Chrysler Movie car

This one of my Evil Car series. The original painting of Christine has been sold. I decided to develop my own series of horror cars, art. ... more

by Victoria Snavely

Title

Chrysler Movie car

Artist

Victoria Snavely

Medium

Painting - Acrylic

Description

This one of my Evil Car series. The original painting of Christine has been sold. I decided to develop my own series of horror cars, art. This is my version of this demon car. I am a big fan of Mopar and own 2 of them.
One of the two remaining models of Christine used in the film
Although the car in the film is identified as a 1958 Plymouth Fury[11] – and in 1983 radio ads promoting the film, voiceover artists announced, "she's a '57 Fury" – two other Plymouth models, the Belvedere and the Savoy, were also used to portray the malevolent automobile onscreen. John Carpenter placed ads throughout Southern California searching for models of the car, and was able to purchase twenty-four of them in various states of disrepair, which were used to build a total of seventeen copies of the film car.[9] All cars were two door hardtops.

Total production for the 1958 Plymouth Fury was only 5,303, and they were difficult to find and expensive to buy at the time. In addition, the real-life Furys only came in one color, "Sandstone White" with a "Buckskin Beige" interior, seen on the other Furys on the assembly line during the initial scenes of the movie, though the car in King's novel was ordered with a red-and-white custom paint job.[12] The original Furys had anodized gold trim on the body and Fury script on the rear fender. In order to bypass the problem of obtaining the rare trim, the cars featured the more common Belvedere "Dartline" trim. Several vehicles were destroyed during filming, but most of the cars were Savoy and Belvedere models dressed to look like the Fury. At least one '57 Savoy was used, its front end modified to look like a '58.

Some of King's details about the car were incorrect in the novel. The 1956-1958 Plymouth Fury was only available as a two-door coupe, while the book described it as a four-door sedan, which would have made it a Savoy or Belvedere model. During Leigh's choking scene, Christine is shown to have common vertical lock "buttons" on the inside door panels. Chrysler vehicles of this era were not equipped with such buttons. To lock the door, the door handle has to be pushed downward. King also mentions a shift lever for the automatic transmission, but in real life it had push-button controls.

Originally, Carpenter had not planned to film the car's regeneration scenes, but gave special effects supervisor Roy Arbogast three weeks to devise a way for the car to rebuild itself. Arbogast and his team made rubber molds from one of the cars, including a whole front end. One of the cars was stripped of its engine to accommodate internally-mounted hydraulics that pulled the framework inward, crumpling the car, with the shot then run backwards in the final film.[8]

Twenty-three cars were used in the film.[1] Initially sold as scrap metal after filming ended, one of the best known surviving vehicles was eventually rescued from the junkyard and restored. It was subsequently bought by collector Bill Gibson of Pensacola, Florida.[13]

One of the Christines was auctioned off at an auto-auction in Florida in January 2020.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_(1983_film)

Uploaded

November 5th, 2021