Ahh, AMC is at it for a second day, doing the Stephen King thing. I've never seen
Christine until today. Kinda neat, although it never really says why the car is the way it is. Seems it was "born bad", right off the Detroit assembly line?
And a young Alexandra Paul...rawwrrr.
The self-repair/regeneration effects are pretty cool. I read on the movie's Wikipedia entry that molds were made from the original cars and then recast in plastic and then hydraulics attached from the inside to draw in/crumple the painted, faux metal/chrome panels and components. And, when run in reverse, it looks like the car is going from a crumpled mess to a pristine, smooth car again with smooth red body and perfect chrome.
Never occurred to me it was that simple and "well, of course!"
I was sitting here trying to figure out how they did that in 1983 (no CGI) and it doesn't have the jittery tell-tale look of stop-motion work, so it was cool to learn how relatively straightforward and low-tech it was to achieve the effect...crush some plastic from within, and run the film in reverse. I love stuff like this, back when special effects crews couldn't do it all on a computer and had to come up with creative, real-life ways to go about stuff like this. The Wiki entry said that the director, John Carpenter, originally hadn't intended to film the regeneration sequences (too tough?), but that he gave the effects crew three weeks to figure out a way to make it happen...and they did. That's just cool.
For those who've not seen...scrub up to the 1:25 mark to cut the chase.