Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 18

Free Day:

The Other Christines

on the Assembly Line

Even by the early 1980s, one would have been forgiven for thinking of Stephen King as a fiction factory. Christine was King’s thirteenth published novel to come off the assembly line. Since the release of Carrie in 1974, King had published seven other books under his own name and four under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. 

By 1983, King was a household name, and his brand of horror had changed the literary landscape. The movies hadn’t quite caught up with Stephen’s output, however. By the time of Christine’s (the book) release, Hollywood had adapted only four of his works: Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma), ‘Salem’s Lot (1979, Tobe Hooper), The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick), and Creepshow (1982, George A. Romero).

(Only Carrie and The Shining could be considered true “Hollywood” pictures. Tobe Hooper’s ‘Salem’s Lot was a two-part miniseries for CBS television — which was still seen as “lesser-than” when compared to movies — and Creepshow was an original screenplay written by King for Romero and producer Richard P. Rubinstein’s independent production company Laurel Entertainment. Pittsburgh ain’t Los Angeles, Blog-o-weeners.)

After Christine’s publication, that number would more than double over the next five years. During the 1980s, King was ubiquitous — bookstore shelves groaned beneath the weight of his bibliography, cinema screens ran red with movies that ran in the black. Heck, even innocent TV viewers weren’t safe:

John Carpenter’s career, too, began in 1974 with the release of his science fiction comedy Dark Star. In 1978, he re-wrote the rules of both horror and independent filmmaking with Halloween. His career seemed on an ever-upward trajectory with popular and critically acclaimed hits such as Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), The Fog (1980), and Escape from New York (1981). That is until the release of his remake of Christian Nyby’s The Thing from Another World (1951). The Thing (1982) was (at the time) a misstep. Deemed to be too downbeat for the audiences that made Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial such a hit, Carpenter’s gory film has since been reevaluated and is now considered to be a classic of the science fiction/horror genre.

Come 1983, Carpenter’s career was a bit wobbly. Two other projects that he had in the pipeline — adaptations of another of King’s novels, Firestarter, and Eric Van Lustbader’s The Ninja — were delayed. (Neither would be released under Carpenter’s guidance.) Carpenter needed the work; Richard Kobritz (Christine’s producer) needed a director. The two men had previously worked together in 1978 on the made-for-TV movie Someone’s Watching Me.

Along with screenwriter Bill Phillips, Carpenter began the job of adapting a novel that hadn’t even been published yet. The film’s budget was just under $10 million, which was less than what he had to work with on The Thing, but more than he spent on all of his previous movies combined. (The average film budget of an independent movie in the early 80s was around $2-3 million. Even big movies in 1983 — Return of the Jedi, for instance — had small-ish budgets of around $30 million. Peanuts when compared to the dollar-gobbling behemoths of today.) Still, the budget was small enough to allow Carpenter what he values most as a director: freedom.

I think Carpenter’s Christine is a model of efficiency when it comes to adaptation. Anytime you are charged with turning a 526-page book into a 110-page script (following the industry standard of one page equally one minute of screen time), you are going to have to make some hard choices. From the get-go, Carpenter and Phillips show that they are unafraid to make those hard choices. Within the first minute, they clear up the confusion of where the evil resides in the story. Throughout Blog-o-ween, I’ve been trying to figure it out — is it LeBay or Christine? Carpenter and Phillips cut through the knotty issue by showing us that it is Christine herself. To the pulsing boogie backbeat of George Thorogood and the Destoyers’ “Bad to the Bone,” we are shown that even before leaving the assembly line (which was merely an abandoned furniture factory in Irwindale, CA) Christine just ain’t no damn good.

Other scenes, as well as characters, from the book are combined and compressed to fit the film. Arnie’s confrontation with Buddy Repperton happens on the first day of school before he’s even found Christine. (Good work, Buddy, for getting expelled on the first day — that’s gotta be a record.) Roland D. LeBay and his brother George are smooshed together into the actor Roberts Blossom. Leigh’s near death experience happens at the drive-in not on the side of the road. There a more examples I could choose, but it all boils down to Carpenter’s ability to… well… boil down the story to its essentials. I think young filmmakers who are looking to adapt other media into a movie could do worse than study Carpenter’s work on Christine.

