CHRISTINE
(1983)
The classic love affair, we all know, is boy meets girl, boy gets girl, and so often, boy loses girl. But in America, and in today’s popular culture, there’s a common variation on that theme: Boy sees car, boy buys car, boy falls in love with car, and they live happily ever after to a rock ’n’ roll sound-track. Oddly enough, in the mythology of twentieth-century America, men can rely far more on their automobiles than they can on true love with a living, breathing human being.
In Christine, King takes that bizarre notion and twists it to the heights of perversity. Published in 1983, it is a novel of obsessions and hauntings, of teenage lust and high school angst. If this storyline were pitched in Hollywood, it would be Carrie meets The Shining … with cars.
Cars are everywhere in the book. To nearly everyone in this story—save for its protagonist and narrator, Dennis Guilder—cars are vitally important. It’s a wonder that the plot line is set in the Pittsburgh suburb of Libertyville, instead of somewhere outside of Detroit.
King grew up in New England in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A flashy car was everything to a teenage boy then. It still is, though other things have since become almost as crucial. So there’s no surprise that the status symbol all the guys in the story—teenagers and their elders alike—covet most is a fine automobile.
The exception, as noted, is Dennis Guilder. He is sufficiently mature to look askance at this kind of posturing. Unfortunately, his best friend, Arnie Cunningham, not only partakes of this, but embraces it. Arnie becomes a contorted funhouse-mirror image of what the average American male’s obsession with cars looks like to someone who doesn’t share that passion.
On the other hand, it isn’t really Arnie’s fault. He’s a lonely, pimply-faced kid, lusting after the smart, pretty girl in school who he thinks barely notices him. His best friend is a handsome jock, and he’s just the forlorn sidekick.
Until he meets Christine, a 1958 red Plymouth Fury. In reality, she’s a pile of junk, but she calls out to him, seduces him in a sense. He can see in her a vision of what she should be, and buys her in order to restore that beauty. Arnie believes, in his secret heart, that he also has that beauty and specialness within himself, and he sees restoring Christine as a way to bring it out.
Well, we know where that leads.
Christine isn’t your average automobile. She’s possessed by the corrupt spirit of her first owner, Roland LeBay. He’s a vicious SOB, and he plays Arnie wonderfully, manipulating him until his insecurities have made him so desperate and cruel that he almost becomes evil himself. Fortunately, Arnie is eventually redeemed. Sadly, it comes too late.
Cars. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.
Christine is also, perhaps more than any other of King’s works, the author’s paean to rock music. As a musician and radio station owner himself, there’s no doubt that music is important to him. Here, King puts it in perspective as part of the high school experience. Each chapter begins with a quote from a classic rock song. More than that, however, when Christine (or, more accurately, the ghost of Roland LeBay) goes out on the prowl to punish those who’ve wronged Arnie, the music pouring from the car’s speakers is the music of the period in which the auto was built.
That element of the story is also present in King’s masterpiece of a haunting, The Shining (1977). Like the malevolent auto in Christine, the Overlook Hotel of The Shining (and, let us not forget, the Marsten House of 1975’s ’Salem’s Lot) is not only inhabited by the spirits of the damned, but in a real, tangible way, possessed by some other, greater, more distinct evil. In Christine, it is never truly elaborated on. In The Shining, however, we actually see the evil rising in the fire cloud above the exploding hotel.
All three King novels present their malignancy as a collaboration between seemingly ancient, preternatural evil and simple human cruelty and corruption. The lingering malignancy is created, in all three cases, by that
collaboration of ethereal malevolence, human weakness, and, interestingly, the creations of humanity: a car, a house, a hotel. This combination recurs frequently within King’s work, where events conspire to make an object the focus of both mortal and immortal evil.
Further, in all three cases, the human weakness on display generally plays itself out in the form of obsession. Arnie Cunningham’s fixation on Christine. Jack Torrance’s mania with the hotel, his job, and the play he’s trying to write. Ben Mears’s preoccupation with the Marsten House. (Of course, in the latter case, Ben turned his obsession to positive action, rather than descending into insanity, as do Arnie and Jack.)
Yet another similarity is that each of these characters’ obsessions reflects, in some way, the warped passion of a predecessor. Arnie takes the place of Roland LeBay. Jack takes the place of Delbert Grady, former caretaker of the hotel, who murdered his entire family with an ax. Both of them still exist as ghosts within the respective man-made hosts. In the third case, things are different. Ben Mears does not replace Hubie Marsten, the obsessed, evil man who killed his wife and himself in his home. Rather, he sets himself against Marsten’s heinous legacy.
