Story: John Carpenter directs the movie based on the Stephen King best seller about a killer 1958 Plymouth that goes a little nutty for her new owner Arnie Cunningham. Bad news for the punks that all picked on Arnie in school, because they’re all about to die horrible deaths! Karma?!

The Film Itself: Time magazine called Christine “Carpenter’s best since Halloween”. Is that true? Well, it’s a matter of opinion, but as a huge Carpenter fan, I’ll be bold enough to say that this is in fact one of his best, and also one of my personal favorites. This came out at a time when most Stephen King adaptations were predominantly good for the most part. And who better to guide a story by the king of horror novels to the big screen then one of our modern masters of horror, John Carpenter. Like with all of Carpenter’s work, this movie’s got a lot of great atmosphere. You can tell it’s a Carpenter flick. His original score only adds to that. God, I love this score. The casting is pretty dead on too. Keith Gordon (of ‘Jaws 2’ & one of my 80’s faves ‘Back To School’) stars as the geeky Arnie Cunningham. Arnie finds the beat-up old 58 Plymouth, fixes it up, turns out to not be such a geek after all, and scores the hot babe in school that everyone wants. See? A nice car brings out a lot of confidence! Oh, wait… the car’s jealous and tries to choke his new girlfriend at the drive-in? Oh… and Arnie’s dissing his best friend and cursing obscenities at his parents now? Christine (that’s the car’s name) is making him go a little crazy it seems?! So what? It’s a sweet ride! You’d totally keep it too!

Special Features: Now this is what I call a special edition! Originally released in a bare-bones disc, Columbia Pictures redeems themselves with giving ‘Christine’ a proper DVD release like this one! There’s a great commentary track with Carpenter himself and lead star Keith Gordon. (Now a director in his own right.) Carpenter’s commentaries are always great (especially the one’s he does with Kurt Russell) and this one is no exception. Both offer tons of interesting little tid-bits into the making of the movie. Carpenter reveals a lot of movie-magic secrets, such as how he pulled off the sequence in which Christine fixes herself. There are also plenty of little facts that the average fan would never have known about until this commentary. Like the fact that this was the first movie to use George Thurgood’s ‘Bad To the Bone’. And the fact that this movie was considered one of the dirtiest films, language-wise, only to be dethroned from that title a few months later with the release of ‘Scarface’. There’s a series of deleted scenes presented here as well. This movie always felt like there were bits missing, but the extra scenes don’t add too much. Still, they’re cool to finally see. There’s also 3 great featurettes with interviews with just about everyone involved in the movie. (Except for Stephen King surprisingly.) There are plenty of funny stories shared thru-out the duration of the featurettes as well. One in particular is lead actress Alexandra Paul explaining how one day, she had her twin sister come in and pretend to be her for the night without letting John Carpenter know she even had a sister. Regardless, it seemed that John felt something amiss while trying to direct Alex’s sister. Overall, if you’re a Carpenter fan, or a Stephen King fan, or hell… even just a fan of good movies, this special edition of Christine is totally worth adding to your collection. – Robg.