Uncle Ira’s Basement: JOHN CARPENTER’S CHRISTINE

In this venture down into Uncle Ira’s Basement of mysterious findings, Damn Dirty Geeks Frank Dietz and Frank Woodward discuss Jack Bennett’s choice of film topic: John Carpenter‘s tense, character-driven adaptation of the Stephen King killer car novel CHRISTINE.

Starring Keith Gordon and John Stockwell who invest both their roles with memorable character arcs, CHRISTINE marked a big year for King film adaptations as THE DEAD ZONE and CUJO based on his novels were also released in 1983.

In this episode, Jack relates his unique predilection for seeing the last 2o minutes of many movies on cable, and how his childhood fear of horror movies led to CHRISTINE being his first full-fledged horror film viewing. Watching a murderous car freewheeling on fire to the pulse of Alan Howarth and Carpenter’s synth score shot the love of horror cinema into Jack’s veins, and he’s been hooked ever since!

Click the image below to open our CHRISTINE episode photo gallery:

SHOW NOTES:

Three of our Damn Dirty Geeks — Frank Dietz, Frank Woodward and Jack Bennett — jump behind the wheel of John Carpenter’s 1983 adaptation of Stephen King’s killer car film CHRISTINE.

Trivia: CHRISTINE was the third King adaptation film released in 1983, following Lewis Teague’s CUJO on August 12th and David Cronenberg’s THE DEAD ZONE on October 21 of that same year. The DDG will release a new podcast episode on THE DEAD ZONE soon, so stay tuned!

Trivia: Stephen King’s novels were so popular for film adaptation at the time that CHRISTINE went into production before King’s book had even been published.

CHRISTINE trailer – Watch the wonderfully vintage 1983 theatrical trailer for CHRISTINE on YouTube.
STEPHEN KING website – visit the official website for the prolific horror author
CHRISTINE DVD – purchase the Special Edition DVD on Amazon.com
CHRISTINE NOVEL – get the paperback edition of Stephen King’s horror novel on Amazon.com