Trivia for
Christine (1983) More at IMDbPro »

• Christine was said to be a 1958 Plymouth Fury, which had similar panels and trim to the 1957 model. When the Fury name was introduced, it was essentially a sport and trim package on the Belvedere - notably two doors, gold anodized trim, gold grille and dual four-barrel carburetors. Christine, as shown in the movie, could have been any two door Belvedere with a 318 or 350 engine. Although over 5300 Furys - and far more Belvederes - were built in 1958, they have since become very rare and are now collector's items. There were 13 or 16 (depending on source) Belvederes/Furys smashed in the making of the movie (out of the roughly 25 used during filming), but it is unknown whether they were 1957 or 1958 models, or a combination. In any event, Plymouth enthusiasts were infuriated, although the movie popularized the car and probably saved many of them - in the same way that Back to the Future (1985) did for the DeLorean. In the original Stephen King book, the car had four doors but this was changed to a two-door model when it was realized that there never was a four-door 1958 Plymouth Fury. Although all 1958 Plymouth Furys had Buckskin Beige exterior paint and gold anodized aluminum side trim and grille, the book mentions that this particular car was custom ordered in Ford red.
  
  
• Scott Baio was considered to play Arnie Cunningham and Brooke Shields was considered for Leigh Cabot. But the film makers involved all felt the movie would be better served by casting "unknowns".
  
  
• Richard Kobritz, who had produced the film version of Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot (1979) (TV), was given some new unpublished manuscripts from King to consider for their next film adaptation. One was Christine (1983) and the other was Cujo (1983). Korbitz chose Christine because he thought Cujo was too silly...
  
  
• Arnie's nemesis, Detective Rudolph Junkins, also drives a Plymouth Fury. The car Detective Rudolph Junkins is driving when he meets Arnie in the high-school parking lot is a 1977 or 1978 Plymouth Fury - a popular police car of the late 1970s.
  
  
• To simulate the car regenerating itself, hydraulic pumps were installed on the inside of some of the film's numerous Plymouth Fury "stunt doubles", a mock-up in plastic that looked more like metal on camera than actual metal as it bent and deformed. These pumps were attached to cables, which were in turn attached to the cars' bodywork and when they compressed, they would "suck" the paneling inwards. Footage of the inward crumpling body was then reversed, giving the appearance of the car spontaneously retaking form.
  
  
• Stephen King's popularity was such at the time that the film went into production before the book was even published.
  
  
• One of the stunt Furys used in the film - the one that runs over and kills Moochie - had a rubber front end. The car was destined for the salvage yard and has been restored using parts from the other "stunt" vehicles. The vehicle is now in private hands.
  
  
• The movie playing at the drive-in scene is Thank God It's Friday (1978).
  
  
• Kevin Bacon was offered the lead role but ended up choosing Footloose (1984) instead.
  
  
• The license plate of Christine reads: CQB - which is an acronym for Close Quarters Battle.
  
  
• Special Edition DVD contains - 20 deleted, extended, or alternate scenes. They are as follows: - A brief scene of Arnie and Dennis driving to school, in which Arnie recites a dirty limerick. - Alternate scene of Arnie being bullied by Reperton and his gang. - Arnie driving to Darnell's in a junked out Christine. - Arnie breaking down in anger in Dennis's car. - Darnell and a friend talking to Arnie when he is fixing up Christine. - Extended scene of Arnie visiting Dennis at the hospital. - Extended scene of bullies trashing Christine, including the guy defecating on the dashboard. - Extended scene of Arnie and Leigh walking into Darnell's. - A scene in which Leigh visits Dennis in the hospital. - Brief scene of Arnie's mother looking in on him while he is sleeping. - Extended scene of Arnie's second visit to see Dennis in the hospital. - Alternate scene of Detective Rudolph Junkins questioning Arnie in the school parking lot. - Brief scene of Leigh telling Arnie over the phone that she can't see him any more. - A brief scene of the gas station bully being crushed by a car, explaining his death rather than the implied death of being immolated in the gas station fire seen in the wide release. - Extended scene of Detective Rudolph Junkins questioning Arnie at Darnell's after Darnell's death. - Alternate scene of Leigh calling Dennis. - Extended scene of Leigh visiting Dennis at his house. - Alternate scene of Arnie and Dennis driving in Christine, in which Arnie is speeding and drinking alcohol. - A scene of Leigh and Dennis kissing in Dennis' car, and Arnie pulls up behind them and catches them. - Extended scene of Dennis and Leigh waiting in the bulldozer for Arnie to arrive. The following deleted scene is not included in the DVD, but is mentioned by screenwriter Bill Phillips during the featurettes: - A scene at the end featuring George Thorogood and Bill Phillips as junk yard workers, who smash the pile of Christine.
  
