CHRISTINE Vroom vroom, doom doom! These "bullied high schooler takes revenge" stories are only getting more interesting in an age where every other week or so it seems some meek kid snatches up his dad's gun and shoots a bunch of his classmates. I'm tellin' you, bullied high school kids are the postal workers of the 21st century. I know better than to think that all these kids are only targeting the ones who are asking for it, but I'll be honest with you - the thought of picked-on kids rising up and giving the little bastards what they deserve gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. The only time that the careers of John Carpenter and Stephen King have ever intersected, Christine is widely hailed as a marginal but unspectacular success. And I'd have to say that the, uh, "critical mass" is mostly correct on this one; it's nowhere near the top of Carpenter's body of work but it's still a worthy addition to it. As for the source material, it's just been so long since I've read King's novel, high school I believe, God, I feel so old. I don't remember much about it, except that I didn't rank it all that high among his books. Keith Gordon plays Arnie Cunningham, a nerdy high school kid with parents who have mapped out his entire future, zero romantic prospects, and trouble with the bullies at school (led by John Travolta, who was on top of the world only a couple of years before - what's he doing here with this minor part?). (NOTE: I've since found out that this isn't Travolta at all, it's William Ostrander, who looks so much like Travolta that the Scientologists must be hitting him up for dues. My mistake, please forgive me.) One day driving with his best friend Dennis (JOHN Stockwell, not Dean, as I'd previously erroneously written) (damn, I was just off the ball that day, wasn't I?), his eyes come to rest on a beat up old 1958 Plymouth Fury, and he becomes lost to it. He buys it, lovingly restores it, even starts calling her by name. This frightens his parents, confuses his friend, and as for his new girlfriend (future Baywatcher Alexandra Paul), she doesn't even like being in it (and who can blame her after it locks her in and tries to choke her to death?). Needless to say, some bullies' days are numbered, and with Arnie's newfound apparent self-confidence and romantic prowess comes a terrible price. There are a lot of nice touches here, and I don't know which ones are from King, Carpenter, or screenwriter Bill Phillips. Dennis makes for a rare cinematic jock with at least half a brain in his head. Granted, the football players in my own high school were done no disservice by the stereotype, sharing an estimated IQ of 35 amongst the team, but I know it doesn't work that way nationwide. (curiosity: this may have hold true for the male jocks, but the female jocks tended to be way smarter than average. Hmmm.) The special effects are excellent, where the car re-assembles (and in one case, disassembles) itself in order to pursue its own ends. Christine communicates with Arnie and others in a limited fashion by turning on her radio which plays only 50's rock songs, always lyrically relevant to the situation at hand. For example, when Dennis tries to break into the car, the radio starts playing some song which goes "I hear you knockin' but you can't come in!" The most perversely appropriate time this happens is when the radio plays "Bony Moronie", for reasons which become clear soon enough. I think best of all is the thick undercurrent of sadness that hangs throughout the film. Never exactly a gay ol' time, one of the reasons Christine works is that it follows through with the consequences of Arnie's total thrall to the machine without any last-minute chicken-outs, no climactic moment where Arnie cries out "Nooooooooo" and saves the day. Gordon's performance is excellent throughout, easily eclipsing all the other actors except maybe Harry Dean Stanton as a semi-suspicious cop. His transformation from an inexperienced kid innocent of how much of the world works ("How much do you want for her? I mean, whatever it is, it's not enough!") to a near-slavish devotee of his first real love is, appropriately, only a transformation on the surface. I don't remember how the book's ending was different from the movie's, but I don't think it involved a bulldozer. Maybe the film's ending is a little to action-movie-ish, but then, how ELSE are you going to fight a self-re-assambling demon car? Pour sugar in the gas tank? Actually, that's not a bad idea. At any rate, car enthusiasts are likely to shit bricks seeing all the ways in which this car is not a standard 1958 Fury. I wouldn't know. I could've done without all the shots where Christine suddenly flicks on her headlights (or, for that matter, that silly scene where it tries choking the girl), and maybe the whole thing runs longer than it needs to, but in the end, Christine is a solid horror film. For an obviously for-hire job that, really, retains little similarity to Carpenter's larger body of work, Christine works nonetheless, and Carpenter delivers a nice score as always. The ending suggests a sequel (complete with the song "Let's Do It Again"), which never happened...I always thought it would be interesting to see Christine come into the hands of somebody with a strong enough will and personality to own her the way she owned Arnie. Watch for Kelly Preston as the high school slut (dammit, if we had one of those at my high school, nobody told me which one she was!), but no, there aren't any super-cutesy (read: nauseating) scenes with her and Travolta together, considering that it would be almost a decade before they got married. Jesus, did you SEE that interview with Barbara Walters? I wanted to hurl! BACK TO THE C's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE