and making seem a whole lot more plausible and less silly than it should be. Hopes were raised when it was announced that horror director John Carpenter was helming the film. Carpenter was in a downswing and desperately needed a hit. After making the classic Halloween, Carpenter had a more modest success with the underrated The Fog. Unfortunately, his badly thought out Escape from NY tanked and his disastrous remake of The Thing (which now has an indefensible cult following) had been eviscerated by critics and imploded at the box office, so he was in need of a hit and King's novel offered fertile ground.Alas, it was not to be. King's story, told through the eyes of sensitive jock Dennis, recalling past tragic events involving his nerdy high school best friend Arnie and the dilapidated 1958 Plymouth Fury that Arnie falls in love with, buys and starts to restore with sinister impact, had a lot going for it. The story of a killer car is foolish, but King takes everything very seriously and populates his tale with sympathetic characters, has a good ear for how high schoolers talk, and has a strong number of requisite set pieces that stay in the memory long after one puts down the book. By contrast, Carpenter's film feels rushed, shallow and forgettable.Carpenter makes major changes in the plot and characters, ostensibly for budget purposes, and literally all of them function as detractions. Barring a couple of amazing shots of Christine's regenerative powers, the film looks cheap. Given how much Carpenter has excised, his film still has stretches of boredom. He seems incapable of garnering sympathy for his characters and even the villains come across as half-hearted cardboard nothings.His cast is not the best either. Veterans like Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Prosky and Christine Belford are completely wasted. The gaggle of actors playing the bullying tormentors of Arnie seem entirely too old to be in high school. In the lead, Keith Gordon, who has been much better elsewhere, makes the leap from nerdy doormat to arrogant, self-confident and ultimately psychotic with such speed that the audience never has a any rooting interest in his plight. Truthfully, this could more be the fault of the rush in the screenplay than the actor. As our protagonist, Dennis, John Stockwell is goofy, awkward and off-putting. Alexandra Paul is cast as "the prettiest girl in school", which is debatable here, and she as well has been better elsewhere. There is not much time placed in developing her relationship with Arnie so that anyone buys how badly his transition has impacted her or the lengths that she is willing to go in the film's latter portion.Carpenter's changes in story often make no sense. Truthfully, in King's novel, Christine was fairly neutral. It was the rancid soul of her detestable former owner that possessed her and galvanized the action and change in Arnie. By omitting that character from the film and oddly mixing the characteristics with a still living character, Carpenter makes nonsense stew. Carpenter also omits the clever touch of how the souls of Christine's victims become trapped in the car and end up making diabolical passengers during attack scenes.Worst of all, King's novel features some stunning attack sequences set in a wintry Pennsylvania, including the snow drift attack on Arnie's chief tormentor and a terrific sequence where another character is attacked in their isolated home during the height of a blizzard, but Carpenter axes all such sequences for incredibly cheap affairs. The latter character dies in the film when he inexplicably decides to hop into the driver seat of the still-smoldering car that he just witnessed driving itself into a garage and the car seat pushes itself forward so far that it crushes him. An incredibly memorable sequence has been swapped out for an unintentional embarrassment.This all combines to make Christine a misfire. The studio obviously was not willing to cough up the budget necessary for a good film, the cast fails to inhabit their characters, and Carpenter was not inspired enough to do much with what he had, so the end result is an exceedingly mediocre testament of what might have been had anyone cared.

One of the most intriguing coming-of-age stories in cinema, and this tends to be overlooked, both as a Stephen King story and horror film, in place of the more sensationalized frolic and mayhem of works such as 'The Shining', 'Carrie', 'Misery' and 'The Shawshank Redemption', which is a crying shame, because: a) John Carpenter is probably the finest director (at least Top 3) ever involved with King adaptations; and b) it perfectly conceptualizes, like earlier short experimental films by the likes of Kenneth Anger, the downright uncomfortable sleaziness and fetishism that has existed, mainly in America, between men and their cars.Keith Gordon does some really fine acting here (as he did previously for Brian De Palma in 'Dressed to Kill') as all possible dynamics along the range from nerd to psycho. It's impressive that, while growing up in film, he obviously learned some of the tricks of the trade from such cinematic greats (at least of American film of the past 50 years) and ended up becoming a decent film helmer himself.9/10 for me; Grade A Carpenter. It simply isn't top-tier for me, of his oeuvre, because I know he, like Sir Alfred Hitchcock, De Palma and other greats, is capable of cinematic perfection (Halloween, The Thing, etc.).