A Twitch of Chrome
I saw John Carpenter's Christine (1983) a week ago, so whatever lack of specific memory of plot details derives from that. Keith Gordon plays a glasses-wearing "nerd" friend (Arnie) of a high school football player (Dennis, played by John Stockwell) popular with girls, including a sweet blonde played by a young Kelly Preston (later on John Travolta's scientologist wife). Whether Arnie is drawn to something malignant or not, he becomes immediately attached to a For Sale 1958 Plymouth, rusty and falling apart, but with a living purring engine. The crusty old man who sells it to him for 250 dollars, accepting a check, which looks uncool as opposed to just paying with cash, tells his friend later on that someone committed suicide in the car. It's evidently haunted. The radio comes on emitting a strong puke green light, playing rock and roll, the genuine kind of the 1950s. When that radio activates, Christine is about to kill.
The car's influence plays on Arnie as he repairs the car, he wears black, loses the glasses, presumably goes over to contacts (that mundane part of the story left out--we don't see Christine's new servant making an appointment with his family's optometrist). A new boy in black with a pretty red old classic car he gets the attention and lips of Leigh (Alexandra Paul, about nine years before she debuted in the hit TV series, Baywatch). She's one of Christine' first would-be victims, at the drive-in during a rainstorm after she's been making out with Gordon, rubbing his penis, though when he touches her breasts, she backs away, gets out of the car, they argue by the concession stand. She gets back in the car, the doors lock after the weird radio comes back on, playing some fifties tune, the car's interior glows with white light. Alexandra gets popcorn in the wrong passage, can't breathe, but the car relents and a man in the next car gives her Heimlich maneuver.
This should tell Arnie his car is a supernatural entity, though he never admits to that, but accepts his new look (the black clothes, no glasses) and feels justified in assuming the rebel's role.
He clashes frequently with his parents who won't let him keep his car in their driveway. He keeps it at the junkyard garage where he first fixed it, polishing it up. Christine can also self-regenerate, even returning from a spectacular set piece in which the vehicle is on fire chasing after antagonist Buddy and his dumb friends. Christine is a killer, running over, clipping hips and legs, a movable weapon with blackened windows (darkening when it kills). When this is the case, it seems that Arnie is behind the wheel, but not really controlling the steering or the car's intentions.
The car thus inhabits that peculiar Stephen King world of shifting sands underneath the apparent stability of reality. The car, a symbol of American freedom, takes lives. A pair of magic shoes that take vengeance against its enemies might work for a comedy, or a haunted bicycle, but a car, especially a late 1950s dream machine, no longer appreciated, made fun of, insulted, rusting in an overgrown lot, touches the insides of those who remember how these old stylish cars spoke of sex, speed, horsepower, and the bridging of spaces, connecting the user with other cities, towns, landscapes. Arnie doesn't take the car on a road trip, but that could be a sequel to this film if only
Christine isn't dealt with finally by compacting it into an elongated cube. Can it reconstruct itself? A twitch of chrome suggests it's possible. One doesn't want the villain (or hero?) of the piece to entirely die.
Carpenter's direction is good, making his ridiculous The Fog (reviewed elsewhere in this blog) look a very poor horror film indeed. The set piece involving Christine on fire and driving around, furthering the quest of its mayhem, is spectacular and thrilling, involving fleeing antagonists, a gas station, explosions, and screaming tires. Christine is her own doctor by this point, so the burn damage is temporary. An immortal machine, like the myth of the automobile in its heyday, the 1950s and 1960s, when style mattered. The car is a vengeance of neglected style against modernity.
Vic Neptune
I saw John Carpenter's Christine (1983) a week ago, so whatever lack of specific memory of plot details derives from that. Keith Gordon plays a glasses-wearing "nerd" friend (Arnie) of a high school football player (Dennis, played by John Stockwell) popular with girls, including a sweet blonde played by a young Kelly Preston (later on John Travolta's scientologist wife). Whether Arnie is drawn to something malignant or not, he becomes immediately attached to a For Sale 1958 Plymouth, rusty and falling apart, but with a living purring engine. The crusty old man who sells it to him for 250 dollars, accepting a check, which looks uncool as opposed to just paying with cash, tells his friend later on that someone committed suicide in the car. It's evidently haunted. The radio comes on emitting a strong puke green light, playing rock and roll, the genuine kind of the 1950s. When that radio activates, Christine is about to kill.
The car's influence plays on Arnie as he repairs the car, he wears black, loses the glasses, presumably goes over to contacts (that mundane part of the story left out--we don't see Christine's new servant making an appointment with his family's optometrist). A new boy in black with a pretty red old classic car he gets the attention and lips of Leigh (Alexandra Paul, about nine years before she debuted in the hit TV series, Baywatch). She's one of Christine' first would-be victims, at the drive-in during a rainstorm after she's been making out with Gordon, rubbing his penis, though when he touches her breasts, she backs away, gets out of the car, they argue by the concession stand. She gets back in the car, the doors lock after the weird radio comes back on, playing some fifties tune, the car's interior glows with white light. Alexandra gets popcorn in the wrong passage, can't breathe, but the car relents and a man in the next car gives her Heimlich maneuver.
This should tell Arnie his car is a supernatural entity, though he never admits to that, but accepts his new look (the black clothes, no glasses) and feels justified in assuming the rebel's role.
He clashes frequently with his parents who won't let him keep his car in their driveway. He keeps it at the junkyard garage where he first fixed it, polishing it up. Christine can also self-regenerate, even returning from a spectacular set piece in which the vehicle is on fire chasing after antagonist Buddy and his dumb friends. Christine is a killer, running over, clipping hips and legs, a movable weapon with blackened windows (darkening when it kills). When this is the case, it seems that Arnie is behind the wheel, but not really controlling the steering or the car's intentions.
The car thus inhabits that peculiar Stephen King world of shifting sands underneath the apparent stability of reality. The car, a symbol of American freedom, takes lives. A pair of magic shoes that take vengeance against its enemies might work for a comedy, or a haunted bicycle, but a car, especially a late 1950s dream machine, no longer appreciated, made fun of, insulted, rusting in an overgrown lot, touches the insides of those who remember how these old stylish cars spoke of sex, speed, horsepower, and the bridging of spaces, connecting the user with other cities, towns, landscapes. Arnie doesn't take the car on a road trip, but that could be a sequel to this film if only
Christine isn't dealt with finally by compacting it into an elongated cube. Can it reconstruct itself? A twitch of chrome suggests it's possible. One doesn't want the villain (or hero?) of the piece to entirely die.
Carpenter's direction is good, making his ridiculous The Fog (reviewed elsewhere in this blog) look a very poor horror film indeed. The set piece involving Christine on fire and driving around, furthering the quest of its mayhem, is spectacular and thrilling, involving fleeing antagonists, a gas station, explosions, and screaming tires. Christine is her own doctor by this point, so the burn damage is temporary. An immortal machine, like the myth of the automobile in its heyday, the 1950s and 1960s, when style mattered. The car is a vengeance of neglected style against modernity.
Vic Neptune
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