By Kit Rathenar
There are certain things that have always, historically, been the province of teenagers in a way that they can never quite belong to any other section of society. Every generation thinks they invented sex, drugs and rock’n’roll; and in a sense they’re right, because these are rites of passage such that it doesn’t matter who’s done them before. When we’re doing them for the first time, at that moment they belong to us alone.
Horror movies – we all know it – fall into that category, too. We sneaked into eighteens under-age, we dared each other to watch things that we knew we were going to regret, and we’ve all got that one movie that we scared ourselves to death with at some impressionable age and still can’t watch without a shudder. It’s just the way it goes. But there’s one other great cultural icon that resides in this teenage territory, and that’s cars. Even in England learning to drive and getting your wheels is still something special, and in America the First Car has been elevated to the status of a cultural cornerstone. And thus, it makes a certain sense that cars – like sex, like drugs, like rock’n’roll – are a hand-in-glove fit for horror.
Unsurprisingly then, when Stephen King, acknowledged master of the all-American nightmare, wrote Christine he did a damn near perfect job of deconstructing the American teenage boy’s traditional love affair with his chosen wheels and remaking it into a thing of terror. His handiwork is fully acknowledged and honoured in John Carpenter’s 1983 adaptation, which has obviously made a very close study of the original story. Christine seems to have become something of a forgotten entry in Carpenter’s lengthy filmography – certainly compared to the likes of The Thing, which directly preceded it – but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. It’s arguably a little lightweight in its conception compared to many of his better known works, but as early-eighties genre horror goes, it remains a pleasure to watch.
Though I’m probably biased, I admit, because I love cars. And I suspect you have to love cars to fully appreciate this film. If you’ve ever had that one perfect marque and model that you wanted more than life, if you always zero in on the stray copy of What Car? in the dentist’s waiting room, you will have no problem buying the premise that a shy, geeky young man might find the love of his life rusting away in a back lot. You can probably imagine exactly how he feels. And indeed if anything, the biggest problem Christine faces is that because its audience will recognise the sentiments at play, it has to work quite hard to make its monster an authentic monster. What’s so bad about a car that looks out for you, can take care of itself while your back is turned, handles all its own repairs and maintenance, and is quite literally willing to do anything for you? In your heart of hearts, it’s hard not to think: well, nothing at all, really. This is probably why both the book and the movie share the same slightly forced quality – Christine, the red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury with a jet black heart, is a gasoline-drunk teenage boy’s dream machine, so it takes a lot of narrative effort to make her convincingly evil enough that you’d want to see her destroyed. And for me, despite those efforts that still never quite happens; I watch this film and I love it, but definitely not for the inevitable events of the last ten minutes. Rather I love it for the gorgeous classic American cars, the mingled rock’n’roll and spine-tingling eighties synths of the soundtrack, and the visual spectacles and thrills of genuine terror that it offers. The scene of Christine running down her tormentor Buddy Repperton on an empty back road, sliding through the darkness with her entire frame wreathed in fire, chills me to the bone every time.
Since this is a John Carpenter movie, though, the other thing I find fascinating about it is the characters, because the characterisation in Christine is very, very classic Carpenter. While King’s original cast are fairly well preserved and translated to the screen, on top of this framework Carpenter has definitely added a layer of his own tendency to exaggerate and idolise the unreconstructedly macho. The male cast here are archetypal, at times two-dimensional, but believable and vital; by comparison the women, even when they impact on the plot, are unrealised ciphers who never really rival the forcefully projected and often violently expressed emotions of their male counterparts. But the all-important exception to this is Christine herself; who manages to convey more character depth with only her radio and the look in her headlights to communicate through, than do the rest of the female cast put together. This is really only fitting, however, since she is, after all, in truth the leading lady of the film. One key regard in which Carpenter’s adaptation diverges from King’s original is that King’s Christine seems to have started out an ordinary car, and the evil in her is a heritage of her previous owner; Carpenter’s, however, hasn’t even rolled off the production line before she’s showing her true bloodthirsty colours. It’s a change I like, since it frees Christine to be both figuratively and literally an entirely self-driving element of the story. Without her actions, intentions and emotions, there simply wouldn’t be a plot to begin with – the rest of the cast act and react around her, but always with reference to her and in response to events that she alone sets in motion.
And this is why, despite the fact that it’s by no means the most profound or truly frightening of John Carpenter’s movies, I’d still say Christine is well worth seeing – as it’s a credit to any director’s talents if he can take a non-speaking, non-human main character and make them believable as a narrative prime mover, and here, Carpenter successfully does just that. Sure, the movie has dated, if only because it’s so strongly located in its signifier place and time (although the special effects hold up surprisingly well) and it does conform very strongly to the mould of eighties genre horror, but if you have any nostalgia at all for that particular cinematic era, Christine is an above-par example that you might well have missed. Likewise if you’re a Carpenter fan in general; this may not be one of his signature films, but if you like his style you’ll probably still find something to enjoy here.
Just don’t watch it right before you have to do any night driving, that’s all…