Did You Know?

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 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.

Richard Kobritz, who had produced the film version of Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot, was given some new unpublished manuscripts from King to consider for their next film adaptation. One was Christine and the other was Cujo. Korbitz chose Christine because he thought Cujo was too silly...

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.

The movie playing at the drive-in scene is Thank God It's Friday.

The license plate of Christine reads begins with "CQB" which is an acronym for "Close Quarters Battle".

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.

According to Keith Gordon (who plays Arnie) 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.

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.

The possible origin of the killer car's name could possibly be from Christine, another movie called Christine which was made in 1958, around the same time the Plymouth Fury was made.

For the French language dub version, John Stockwell's voice was dubbed by Lambert Wilson.

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.

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 where Jack does the same thing to David.

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 getting 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.