Christine's Plymouth Fury: how John Carpenter built the scariest car in movies

Some cars are stars. Christine was a monster. John Carpenter's adaptation of Stephen King's novel hit theaters on December 9, 1983, and turned a 1958 Plymouth Fury into the most feared car in movie history.

The car on screen

In the movie, Christine is a 1958 Fury in red and white. That paint job was pure fiction: the real 1958 Fury only came in Sandstone White with a Buckskin Beige interior, and Plymouth built just 5,303 of them that year. So the production leaned on its cheaper siblings. Plymouth Belvederes and Savoys stood in for the Fury, all of them two-door hardtops, dressed up to look like the real thing.

Carpenter bought 24 cars in various states of disrepair and built 17 copies of Christine from them. Other accounts say 23 cars were used, so the exact count depends on who you ask.

How they made her heal

The scene everybody remembers is Christine repairing herself, crumpled metal popping back into shape. Carpenter hadn't originally planned to film it. He gave special effects supervisor Roy Arbogast three weeks to figure it out. The team made rubber molds from one car, including a full front end, then pulled one engineless car inward with hydraulics so it crushed itself. They ran the footage backward, and the car appears to heal. No computers, just clever people.

Stunt coordinator Terry Leonard did the driving in the high-speed chase and the burning highway scene. The movie took in about $21 million at the box office.

Where the cars went

Most of the cars were scrapped after filming. One of the best-known survivors was pulled out of a junkyard and restored, and one of the Christines crossed the block at a Florida auction in January 2020. If you're shopping for a late-50s Plymouth today, check values with Hagerty's valuation tools and sold auction results, not asking prices, and watch for rust in the floors and trunk.

The Radazoid take

Christine works because every guy who ever loved a car gets it. Arnie doesn't just fix up a junker. He gives his whole heart to it, and it gives back, in the worst possible way. It's the most relatable horror movie ever made for anybody who has spent a weekend under a hood instead of answering the phone.

And the self-repair scene still beats modern CGI cold. A computer can make anything look like anything. Arbogast's crew crushed a real car and played it backward, and you believe every second. That's craftsmanship. Also, if your car ever starts playing old rock and roll on its own, sell it. Immediately.