  
• According to Bill Phillips in the DVD Documentary, Robert Prosky, who plays garage owner Will Darnell, asked Phillips to give him more dialog to make his character more interesting. Prosky recalled moments in the book featuring Darnell and asked that the scene where Darnell offers Arnie a job to be expanded to include the lines in the book where Darnell says "You can pick up around the place. Do a few lubes. And put the toilet paper on the spools...". So Phillips did add them to the script.
  
  
• The opening scene in the movie which shows Christine being "born" in Detroit was added in for the movie, the scene does not appear in the Stephen King novel.
  
  
• According to Keith Gordon on the DVD Commentary, he kept having trouble with Christine's push-button operated TorqueFlite automatic transmission control. The 1958 Plymouths (along with all other Chrysler products that year) used push buttons to select "Reverse," "Neutral," "Drive," etc.(The buttons can be seen in some shots located near the steering column but are never seen being pushed in the film). He says that it would routinely take several tries to put the transmission in gear. In a few instances, filming would be delayed so that a technician could repair the selector buttons and even then he'd still have trouble with it.
  
  
• According to Bill Phillips on the DVD Documentary, the movie technically didn't have enough violence to justify an "R" rating. But they were afraid that if the movie went out with a PG rating (PG-13 didn't exist yet), then nobody would go to see the movie. So he purposely inserted the word "fuck" and all its derivatives in order to get the "R" rating. He then commented that they were criticized at the time for their use of the word in the film.
  
  
• Screenwriter Bill Phillips and rocker George Thorogood filmed a cameo appearance as the junkyard workers who compress Christine and dropped the cube at the end but the sequence was cut because neither one could act very well (as Phillips states in the documentary). It was Phillips who also suggested that they use Thorogood's "Bad To The Bone" as the movie's theme song.
  
  
• As a joke, 'Alexandra Paul (I)''s twin sister, Caroline Paul, stood in for her during some scenes, most notably the ride on the bulldozer.
  
  
• The possible origin of the killer car's name could possibly be from another movie called Christine which was made in 1958, around the same time the Plymouth Fury was made.
  
  
• Stephen King suffered a near fatal car collision in 1999. In an example of life imitating art, King bought the van that struck him and personally beat it with a baseball bat before sending it to the junkyard to be destroyed.
  
  
• For the French version, John Stockwell's voice was dubbed by Lambert Wilson.
  
  
• The actor playing Arnie says on a DVD extra that he pretended the car was a woman, so wherever he touched the car, he imagined which part of a woman the car was.
  
  

• SPOILER: Pay attention to the background when Arnie first brings Christine to Darnell's Garage. As he's walking back to Dennis's car to ask him to honk his horn, you can see the bulldozer in the background that will be used to destroy Christine.
  
  
• SPOILER: After reading over the book, actor Keith Gordon (Arnie) and the costume designer came up with a visual way to show Arnie being possessed by Christine. As the movie progresses, Arnie begins to wear clothes that reflect the era of Christine's make. At various points, especially when Arnie is yelling at Leigh on the phone, Arnie is seen wearing button up shirts open with black t-shirts, black pants, and boots like a 1950's "greaser". When he's talking to Junkins (both times), he's wearing a leather vest over a button up shirt (a nod to western TV shows which were popular in the 50's), and he even starts to wear a red suede jacket like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
  
  
• SPOILER: In the DVD Documentary, Bill Phillips says that he cut out the novel's plot line of the dead owner's spirit possessing Arnie and actually causing Christine to kill not only to save time and compress the story, but also because he didn't want it to look like they were copying An American Werewolf in London (1981) where Jack does the same thing to David.
  
  
• SPOILERS: Among the many subplots in the book that didn't make it to film: Will Darnell turning out to be a criminal invested in the smuggling business. Arnie was arrested for smuggling cigarettes for Darnell; Darnell, who gets arrested on income tax evasion, ends up killed by Christine after it's implied he'll cut a deal with prosecutors to tell what he knows about the car; In the book, Christine is vandalized at an airport. Sandy Galton, an airport worker and a friend of Buddy Repperton's, serves as a lookout when Christine is vandalized. He soon skips town and at the very end is found to have been run over by a car, implying that Christine is alive again.
  
  

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