Another element that is prevalent throughout Christine is that of the horrors of high school. Arnie is a loser on the scale of the title character in Carrie, and suffers many of the same injustices from his peers. Like Carrie’s callous tormentors, Christine’s Buddy Repperton and his cronies represent the worst that high school has to offer. In both novels, the cruelty of the teens feeds into the seemingly inescapable horrors that occur at the climax of each book.
With its mix of pop culture and King’s special brand of evil, Christine is a classic American ghost story.
CHRISTINE: PRIMARY SUBJECTS
ARNIE CUNNINGHAM: As a senior at Libertyville High School, Arnie is the quintessential sidekick. He speaks softly and minds his own business, trying not to get picked on by his peers and hoping to live long enough to survive high school. He loves Leigh Cabot, though he doesn’t have the guts to even ask her out until he buys Christine, a red 1958 Plymouth Fury.
Arnie’s new car changes him, in more ways than one. At first he seems
more confident. He asks Leigh out, and they date for a bit. A nice car has given Arnie the boost he needs to feel good about himself. Or so it seems.
But Christine has wrought other changes on Arnie. His appearance changes. His face clears up, and he carries himself differently. His best friend, Dennis Guilder, notices the alterations immediately. He finds, over time, that he doesn’t really like the new Arnie, and eventually, neither does Leigh.
Arnie is not himself. Quite literally. He has been manipulated and at times even possessed by the malignant ghost of Roland LeBay, the first owner of Christine. In the end, Arnie sees what he has done to his life, and how much he has hurt the people he loves the most. He wrests control of himself from LeBay one final time, and attempts to save his mother’s life. It is a failed attempt, and both Arnie and his mother are killed.
CHRISTINE: A 1958 red-and-white Plymouth Fury, Christine was built on the assembly line in Detroit, and she was born bad. There was something evil about her from the beginning, a supernatural force that reached out to hurt those it came into contact with.
Christine’s first owner was Roland LeBay, an Army veteran. LeBay was a cruel man, though he prized his car more than anything. Upon his death—shortly after selling Christine to Arnie Cunningham—his spirit merges with the car, combining his cruelty with Christine’s already considerable evil.
Then Arnie begins to be tainted by Christine’s evil, and LeBay’s presence as well. After local toughs, led by Buddy Repperton, vandalize the car to get at Arnie, the car sets out on its own at night, hunting them down and killing them. Eventually, in an effort to put an end to that evil, Dennis Guilder and Leigh Cabot use an enormous sewage truck to crush Christine until she is useless scrap. Later, she is destroyed in a compactor at a junkyard.
However, that may not be the end. For out in California, a kid named Sandy Galton, who had once attacked Christine with his friends, is struck and killed by a car. Dennis Guilder wonders if this murderer is Christine, and still fears that she might be coming for him.
DENNIS GUILDER: The most valuable player on the football team at Libertyville High, Dennis Guilder isn’t the average jock. His relationship
with Arnie Cunningham proves that. Everything Dennis is, Arnie isn’t. Where Dennis is handsome and athletic and outgoing … Arnie isn’t. And yet they remain friends, as they have been since grade school. Dennis is Arnie’s protector, and tries to be his voice of reason when things in Arnie’s life get out of control.
Nobody understands why Dennis always defends Arnie, and in time, Dennis comes to realize that he can’t save Arnie anymore. Despite their outward differences, they’re both intelligent young men, and their friendship means more than the prejudices of high school, the cruelties of teenage life.
But it has always been easier for Dennis than for Arnie. They are both enamored of the same girl, Leigh Cabot, but Arnie doesn’t believe he stands a chance with her if Dennis is his competition. Yet when Arnie begins to change, thanks to Christine’s influence, he finds the courage to ask Leigh out, and she says yes.
Over time, however, both Leigh and Dennis have to deal with the further changes in Arnie, and the way his obsession with Christine has twisted him. As a result, the two of them are drawn together, and eventually fall in love.
Together, Dennis and Leigh destroy Christine—or at least believe they have.
Presently, Dennis Guilder remains in Libertyville, where he is a high school teacher. He still fears that one day Christine may return to unleash her vengeance upon him.
