Christine

John Carpenter took the job after The Thing failed at the box office and calls it work rather than a personal project; reading the novel, he says, it just was not very frightening, but it was what his career needed then. Shooting began in April 1983, days after Stephen King’s book reached shops, and the film was in cinemas that December. The adaptation moves one thing. In the novel the evil belongs to the spirit of the car’s dead former owner, Roland LeBay; the film puts it on the assembly line in 1957, making the opening factory scene the film’s own invention. The self repair was not planned either. Carpenter gave effects supervisor Roy Arbogast 3 weeks; the crew moulded rubber off one car, stripped the engine out of another to fit hydraulics that pulled the frame inward and crumpled it, then ran the footage backwards. Carpenter wrote the score with Alan Howarth. The film was up for best horror film at the 11th Saturn Awards, an award taken by another King adaptation that year, The Dead Zone. A good fit if you want the horror to come from Arnie changing as he takes possession of the car rather than from the car. Not for a viewer impatient with a first half given mostly to school hierarchy and car repair.