Month of Horror - Day 21: Christine

"She smiled at me. I want to have deep, meaningful sex with her."

When I was in high school, I attempted to pursude my parents to buy me a broken down El Camino. My friend's dad was selling it, was gonna let me have it real cheap. Dad's wasn't a car guy. I was even less of one. Didn't matter though. I convinced myself that with just a little "elbow grease," a term I'd heard on a Chico and the Man rerun, that car would be up and running in no time. The convincing began and ended with me. Dad explained that our family couldn't produce elbow grease, something about genetics and which part of Prussia we came from. I know what part of Prussia the kid in Christine came from but it must have been different than my ancestors. That kid's got grease coming out of both elbows. And he's got moxie, a term I heard on ollllllld-time raaaaaaadio.

When Arnie, a bookish fellow with a love for giant black-framed glasses, spends two-hundred and fifty of his hard earned American dollars on a junky Chrysler Plymouth Fury, everyone he knows gives him shit. We don't get a lot of background here. Maybe this was like the twentieth old pile of scrap metal he'd tried to rebuild. Maybe, one time, he stole 400 bucks from Grandpa Jardine for a dilapidated Chevy Nova. Whatever history this kid had with useless vehicles, his friends and family had had it up to here. [Note: Pretend I lifted my hand up, palm down, to a specific level around my forehead.]

Nothing was going to stop Arnie. People named Arnie are rarely stopped. [See: Pete & Pete] He fixes that car up and gives her all his sweet, sweet lovin'. His TLC is just what Christine needed to turn back into her old psychopathic murdering self. When someone smashes her up with a sledgehammer, she runs him over until he splits in two. When someone shits on her dashboard, she blows up the gas station he's standing in. Fair is fair. But when Christine starts going after Arnie's only two friends, you'd think that Arnie would care. Turns out, not so much.

Let's be honest, a lot of Stephen King movies are boring. Salem's Lot? Was that thing made out of cardboard? Cujo? The dog had rabies. I grew up in the country, everything had rabies. Stand By Me? That movie wasn't even scary!

Christine has a secret weapon though! Do you know who directed this movie? John "Fuck you, I'll write my own score" Carpenter! The man who brought you Halloween, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, Assault on Precinct 13, and Dark Star loaded up his cameras and made a movie about scary cars. And it's awesome! The dialogue is funny, the death scenes are rad, and the movie taught me an important lesson: Buy Japanese.