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Christine comes out evil from
the assembly line in Detroit, where it mutilates a worker and kills the
department head. Already from the beginning, John
Carpenter's movie is different from Stephen King's
novel. In the novel, the ’57 Plymouth ‘Fury’ (by the way, a four-door car
becomes on the screen a coupé) became infernal
through a satanic ritual. It was the first owner who sacrificed in it
his daughter in order to attract to the car the presence of a demon and to
gain immortality for the car and for himself the return from afterlife. |
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Going back to the movie, it is the story of Arnie Cunningham
(Keith Gordon), a difficult and shy young boy, more than ever ill at ease with the
problems of the end of adolescence (girls and all the rest), who finds a
sheet anchor indeed in Christine. He sees it coming back from school and
it is immediately love at first
sight. After twenty years the car is little more than a wreck. Arnie starts to repair it
lovingly, but unconsciously renews himself together with that dented
wreck. In a few weeks he turns into another person: he no longer needs
glasses, he is self-confident, he even manages to go out with the
prettiest girl in the school. |
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But, as it often happens in everyday life, those who have know you to be
a weak person do not accept that you can change. The punks of the school,
even though unconscious of the true nature of the object, opt to hit his
strong point anyway. With bats and chains
they wreck Christine. |
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The devilish car is, however, capable of self-generation. Like a vampire,
it comes back to life from its grave (box n° 20 in the garage of Darnell) and
puts Arnie’s revenge against Buddy Rapperton
(William
Ostrander) and buddies into practice. But at this point there is no limit. An
irreversible transformation has also come about in the owner, there is no
longer love for the family or for friends: everybody has become an
obstacle between him and Christine, and thus are targets to be eliminated. |
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In the final confrontation, anyhow, the good will have the better. Dennis
Guilder (John
Stockwell) and Leigh Cabot (Alexandra
Paul) – his best friend and ex-girlfriend – defeat Arnie, who loses his
life. Christine is worn down to nothing, but at the exit of the press in
the car cemetery, its cubic corpse still shows signs of life. |
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REMARKS
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When a genius interprets another genius, valuable results are almost
always achieved. Generally, when a movie is inspired by a book, in
the overwhelming majority of cases, the book appears better than the
movie. Maybe, this simply happens because the book is the original
and the story was felt more by the person who conceived it
originally. It’s very rare to find a book and a respective movie
that are equivalent, but exceptions do exist. In any case, 'Christine'
is an enjoyable and effective movie, furnished with skill of the
‘50s’ iconographical and musical dream (the old music that comes
from the car radio). Perhaps the surname of the main character,
Cunningham, has not been chosen randomly either. 'Happy Days'
was very popular in the ‘70s and Ricky Cunningham, played by Ron Howard,
made one think of the famous decade just by naming him, but all this
concerns the choice of the author.
John Carpenter, on the other hand, like all directors who give their
personal vision of a novel, has given and taken from the movie. The
final result is in any case excellent. |
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The challenge between Christine and Rapperton is the hottest point of the
story. Carpenter mediates/concentrates it with a coupe de théatre that
will always stay in our memory (Christine with the burning hood
catches up with the punk, while he runs away in the night along the
desert main road). I don’t think that I exaggerate when I say that
the scene originally conceived by King, would have been even more
incisive on the screen. After a breathtaking pursuit there would
have been a hair-raising coup de théatre in the Romero.
manner. Le Bay’s ghost (the original owner) or rather his half-rotten
corpse with a shoulder halter - an item that for King has a
precise |
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meaning and which Carpenter in the movie makes the brother of the dead
(Robert
Blossom) dress in, the person who sold the car to Arnie - stands on a pile
of snow like a judge on the bench, to give the final thrust
to a Buddy Rapperton who at this point is out of his mind. |
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But, as a whole, adapting
the novel to the movie he has also given a contribution.
We realise this at the end.
In the
book the red Plymouth was ‘killed’ by a tank truck: the same
elements, even though used backwards, for a final, that maybe in the
mind of the writer should have been the ”anti-Duel”,
even though only from the motor point of view. Carpenter chooses an
impersonal scraper that does the job in a relatively quick and clean
way. |
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NOTE!!!
This is an unauthorized site. The copyrights of the images of ' Christine'
belong to Columbia/Tristar
pictures. This site is just a movie page for my personal website. The
copyrights of the texts belong to Lorenzo Costa. Email me
at alfadriver@lorenzocosta.com |
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