Three Christmas movies drip red in search of box-office green
CHRISTINE
The movies are a machine that makes art. But what are we to make of films in which the machine is the main attraction? Burt Reynolds may be at the wheel of his Trans Am, Harrison Ford can maneuver his Millennium Falcon in hyperspace, Roy Scheider may occupy the cockpit of the Blue Thunder helicopter, but the hardware is the hero. It knows neither fear nor fatigue; it does the job it is programmed to do and never complains; if it is destroyed, a comradely clone can take its place. For a nation that has cause to doubt that nobody does it better, the machine is something like the last American hero.
Not Christine, who has the body of a '58 Plymouth Fury but the mind of a Victorian murderess. At birth, on the Chrysler assembly line, she mysteriously killed a mechanic who dared to drop cigar ash on her upholstery. (Alfred Hitchcock once tried, unsuccessfully, to work a scene like this into a movie; now the trick has been solved.) Two decades later, Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon), nerd of high school nerds, owns Christine—and is possessed by her. In a trice this four-eyed Faust is transformed into a cool dude with clear skin, wrap-around shades, slick black hair and the sexy swagger of a Vegas lounge star. No wonder Leigh (Alexandra Paul), the prettiest girl on campus, is aswoon over Arnie. But she has tough competition in Christine. Such jealousy: when Leigh suggests that Arnie is too attached to his car, Christine forces the girl to choke, nearly to death, on some fast food. Such vindictiveness: three punk classmates of Arnie's push him around and Christine seeks them out and totals them. "Be careful what you call my car," Arnie warns his best friend (John Stock-well). "She's real sensitive."
Director John Carpenter and Screenwriter Bill Phillips have compacted and customized Stephen King's screaming jalopy of a novel until it moves with sleek '50s lines and a sassy tailfin flip at the end. Graceful tracking shots mime the killer car's gliding menace; the deserted nighttime streets are washed chrome-shiny by rain. The high-school scenes, which are neither coarse nor condescending, put every other current teenpic to shame. Carpenter's cast mixes vigorous old pros with young comers; Keith Gordon is a hilariously intense Jekyll-and-Snide. The movie—Carpenter's best since Halloween—is at heart a deadpan satire of the American male's love affair with his car. This Christine is one lean mean funny machine. —By Richard Corliss
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