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Mistakes

Christine's instrument lighting is green in long shots and white in close shots. See more...

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Christine (1983) - 7 corrections

Directed by John Carpenter, starring Alexandra Paul, Harry Dean Stanton, John Stockwell, Keith Gordon (add more)

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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In 1958, Plymouths could be ordered with radios (as was Christine in the movie). However, radio technology at that time still used vacuum tubes and vacuum tubes take time to warm up. Transistor (solid state) radios require no warm up time and produce audio instantly when turned on, but transistor radios were not used in cars until the early 60's. Typically, vacuum tube radios takes approximately 5-10 seconds for audio to be heard after the radio is turned on. In the assembly line scene (as well as later scenes), the radio is turned on and music is heard instantly but this is simply not possible with a vacuum tube radio. [Arnie cobbled the car together with parts from Darnell's wrecking yard. Also, there are a number of companies that make modern electronic radios with the face plates of the original car for car restorers.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
Christine's production line is shown stopping at 5pm exactly. Car production lines are very capital-intensive - in 2011, they cost about £10,000 an hour to run - so they are usually run on two or three shifts, finishing at 6am, 2pm, or 10pm. Meal breaks are usually half way through the shift, so that doesn't fit either. In any case, until the 1980's, there was usually some allowance for "washing up time" at the end of each shift - the men (in those days) would finish at ten to the hour to have time to wash their hands and change their clothes. [I work on a production line. The exact time my work finishes each day varies. This day, that production line happened to finish, for whatever reaon, at 5PM. There's no mistake in that.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In filming the movie, both 1957 and 1958 Plymouth Furys were used: they had similar body styles, but quad headlights were not allowed until the '58 model year. The '57's had what looked like headlights inboard beside the real headlight, but were in reality only chrome ornaments. In some scenes, the car starts as a '58 then changes to a '57, then back to a '58. [Although several Furys/Belvederes/Savoys were built to look like Christine, none of them displayed the dual headlights of the '57 model. Other interchangable parts between the '57 and '58 may have been used, but the headlights remain the quads of the '58 throughout the movie.]
Edit
When Christine is fixing herself after the guys smashed her up, her front end is shown to be perfectly straight for its entire width and the hood is missing. Near the end of the scene, the front end is shown crushed and unfolds again, and the hood appears from nowhere. [About the hood: in the book, Stephen King had the broken-off parts of the car reattaching themselves; hubcaps rolled "like coins" to reattach themselves to the wheels, etc. Therefore it's safe to assume that the hood - ripped loose and thrown to the floor by Buddy in a deleted scene, by the way - reattached itself.]
Edit Corrected by Jeff Swanson
The restored Christine has yellow and black late '50s standard California license plates with the number CQB 241. The only time the letter Q was used at that time was on special plates for ham radio operators, and even then it was a different style; the type of Q they used on Christine wasn't introduced until the late '60s. [Filmmakers have to use fake numbers to avoid lawsuits (just like fake adresses and phone numbers).]
Edit Corrected by Rlvlk
While on the assembly line in the beginning, Christine's air filters were brass colored. After Arnie buys her and she restores herself, they're chrome. Doubtful he found them in Darnell's junk heap. [He could have found them on a junked car, or he could have bought them somewhere, he probably would not have been able to find every part he needed in the junk yard, so it makes sense that he would have had to buy a few new parts.]
Edit Corrected by pross79
Christine is a 1957 Plymouth Fury, and is shown being assembled on the assembly line in 1957. She is painted 'Autumn Red', as per Detective Junkin's remarks later in the film. However, the 1957 Fury was only available in one color: 'Buckskin Beige'. In fact, all of the other Furys shown on the assembly line are the correct color. The producers apparently made Christine red to give it a more flashy, sinister look than what the beige color would provide. [According to the novel, Christine is red because she was custom ordered in that color, the color is referred to as "autumn red" in the novel but not the movie. Christine is also a 1958 model.]
Edit