CHRISTINE

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS, AND NOT JUST THE ONES ON THE CAR

So my occasional rewatches of movies I last saw in the wrong ratio on knackered VHS a third of a century ago has landed me with this fusion of no less than Stephen King and John Carpenter. My lists tell me that I gave it one star back then and my general memories were that I really didn't care for it: had I misjudged it? Was it genuinely that awful? Surely there must be something in there, even if it's the Carpenter/Howarth score (which on this occasion has to share space with a vintage jukebox selection) or some decent death scenes?

No, I hadn't misjudged it. Christine is genuinely that awful. The music is in that lovely pulsing synth Halloween/Fog style but it's far from their best (Prince Of Darkness has always been my favourite) and even the much deserved kills aren't particularly interesting. Christine itself/herself is a sentient 1958 Plymouth Fury which for no apparent reason starts killing people (beginning with a poor sap on the production line) and also has the power to rebuild itself when it's been reduced to scrap. Bespectacled, bullied loser Arnie (Keith Gordon) buys the wreck and almost instantly transforms into the coolest kid, dating the hottest chick and now driving the sharpest car. But can his few remaining friends break the anti-Herbie's spell over him before she kills any more innocent people?

It's a surprisingly mean-spirited film, with a surprising level of strong language shoehorned in (they should have called it My Mother****er The Car) and a trio of antisocial punks so hateful that you actively want them to die. Which wouldn't be so bad if the good guys were any compensation: the romantic leads are wet as fish and Arnie's too-quick transformation from hapless dweeb to cold-hearted, possessed sociopath means he merely goes from one shade of uninteresting to another. It has little of anything you'd normally associate with Carpenter: with none of the yucky surreal horror of The Thing, none of the cozy, comfortable chills of The Fog, none of the humour of Escape From New York, none of the fun of Big Trouble In Little China and none of the scares of Halloween, it's really got very little going for it except for isolated moments: Harry Dean Stanton's nice turn as a cop, Christine screaming down the highway on fire. And obviously it looks better on a shiny new Blu than it did on a battered rental videotape.

King adaptations have always been a roll of the dice: for every Misery or Dolores Claiborne there's a Graveyard Shift or Cat's Eye and Christine has always been in the latter category. I wanted to like it (obviously - why rewatch it otherwise?) but it's too long, has no characters worth following and is still difficult to enjoy or to find more than small nuggets of interest.

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