John Carpenter and Stephen King – a combination that should go together like peanut butter & jelly, but to our surprise, these two titans of horror have only ever collaborated on one feature – 1983’s Christine. An adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a possessed cherry red 1958 Plymouth Fury, Christine ranks highly on the list of best Stephen King adaptations ever. For Carpenter, it wasn’t a passion project, as he was coming off of the massive financial failure of The Thing, which caused some immediate fallout for his career. In fact, Christine would be one of two “for hire” jobs he would take following its failure, with the other being the Academy Award-nominated Starman in 1984 (which we profiled on yesterday’s Best Movie You Never Saw).
While Carpenter has made it clear that Christine was never a personal project for him, the director nevertheless shot the hell out of it, and it had a classic John Carpenter musical score to boot. An early showcase for teen actors Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul and Kelly Preston, Christine was a modest success at the box office, grossing $21 million, but a huge hit on video/cable. In this episode of WTF Happened to this Horror Movie, we dig into how Carpenter came to adapt this Stephen King classic.
This episode of WTF Happened to this Horror Movie is written, produced (with John Fallon), edited and narrated by Tyler Nichols. Watch previous episodes below and let us know in the comments if you think 1983’s Christine holds up!
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