ROLAND LeBAY: Born and raised in Libertyville, Pennsylvania, Roland LeBay was a misanthrope all his life. He was a cruel individual who didn’t ever see the need to get on well with people. But he knew cars. In the Army, he was a mechanic known for his ability to fix anything.
When he bought Christine in 1958, it was a match made in Hell. The car itself was already evil, somehow, and LeBay’s natural hatred of people fed the auto, just as it fed him.
Some twenty years later, Roland sells Christine to a local teenager named Arnie Cunningham. Shortly thereafter, he dies. At least, physically. His spirit, however, merges with Christine, and together, the two of them—car and owner—change and possess Arnie Cunningham. In the end, however, when Christine is being destroyed, LeBay’s spirit flees the vehicle in an effort toward self-preservation. He tries to fully possess Arnie himself,
but Arnie fights him. The struggle takes place in a speeding car, and an accident ensues that takes Arnie’s life and that of his mother, Regina Cunningham.
It is presumed that without a host, Roland LeBay’s spirit has gone to its final reward. Or final punishment, as the case may be.
LEIGH (CABOT) ACKERMAN: As a senior at Libertyville High, Leigh has the misfortune to briefly become the girlfriend of Arnie Cunningham and the object of Roland LeBay’s obsession. Leigh cares for Arnie a great deal, but soon comes to realize that his fixation on his car is very unhealthy. In fact, along with Arnie’s best friend, Dennis Guilder, Leigh realizes that there is something supernatural at work here. Together with Dennis, she aids in the destruction of Christine.
For a time afterward, Leigh and Dennis remain together as a couple. Eventually, however, they split and Leigh marries another. She settles in Taos, New Mexico, where she still lives with her husband and their twin girls.
WILL DARNELL: The owner of Darnell’s Garage, where Arnie restores and garages Christine, Will Darnell is a common criminal. He uses his operation to smuggle drugs—among other things—inside cars. When Arnie Cunningham is arrested for working for him, Darnell lets him take the fall. In vengeance, Christine kills Darnell.
BUDDY REPPERTON: The most notorious member of Arnie’s class at Libertyville High, Buddy is the leader of those students who frequently abuse Arnie. When Arnie begins to change and grow more confident—and more importantly, less afraid of Buddy—Repperton and his friends attack and vandalize Christine.
For that act, Christine later forces Buddy’s car off the road, and Buddy and several of his friends die in the ensuing crash.
SANDY GALTON: Though Sandy Galton doesn’t participate in the assault on Christine, he is the one who tells Buddy where the car can be found, and lets them into the airport parking lot where the attack occurs.
Though for a very long time it appears that Sandy has escaped Christine’s vengeance, it is later reported that he has been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in California. It is Dennis Guilder’s belief that Christine has somehow returned and is responsible for Sandy Galton’s death.
VERONICA and RITA LeBAY: The wife and young daughter of Roland LeBay, both of them die while inside Christine. Rita chokes to death. Veronica’s death appears to be suicide, but Dennis Guilder believes that Christine murdered her.
CHRISTINE: ADAPTATIONS
Just in time for Christmas, in 1983, Columbia Pictures released the motion picture version of Christine. Oddly enough, despite the marquee value of the Stephen King name, and the fact that the story was, of course, his, the film was marketed as “John Carpenter’s Christine.” Carpenter, director of Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and Escape from New York (1981), among many others, clearly had his own box office appeal, but the billing seemed awkward nevertheless.
Produced by long-time Carpenter collaborator Richard Kobritz and adapted by Bill Phillips, the 111-minute movie remained relatively faithful to the original novel (except for the change of making Christine inherently evil rather than possessed), despite the title billing. Keith Gordon, who would later become a director himself, played the doomed Arnie Cunningham, with John Stockwell as Dennis Guilder and Alexandra Paul as Leigh Cabot.
The film version of King’s novel met with mediocre reviews and unimpressive box office, but continues, as with just about everything these days, to survive in the eternity of video.
CHRISTINE: TRIVIA
• Alexandra Paul, who plays Leigh Cabot in the film, went on to become the costar of the most-watched television series in the world, Baywatch, in the 1990s.
• Actress Kelly Preston plays the relatively minor role of Roseanne, a girl Dennis Guilder briefly dates. In an odd confluence of events, the book features Dennis and Roseanne going to see the movie Grease (1978), which starred John Travolta, who happens to be married, in real life, to Kelly Preston. Travolta also had an early role in a King film, as Billy Nolan in Carrie (1976).