The next movie in the DailyView binge watch comes from an adaptation of one of Stephen King’s novels. There have been plenty of King adaptations hitting the big screen. Some were awesome such as It, Carrie, Stand by Me or The Shining (Sorry Stephen, I love that movie). Some were not as good such as Children of the Corn, It Chapter 2 or The Dark Tower. The adaptation that I am going to talk about today is Christine.

Directed by John Carpenter, Christine is an evil red Plymouth Fury that had a history of people dying in mysterious manners around it. Named Christine, it bonded with nerdy teenager Arnie (Keith Gordon) and Arnie immediately became obsessed with the car. As soon as he discovered Christine, Arnie changed becoming more aggressive, more angry and completely focused on the car.

Arnie became more verbally abusive toward his parents, started spending less time with his best friend Dennis (John Stockwell), and hooked up with new girl Leigh (Alexandra Paul). Unfortunately, Leigh began to feel uncomfortable in the car and nearly chokes to death.

After the bully (William Ostrander) attempts to destroy Christine, Arnie discovers the car’s special abilities

Sure, some of Christine is silly, but it is a solid adaptation and is filled with decent scenes. Though we see a flashback to its time on the assembly line back in Detroit in 1957, we do not get any sort of origin for how the car became such a killer. There were two accidents during that flashback, but there is no attempt to explain what was going on. I liked that.

We are also never quite sure to what level Arnie is involved in Christine’s reign of terror as she killed those that had wrecked her. I liked that as well, although we do learn his involvement or understanding at the end of the movie.

Yes, there is a lot of credibility that needs to be stretched to make this work, but the fact that the film plays it straight allows us to overlook some of the unlikely events going on.

Harry Dean Stanton appears here as Detective Junkins, but his role was vastly underutilized. He had maybe two or three scenes that certainly show off his great skill, but leave you wanting for more.

Christine is a fun movie that takes a silly premise and creates an effective and entertaining movie. The flaming Christine scene was easily my favorite and one of the best effects of the production.