Christine Blu-ray Review
Would you buy a used salesman from this car?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 18, 2013
Who would have thought that horror fans would be such avid collectors of films on home video, especially some films
that frankly weren't
that highly regarded in either their original theatrical releases or previous home video
iterations. When Twilight Time debuted its "limited edition" model a couple of years ago, their first releases tended to
be fairly high profile catalog titles like
The
Egyptian, and they continued to mine the archives at both Fox and Sony-Columbia for a rather splendid array
of both well known offerings and relatively underappreciated gems. One of the things that has continued to surprise
me over the years is that there aren't 3,000 people who want any given title, a surprise that actually has carried over
from another medium that Twilight Time's creative team was involved in before matriculating to Blu-ray, limited editions
of original soundtrack recordings. How could there not be 3,000 people in the world interested in buying, say, a classic
soundtrack by the incredible Alfred Newman? And yet, looking over the now rather long history of both limited
soundtrack releases and ultimately the newer phenomenon of limited Blu-ray releases, despite (or perhaps because of)
the hew and cry that has been raised over both the limited edition strategy as well as the pricing, very few Twilight
Time titles have actually sold out, and the ones that
have sold out have tended to be horror (or horror related),
including
Fright Night and
Night of the Living Dead
(two other sold out titles aren't really horror films, but have what might be considered certain "horror" elements in
terms of monsters and the like, including
Journey to the Center of the Earth and
Mysterious Island).
Christine has joined that
select few Twilight Time titles that have sold out, and in fact it sold out spectacularly quickly, something which might
surprise at least some more cynical observers who might not think of the film as a semi-forgotten classic. The fact that
Christine was directed by John Carpenter no doubt adds to its cachet, not to mention the always marketable
fact that it was based on a Stephen King novel, but the cold hard truth is
Christine was met with at best a
mixed critical reaction during its theatrical run, and while it did
okay at the box office, it was certainly no major
blockbuster. And yet it has such a potent fan base that it managed to burn through the limited 3000 copy run in a
matter of mere hours, while other, much better known (and remembered) films are still waiting to be snatched up by
collectors. Such are the vagaries of the home video market, peculiarities that are perhaps ripe to be exploited by some
future doctoral candidate in sociology.
As I discussed in my
Cujo Blu-ray review,
Stephen King loves to exploit our seemingly innate fear of the mundane in his stories. This fear may start when we're
but
children, frightened of noises we can't explain or of shadows that loom in our bedrooms that take on sinister meanings
in
our minds. King catapults those atavistic responses into completely new territory in many of his most famous novels
and
short stories, with everyday items, animals or people suddenly inhabited by some inchoate evil essence. In
Cujo
things were a bit more literal than usual, with a poor dog being infected by rabies and going on a murderous rampage.
Other King outings posit evil in a slightly more abstract form, and that's the case in
Christine. While King's
source
novel had a bit more "tangible" form of this evil (that being the spirit of a demented former owner of the car), in the film
the bright red 1957 Plymouth Fury named Christine is bad to the bone (and/or grille) even as she rolls down the
assembly
line.
There's something just a little intentionally provocative about this plot conceit, given Americans' overt love affairs with
their cars. This love is depicted as outright obsession in
Christine, when nerdy teenager Arnie (Keith Gordon)
stumbles on the ruined wreck of the car (in the 1970s) and decides he must have "her". His best friend, football jock
Dennis (John Stockwell), tells him he must be crazy, and as Dennis will soon find out, that's a bit of an understatement.
Christine has a mind of her own, and as Arnie begins restoring her, she "reaches out and touches" Arnie, sucking him
into a new, cockier identity.
The film plays almost like the flip side of a John Hughes comedy, with high school bullies getting their comeuppance (and
then some) at the hands of a car who (which?) has "decided" Arnie is her new partner and all others be damned. The
film is notable in that, aside from one or two outright shock sequences, the horror here is not especially graphic. In
fact, the film coasts much more on
mood than anything that's actually depicted (again, with a couple of notable
exceptions), which may be why it's both scary
and weirdly charming.
Christine Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
I have several rather odd collecting habits, and at least a couple of them are
extremely spendy. While I understand
some people's aversion to paying a lot for something, on a certain level I have a kind of different attitude about the "limited
edition" phenomenon, which is, "If you want it, get it. If it's too much, don't". Of course this may seem
insensitive to those who don't have a lot of pocket change lying around to spend considerable dough on an expensive
release, and it also doesn't take into account the incredibly fast sell out that
Christine experienced, which obviously
caught a
lot of people by surprise, leaving them to have to deal with
incredibly expensive after market
sellers
(take a gander at the Amazon Marketplace prices listed above, but have your defibrillator handy). Does
Christine
intrinsically
deserve this market adulation? Who's to say? A fan is a fan, and those with the wherewithal (either
financial
or internet accessibility wise) to secure this release probably couldn't care less what some mere critic might think. But the
fact is, this is a
rather breezy film with a piquant sense of humor, and for a King-based outing, it's surprisingly gore and even violence free,
with
hints of mayhem offered at least as much as any overt destruction. Carpenter directs with some unexpected
grace in this film, and the performances are all relatively nuanced (or at least as nuanced as they can be given the kind of
cartoonish ambience of the movie). This Blu-ray offers spectacular video, excellent audio and some wonderful supplements,
and it comes
Highly recommended.
