Christine (1983)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Christine |
| Original title | John Carpenter's Christine |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1983 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | John Carpenter |
| script | Bill Phillips |
| production | Richard Kobritz |
| music | John Carpenter Alan Howarth |
| camera | Donald M. Morgan |
| cut | Marion Rothman |
| occupation | |
| |
Christine is a horror film based on the Stephen King novel ofthe same name from1983. It was directed by John Carpenter , who alsocomposedthe score .
action
High school student Arnie Cunningham is a weak guy and the whipping boy of a four-man gang led by Buddy Repperton.
One day he discovers a 1958 Plymouth Fury in red / white special paint that is in need of renovation and falls in love with the classic car . He immediately buys it from the dark brother of the deceased first owner and learns that the car goes by the name of Christine . He laboriously restores the car by hand. You learn that several people were mysteriously killed in this car.
While working, Arnie's character changes, he becomes more self-confident but also more arrogant. The car takes possession of Arnie, who becomes increasingly separated from his parents and his best friend Dennis, and gradually becomes the focus of his life.
When Buddy Repperton and his friends vandalized the now completely restored car one night, Arnie even chases away his new girlfriend Leigh in his anger and excitement after discovering the crime. The car comes to life, repairs itself and hunts down the members of the school gang, which first kills one and insignificantly later the other three members. In addition, the car is responsible for another fatality during its independence, namely the old owner of the workshop in which the car is stored, because he notices the car without a driver on return. By the red Plymouth, which for him embodies a social substitute relationship, completely under its spell, owner Arnie increasingly falls into the delusion of wanting revenge on the whole world for suffering hurts, which deeply unsettles his only human friend Dennis.
To stop the killing and bring Arnie back to her senses, Leigh and Dennis decide to destroy Christine . With a bulldozer , they face a brutal confrontation that ends fatally for Arnie as a maddened assailant (behind the wheel). However, Christine then tries to continue the fight independently. However, Leigh and Dennis manage to completely destroy Christine with the heavy crawler vehicle .
An accompanying motif is the music of the 1950s, which always comes from the vehicle's radio when the car becomes a danger. This is expressed in the final words of the film ( Leigh ): "I hate rock 'n' roll ." And it is only in this last scene of the film that doubts arise about the ultimate annihilation of Christine .
Remarks
- Stephen King was so popular at the time of filming that production of the film began before the novel was published, which resulted in significant differences in the flow of the film.
As is often the case, some parts of the novel were left out or changed in the script for this film:
- While in the film the brother of the dead Roland D. LeBay sells his car to Arnie, in the novel the still living LeBay does so himself, but dies a short time later. Both in the film and in the novel, the car apparently has a life of its own right from the start, but in the novel the dead first owner is able to live on as a ghost in his former car and also to drive it. However, this aspect does not appear in the film. In the film, the car also found its first fatality in the manufacturer's workshop.
- The plot was moved from Pennsylvania to California in the film.
- In the novel, a Plymouth Fury , model 1958, plays the "leading role". For the film adaptation, care should be taken to only buy true-to-the-original 1958 Fury . But because only a few well-preserved Plymouth Fury models could be found, vehicle models of the Plymouth Savoy and Plymouth Belvedere types were also used, but they have almost the same body. For the shooting, a total of 24 58 Plymouths were bought and restored at all scrap yards and by various vehicle owners in the USA and used as a spare parts store so that all vehicles looked the same. Most of them were destroyed during filming, except for two copies. A total of approximately $ 1.5 million was spent on the cars and the restoration of the vehicles. The two remaining and well-preserved cars were used for promotional purposes and later sold to collectors.
- In the book, Dennis Guilder and Leigh Cabot destroy Christine with a "poop sucker" (pump truck) called Petunia, also a vehicle with a maiden name. Dennis' difficulties in dealing with the sluggish truck gearshift are clearly illustrated, including: a. he breaks his already injured left leg again. In the movie, an unnamed bulldozer is used for this.
- At the end of the book it is implied that the horror of Christine's destruction is not over yet. a. it is learned that the last survivor of Buddy Repperton's gang, Sandy Galton, is killed by a car. Such a hint also occurs in the final scene of the film in the junkyard. After the camera has moved towards the scrap block from the scrap press , two struts of the radiator grille move. This is supposed to symbolize that the supposed final destruction of Christine was not successful after all.
- The film has some logical errors regarding the car, for example it shows how the doors lock by themselves, but neither the Fury nor the other models of the year in question had locking buttons, but were locked from the inside using the handles.
- The Christine in the film rightly only has two doors, and it would not have been possible to find the 1958 model with four doors, as this never existed. In the book, however, Christine has four doors.
- The scene with the explosion of a gas station and the drive of the burning car had to work the first time, because it was realized completely real. The stunt driver for this was Terry Leonard .
- The death of the garage owner W. Darnell is by no means like in the film. He dies with Christine coming to his house, entering the house and destroying everything. He can save himself on the stairs, but falls down due to Christine's massive destruction and is run over by her three times before she disappears again.
- For the regeneration scenes of the Plymouth, body parts were provided with pull wires from the inside. In the film, the corresponding scenes are then run backwards to achieve the desired effect.
- The yellow bulldozer that flattens the Plymouth Christine in the film comes from the manufacturer Caterpillar .
- In the final sequence at the junkyard, the singer George Thorogood has a brief appearance as a junkyard worker. He also wrote the opening credits Bad to the Bone .
There is an epilogue in the book in which D. Guilder describes that the Plymouth ends up in the scrap press, but that one of the officers got a cut on the cube but claims to have been bitten. A bizarre murder in LA that killed a drive-in theater operator after a car sped through the front of the snack bar killing him makes D. Guilder difficult to believe that everything won't start all over again, the car going its way East takes it and saves it last.
Reviews
"John Carpenter, specialist in eerie fabrics, ironically plays with fear and horror this time too, but despite all the trick effects and some fireworks without any particular success."
Trivia
During the shooting, 20 1958 Plymouth Fury were used, of which only two remained without a total write-off after the shooting. Actor Harry Dean Stanton can be seen in the supporting role as Inspector Junkins . As an actor, Stanton was promoted by the German director Wim Wenders , in his film Paris, Texas from 1984 Stanton took on one of his few leading roles.
literature
- John Kenneth Muir: Horror Films of the 1980s . McFarland & Company, Jefferson NC 2007, ISBN 978-0-7864-5501-0 , Christine, pp. 304–306 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
- Frank Schnelle: Suspense, shock, terror. John Carpenter and his films. Verlag Robert Fischer, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-924098-04-2 .
Web links
- Christine in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Christine at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Christine at Metacritic (English)
- Christine in the online film database
- Christine in the German dubbing file
- Comparison of the cut versions Tele 5 from 12 - FSK 16 by Christine at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jim Benjaminson: Plymouth 1946-1959: Christine, Curse or Blessing ?? In: allpar.com. Retrieved February 6, 2016 .
- ^ Christine, the most famous Plymouth Fury. In: allpar.com. Retrieved February 5, 2016 .
- ↑ Christine. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .