Drugstore.com Coupons
How others will see it. This unpleasant teen horror flick has four things in its favor. It's based on a Stephen King novel, so its accessible, and has a well known story. Alexandra Paul is a knockout. So is Christine, once she's fixed up. Best of all, the bullies get what's coming to them. Is there anyone who didn't want to see Christine run over muscled, long-haired juvenile punk Repperton (William Ostrander)?
How I felt about it. Christine is a morality play. Arnie may be a nerd, but he's lovable and entertaining. He'd like to be cool, although he doesn't know this. Christine can make him cool, but its power corrupts. Others (Dennis, Leigh, Arnie's parents) are quick to see this. They prefer amusing nerd Arnie to intensely angry and smug Arnie, no matter how smokin' his shiny red '58 Plymouth Fury may be.
Alas, Arnie has sold his soul to Christine, and all attempts to take him off the road to perdition fail. Let that be a lesson to you, kiddies. Better a greasy-haired, four-eyed nerd, than an arrogant, polemic murderer.
I have nothing against morality tales, as a genre, even if they are disguised as horror films. One benefit: a departure from formula, even if there are three different scenes that involve the pretty girl in peril from the monster. Fortunately for her, she's a good girl. One of lesser character would have been snuffed.
The problem is, the lesson (free to be you and me, whether or not it gets you dates or jobs) is so heavy-handed that it becomes cartoonish. Arnie's increasingly creepy and menacing behavior would have him kicked out of his parent's house, and he'd be jailed after the second round of bully murders. Even without physical evidence.
Harry Dean Stanton is a police detective on the case. He's clearly a fictional character, because his suspicions from the start are focused on the car, and not its presumed driver, Arnie. He interrogates Arnie primarily because the car won't talk to him.
He even proclaims Leigh and Dennis heroes after Dennis somehow obtains a bulldozer (by saving his allowance?) and uses it to turn Christine into scrap metal. A man dead, the evidence destroyed, a preposterous story. A funeral scene, of sorts, for the car, and none for Arnie? End of investigation. Would Columbo work that way?