Blog-o-ween 2026: Playin' Chicken with Stephen King's Christine — Day 12

Part 2: Chapters 23, 24, & 25

Arnie and Leigh are parking at the Embankment, Libertyville’s version of Lover’s Lane. All is going well until Leigh skedaddles out of Christine, leaving Arnie panting, frustrated, and alone. In tears, Leigh tells Arnie that while she wants to keep doing what it is they are doing, she cannot do it in Christine. She senses that Arnie loves Christine more than her. Worse… she senses that Christine loves Arnie right back… and hates her.

After taking Leigh home, Arnie cruises around in Christine. He begins to realize that Leigh may be right about one thing: he spends much more time with Christine than he does her. He also begins to realize that his relationship with Christine may be doing something to him. Just what, he doesn’t know. But soon, as the miles begin to accrue (or diminish if Christine’s odometer is anything to go by), Arnie’s doubts about Christine — as well as his senses of time and of memory — dissolve into the ether.

That night, Leigh dreams that Christine visits her. The car sits at the curb in front of Leigh’s house, her engine running. There is no one at the wheel. Leigh tells her to go away and leave her alone, and Christine abides, pulling away from the curve sans driver. Thinking it all a dream, Leigh falls back asleep. Outside, however, fresh tire tracks show in the snow.

A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, Buddy Repperton and friends pay Sandy Galton a visit at the airport. As the sounds of breaking glass, twisting metal, and moronic laughter drift down to his parking lot attendant’s booth, Sandy takes a slug of Texas Driver and wishes he’d never heard of Buddy… or Arnie… or Christine…

There’s a scene in Fred Dekker’s 1987 love letter to classic movie horror, The Monster Squad, where Sean (Andre Gower) sits on the roof of his house and, with the aid of a pair of binoculars, watches Groundhog Day, Part 12. (No, not that Groundhog Day.) Sean’s dad (Stephen Macht), bearing burgers and fries, soon climbs out on the roof and joins him, and the evening is complete as the two guys kick back and enjoy the flick.

Man, I love that scene! What kid wouldn’t want access to their very own drive-in movie theater? C’mon! Of course, seeing the movie is one thing and hearing is something else entirely. (Although, how much sound do you need to get the gist of Groundhog Day, Part 12?) Back in the day, you’d need to park close to a post that had a speaker hanging from it. You took said speaker and hooked it on the upper edge of your car window. Then, you rolled up the window to keep the speaker in place. The sound wasn’t great, but at least you could understand what was being said.

Unfortunately, the drawback to these speakers wasn’t just poor sound fidelity. (Although, to be honest, if you’re going to the drive-in movies, then sound fidelity is probably pretty low on the list of priorities.) Chances are that after a double feature, a bunch of trailers, a couple buckets of popcorn, a whole pack of hot dogs, boxes of Mike & Ikes, and enough root beer to give Godzilla heartburn, the last thing on your mind is gonna being whether you remembered to put the speaker back on its post. I don’t care how many warnings the theater posted before and after the pictures — you’re probably gonna drive off with a busted window or a useless speaker trailing its wires behind it.

For once, the eggheads in charge of inventing the useless garbage that fills our everyday lives actually came up with a good idea. Not only does it save you the cost of replacing your driver-side window, but it also solves the problem of crummy sound. Why use the lo-fi speakers provided by the theater when you can just bring your own sound system? The solution? Microbroadcasting.

Microbroadcasting allows individuals or businesses to broadcast a radio signal over a limited area. In this case, it’s a drive-in theater broadcasting a movie’s sound to its patrons, but the same technology is used by schools to transmit announcements to students across campus, by tour guides to make sure the folks in the back of the group can hear them, and by that guy down the street from you who goes overboard with his Spooky Season decorations every year and who wants you to hear the theme to Halloween over and over again as you drive past his house.

Unfortunately, for Arnie and Leigh, the Liberty Hill Drive-In does not use microbroadcasting to transmit the movie’s sound. It is 1978, after all, and the technology would not be used until the late-1990s when The Boulevard Drive-In in Kansas City, Kansas, became the first theater to broadcast sound digitally. From where they sit on the Embankment, F.I.S.T. (1978 Norman Jewison) might as well be a silent film.

(Although, I have the sneaking suspicion that neither Arnie nor Leigh are all that interested in what Sylvester Stallone has to say on the subject of rights for the working man.