Christine did well enough at the box office. It pulled in around $21 million over seven weeks. Good, but not great numbers. Audiences liked it fine. Critics were relatively kind. Carpenter has been quoted as saying,

“I like it. I like it a lot. For reasons like the cast. I really dig them. And the car. It was fun. It’s not one of my favorites of mine, but that’s OK. It’s a good movie.”

Stephen King himself, sadly, said that Carpenter’s Christine and Kubrick’s The Shining were the only film versions of his work that had actually bored him.

Ouch!

There has been talk in recent years of there being a remake in the works, but isn’t there always talk of that? The last time Christine’s name rose from the graveyard of dead projects was 2023. Blumhouse Productions announced that they are developing the film with Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, etc.) as director. Nothing has happened yet. With the new Carrie remake doing well, maybe we will see Christine on the road sooner rather than later.

While Blumhouse gets its act together, we can enjoy other versions of King’s story. Sadly, there is no BBC Radio adaptation of Christine like there is for ‘Salem’s Lot. (I’m not sure how well an audio dramatization of Christine would work.) There is, however, a pretty good audiobook version from Simon & Schuster. (Look for it at your local library!) Holter Graham takes the wheel for the narration, and he does a pretty good job of it. He even attempts a Pittsburgh accent, most notably in the early scene where Arnie and Dennis change one of Christine’s tires in front of a house of yinzers. Not bad… but still not perfect.

I think if another audiobook is produced, then they should give the keys to Curt Wootton, better known on the internet as “Pittsburgh Dad.” He’d nail those accents!

There’s one last “adaptation” I want to talk about before we pull over and call it a night. The Stephen King Book Club has been creating videos on YouTube since 2022. They run the gamut from Top Ten lists to movie reviews to deep dives into characters and settings of King’s novels and short stories. Last year, they released a pair of videos about Christine. The first, entitled “Christine: Solving the Mystery of the ‘Evil Car,’” discusses one of the conundrums that I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of — namely, who is really in the driver’s seat: LeBay or Christine?

It is the channel’s second video that I want to bring to your attention. “A True-Crime Retelling of CHRISTINE: Stephen King's Cursed Car” is a pretty ingenious adaptation of the novel. Formatted as your typical true crime podcast, this video tells the story from outside the narrative of King’s book. I’d like to see more of this kind of approach with some of King’s other stories. One of my favorite audio drama podcasts of all time is The Black Tapes. This podcast had the feel of an NPR show, and it produced a lot of shivers up and down my spine. Man, a true-crime investigation into the events of The Shining, ‘Salem’s Lot, Carrie, or It could be a lot of fun.

You know what else is a lot of fun? Unwinding at the motel after a long day’s driving. I’ll order us food from room service, while you get to work on tomorrow’s reading: Part 2: Chapters 40 & 41. It’s Christmas Eve, and good ol’ Arnie’s luck finally runs out, Blog-o-weeners. That’s what you get, I suppose, for driving hundreds of miles all over the darn place.

That true crime rendition of Christine has me thinking of other pseudo-documentaries. My favorite ever is one that Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel aired back in 2012. Mermaids: The Body Found (and its sequel that aired the following year Mermaids: The New Evidence) follows the story of a scientific team's investigation into the source behind mysterious underwater recordings of an unidentified marine body.

It was all so silly, and I gotta admit that I loved it. (I thought it would make a great remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.) Those who bemoan the lack of skepticism in the culture and the deterioration of scientific eduction didn’t love it so much, however. Many who watched the shows were unable to separate fact from fiction and believed what they were watching was a factual documentary. I often wonder if politicians and the like pay close attention to these historical moments when the population is willing to believe anything so long as it is portrayed in a realistic manner. I mean, for those who are interested in pulling the wool over the electorate’s eyes, it’s a teachable moment and…