Next up for #Johnuary is Christine.
I really didn’t know anything about this film whatsoever other than I thought it was based on a Stephen King book and that it was about a girl with super powers. Then I realised I was getting mixed up with Carrie. I found out this one was about a car and that rang a few bells. But I knew nothing more than that.
- I didn’t really like the title sequence as much as Carpenter’s other films. Just the titles quickly appearing over an engine noise
- I’ve said this in nearly every Carpenter film review but I love how Carpenter often has long periods with no dialogue. It really helps him to set a tone I think
- It’s the first of Carpenter’s films so far which uses a lot of proper songs on the soundtrack. And it is a great soundtrack. I love how Christine uses old rock ’n’ roll songs to communicate it’s thoughts
- I kept being struck by how well made the film is. Simple yet very well done
- The old guy who sells the car is Roberts Blossom… the old guy from Home Alone!
- Harry Dean Stanton FTW. He makes any movie better
- The ESP guy from Ghostbusters is in this! You know, the guy at the beginning being buzzed by Venkman in the experiment, and his gum falls out
- The ‘show me’ scene is brilliantly done. I love how they did the car effect. I assume it was all shot in reverse and probably sucking the air out of a plastic version of the car
- The shots of the car on fire is just beautiful
- Apparently the film went into production before the book had been published, which was interesting
- I wish Stephen King and John Carpenter had done more collaborations. I wonder what The Shining would have been like if it had been made by John Carpenter
In what I’ve read I don’t think this film gets quite as much love as a lot of other Carpenter films, but I really thoroughly enjoyed it. There was just something about the characters, the actors, the pacing, the script, the tone, the style that completely resonated with me. A very cool film and it should rank pretty highly in my list.
Images from Blu-Ray.com