Christine (1983) - 16 mistakes

Revealing: In the scene when Christine smashed repeatedly into the silver Camaro at the gas station, there is no motor in the Camaro. The hood of the Camaro gets knocked off the hinges and is twisted sideways on the car. As Christine is in reverse and dragging the Camaro along you can see down through the hood that the engine compartment is empty. Minus a transmission also, I believe.

Visible crew/equipment: When Christine smashes into the little white car inside Darnell's garage, she gets hooked to the car. Christine backs up trying to disconnect herself from the white car. When the white car finally is released, the momentum of the maneuver sends the white car skidding into other cars. Look carefully and you will see the casters mounted underneath the white car allowing it to easily skid along the floor.

Continuity: At the the end of the film, Dennis uses the Caterpillar tractor to ram Christine. He also immobilizes the car by dropping the teeth of the loading bucket into the roof. Then we see close-ups of the car repairing itself completely. The next shot, just before the tractor starts to crush the car, shows the car in its previous smashed-up condition again.

Continuity: At the beginning of the final scene when our hero says "They really cleaned this place out," they must not have noticed the little white car that Christine runs into on her first suicide run.

Revealing: Whenever Christine is shown burning rubber, the thick, white smoke can be seen coming from somewhere up inside the wheel well, and when sprayed onto the spinning tire makes it appear that the tire is producing far more smoke than it actually is.

Continuity: When Buddy stops his Camaro in front of the fuel station's service bay, the car is oriented at about a 45% angle to the facade of the building. But as he and the others step out, the car is parallel to the facade. This is even more obvious just as Christine crashes into the Camaro for the first time.

Factual error: Arnie's mother says, "When we signed the registration papers at town hall." The story takes place in California. In California you don't go to town hall to register a car, you go to the DMV (http://www.dmv.ca.gov).

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where the wrecked Christine rebuilds itself for the first time, and the camera moves in on Keith Gordon, the shadow of part of the camera becomes visible along the right side of his face just as he says "Okay. Show me."

Continuity: When Leigh is choking inside the car at the drive-in, the speaker hanging on the driver-side door glass changes location. When the interior is dark, it is forward, against the vertical chrome bar. As the interior gets brighter, the shot from the back seat looking forward shows the speaker is completely missing. When the interior gets really bright, inside shots show the speaker is a few inches rearward from the original location while exterior shots show its move even further forward. And when dark again, the speaker is where it was at the start.

Revealing: Christine's headlights are visible through Buddy Repperton's rear window as she is chasing him. Repperton makes a pretty quick steering maneuver to get away from Christine, and her headlights are shown moving sideways in the rear window to simulate this. Unfortunately, the movement of Christine's headlights is far too slow to correspond to the quick movement of Repperton's steering wheel. It was done in a studio and looks pretty phony.

Factual error: There are a few scenes in the movie which show Christine locking her doors and we see that she has common lock "buttons" on the inside door panels. This is incorrect - 1958 Plymouths are not equipped with buttons. To lock the door, the door handle has to be rotated counter-clockwise.

Continuity: As Arnie runs after Leigh at the drive-in, he arrives under the awning with his hair slightly wet, but still rather full-looking. But in the next close-up, it's soaked flat onto his head.

Continuity: At the gas station that explodes, a car is lifted high in the left service bay, but is down on the floor when the building explodes. To try and fix this continuity error, a quick close-up shows the controls for the right bay's lift as Christine shoves the Camaro inside the right bay, smashing those controls. This should have no effect on the left lift (each lift is completely independent for safety), yet two quick close-ups (of the blonde guy, then his feet) show the car on the left is now coming down. But long before it could have traveled all the way down, the next shot is from outside as the building explodes with the car firmly on the floor.

Continuity: When the gas station explodes, one closer shot shows the far right end of the station where the tow truck is parked next to two fuel pumps. Behind the truck, the grounds erupts with a huge explosion. The next shot shows the entire station from further away, and at the right is the truck and two pumps with no fireball rising behind them, yet there should be.

Continuity: When Christine is about to push the Camaro sideways into the service bay, an interior shot looking at Trelawney in the bay, screaming, shows that the Camaro is already moving sideways before it is hit by Christine, yet the next exterior shows it isn't moving yet.

Continuity: When Christine is crushed and dropped from the junkyard crane, the side facing Dennis, Leigh and Junkins shows a steel wheel very prominently. As they talk, they are looking right at it, and when the shot returns to the cube, the wheel is gone, replaced by Christine's mangled grillwork and front bumper- as if the cube has spun 180 degrees. The viewing angle is unchanged, evidenced by the crane's tread belts and the area in the background, and if the cube were 'morphing', the 3 characters would have seen it and reacted.