November 4 seems a little late in the season to be enjoying a drive-in movie anyway. Drive-Ins in the Pittsburgh area usually operate from March to October. I’ve been to a couple of double features when the temperatures during the second movie have sunk into the forties. It’s times like that that you want a little company. Or some hot chocolate. Or both.

The way that Arnie negates Leigh’s feelings about Christine is infuriating. Of course, her not wanting to make-out with Arnie in the car because she feels that it — she! — is jealous of her sounds crazy under normal circumstances. This is a horror novel, however, so we know that Leigh’s feelings are completely valid. Calling her “crazy” for feeling that way, however, is an ad hominem attack that Arnie has used before (and will continue to use) on his parents and on Dennis. He is also quick to portray himself (and Christine) as the victim of everyone’s prejudices. These are classic techniques of the manipulator, and it is sad to watch Arnie turn to them… or is it even Arnie who is doing it? More on that later…

According to Merriam-Webster, the term “idiot light” entered the lexicon in 1966 to describe “a colored light on an instrument panel (as of an automobile) designed to give a warning (as of low oil pressure).” These lights were once called “tell-tales,” but “idiot light” rose in popularity with automakers’ use of the lights for crucial functions instead of gauges. Idiot lights let you know that something bad has happened; gauges let drivers know that trouble was on the horizon. Gauges allowed for the detection of trouble before it happened; idiot lights only told you after the fact.

That Arnie is disturbed by the term “idiot lights” (198) is, I think, important. It comes at a moment when he is, at last, beginning to question his relationship with Christine.

“He stood on the walk, looking at his stalled car, marvellously resurrected time traveller from the era of Buddy Holly and Khrushchev and Laika the Space Dog, and suddenly he hated it. It had done something to him, he wasn’t sure what. Something.

“The idiot lights, blurred into football-shaped red eyes by the moisture on the window, seemed to mock him and reproach him at the same time.” (198) 

Once inside Christine, however, Arnie seems genuinely unable to gauge (pun intended!) the damage that Christine has done to his relationships with his parents, with Leigh, with Dennis. Outside, he refers to the car as “it;” inside, Christine is “she” again. Riding in the belly of the beast, Arnie is no longer able to read those emotional gauges. All that matters is cruisin’ with Christine.

We don’t get the attack on Christine in the book they way we will in the movie. (We’ll discuss the key differences between King’s book and Carpenter’s movie in our upcoming “Free Day,” so stayed tuned, Blog-o-weeners.) King keeps the “rape” of Christine by Buddy Repperton and his gang off-stage. We will come to learn the horrors visited upon Arnie’s car tomorrow, but for now we remain with Sandy Galton, hearing what he hears:

“The wind was blowing toward him, and he could hear — too much, he could hear.

“A tinkle of breaking glass, muffled laughter, a loud metallic thonk.

“More breaking glass.

“A pause.

“Low voices drifting to him on the cold wind. He was unable to pick up the individual words; they were distorted.

“Suddenly there a perfect fusillade of blows; Sandy winced at the sound. More breaking glass in the dark, and tinkle of metal falling on the pavement — chrome or something, he supposed… It sounded as if some pretty bad stuff was going on down at the far end of that parking lot.” (207-8)

Pretty bad stuff is right.

I like that we stay with Sandy in this moment. Each sound he hears is separated in its own paragraph as if each one is carried by its own gust of wind. It allows the reader to imagine the worst.

On that note, Blog-o-weeners, I say with retire for the night.  We need to get our rest, because there’s a lot of road to traverse tomorrow. Read Part 2: Chapters 26, 27, 28, 29, & 30. In know that seems like a lot to lay on you so early in the week, but in terms of page count it isn’t all that more than our usual night’s work.

We’ll find out the extent of the damage wreaked by Repperton and his lackeys. We’ll spend Thanksgiving at the hospital with Dennis. And you know what? I think I’ll treat us all to a concert at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. Jackson Browne is in town. (Say that in a Pittsburgh accent five times fast!) We might run into Moochie Welch while we’re there. Or should I say run over him? (Heh-heh-heh!)

Boy, I miss going to the drive-in. Doesn’t matter what’s playing, a trip to the drive-in is always a lot fun. I tried it out here in California, but it just wasn’t the same. Too much light leakage from the surrounding towns for one thing. For another, no one seemed to understand the rules of the drive-in — like shutting off your lights if you arrive after the movie has started. It was so frustrating! I don’t want to sound like Emily Post, but there are important rules of drive-in movie etiquette to be followed. Maybe I’ll share them in a future post. And if you take them all to heart, then you’re guaranteed to have a good time at the movies, because…