Color, 1986, 91m. / Directed by John Carpenter / Starring Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul / Columbia (US R1 NTSC) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9) / DD2.0
A rock solid improvement over Stephen King's interesting but fatally overlong novel, Christine may not be the scariest John Carpenter film by a long shot but is certainly among his sleekest. While the trend has been to dismiss most of the King adaptations in the '80s as trash, critics are fortunately beginning to now reassess most of these neglected titles (The Dead Zone, Creepshow, Cat's Eye, etc.), and Christine is perhaps the most overdue for some respect. After a brief, amusing prologue in which we see the title car, a 1958 cherry red Plymouth Fury, being wheeled off the assembly line and already causing mayhem, the film concerns a circle of high school friends in 1979. Arnie (Keith Gordon, doing an excellent job), a laughable nerd, and Dennis (John Stockwell, doing an adequate job), a clean cut jock, are unlikely friends whose bond is tested by two new arrivals: Arnie's renovated new car, Christine, and a new girl at school, Leigh (Baywatch's Alexandra Paul). Thanks to the malefic influence of his car, Arnie becomes darker, cooler, and more dangerous, attracting Leigh but putting her in danger when the car itself becomes jealous. One night Christine is trashed beyond recognition by a group of bullies, but when the vandals begin to die one by one, Dennis and Leigh begin to suspect that their friend may be under an evil influence or perhaps a murderer himself.
While the device of a killer car had already become hoary by this point, Carpenter injects the concept with a dose of simple but extremely effective special effects which are far more effective than the avalanche of CGI the story would probably receive today. All of Carpenter's scope films rely heavily on each inch of the frame for maximum effectiveness, and Christine is no exception. The careful arrangements of characters on the screen (usually with the dominant personality for the scene in the foreground) makes the pan and scan version included here quite useless; fortunately, the splendid new widescreen transfer is close to perfect and a tremendous improvement over the sick, chalky-looking letterboxed laserdisc a few years ago. The surround soundtrack doesn't rip forth like more recent mixes but does get the job done; frankly, it's nice to see this film in such good shape after years of bad video transfers and subpar TV screenings. Sleaze fans should get a kick out of seeing Roberts Blossom from Deranged in a chilling cameo as Christine's prior owner, and look for Kelly Preston, aka Mrs. John Travolta, as Dennis' girlfriend. Only debits: no trailer or Carpenter commentary, and an awfully cheap-looking, ugly cover design that looks like a bad imitation of the poster for 1958's Diabolique.
Color, 1988, 94m. / Directed by John Carpenter / Starring Roddy Piper, Meg Foster / Image (US R1 NTSC) / WS (2.35) (16:9) / DD2.0
Roddy Piper (yes, the wrestler) stars as Nada (as in "nothing," get it?), a homeless drifter who goes from job to job and winds up in a construction position in an unnamed large city. A group of radicals keep breaking in on the TV signals and warning of an evil conspiracy that's been brainwashing the general public, but everyone tends to ignore it. After a series of government attacks on one faction holing out in a local church, Nada uncovers a pair of sunglasses which reveal that the world is not quite as he thought. All advertising and written material contains subliminal messages, such as "Marry and Reproduce," "No Individual Thought," and "This Is Your God" (printed on money). Even worse, it appears all the wealthy people are - surprise! - ugly skeletal-faced aliens in disguise. Pretty soon Nada is suiting up for battle, and the fun begins.
Generally dismissed as one of Carpenter's goofier films (along with Big Trouble in Little China), They Live has some serious things to say about right-wing suppression and the growing apathy near the end of the millennium. Piper's role seems tailor-made for Carpenter buddy in crime Kurt Russell (including such lines as the immortal "I've come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubble gum"), but Piper fills the action hero shoes pretty well. He got a lot of bad press at the time, but after we've endured such action wannabes as Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme, he looks like Laurence Olivier in comparison. In fact, it's surprising how well this film has aged over the past decade, though it does suffer from a few flaws. Piper's idiotic fight scene with Keith David seems thrown in for no good reason at all and drags on way past the breaking point; it seems including solely for the purpose of pleasing wrestling fans. Also, the final sequence is a serious let-down, a knee-jerk jokey finish that wraps the film up on an abrupt, unfinished note. Interestingly, They Live now feels like a dry run for Carpenter's subsequent In the Mouth of Madness, an even more extreme look at the world's seemingly normal sheen being slowly removed to expose a completely different, malicious force lurking underneath (and which also features an unsatisfying ending). As Carpenter has explained, all of his films in one way or another revolve around normal people who become heroes when thrust into situations beyond their control; here, the hero deals with corruption in the aliens and the human beings around him who have sold out for wealth from the invaders. It's one of the most interesting sci-fi conceits of the past few years, and while the execution doesn't always do it justice, there's plenty of food for thought here for the open-minded viewer. The previous Japanese laserdisc version of They Live was incompletely letterboxed (about 1.90:1) and had a colourless, washed-out appearance that failed to do much justice to this satiric sci-fi political actioner. No director takes advantage of the full scope widescreen image more than Carpenter; and this DVD presents the full 2.35 image and features incredibly rich, vibrant colour and deep shadows, along with a fabulous Dolby Digital surround remix. Though it has no extras (the Japanese laser did have a pretty nifty behind-the-scenes featurette, so don't chuck it if you have it), this one was definitely worth the wait.
